IoT-Based Control and Monitoring System of a Solar-Powered Brushless DC Motor for Agro-Machines

Locally made agricultural machines have proven to elevate the life of many small-scale farmers, which has an increasing need to incorporate machine drives and controls to ease operations, using the Internet of Things (IoT) basics in tandem with motor designs and available off-the-shelf single board computer and development board in Raspberry Pi and Arduino UNO, respectively. This work incorporated Agile-Scrum methods to develop a control and monitoring system for the agricultural machine powered by a solar Photo Voltaic system, and uses a Brushless Direct Current Motor coupled with an electric Solenoid valve, relay modules and a controller unit for the control process, and collecting motor operation data such as voltage and current. A developed mobile app acquires motor operation data offline, and delivers it to a cloud server for analysis once in Internet connection zone. This novel design provides an effective control and monitoring mechanism for a plethora of locally made agricultural machinery that are powered by solar energy, motor operable, and readily available in our remote localities. Hence, addressing productive use of energy and sustainable development goals in SDG-1, 7, and 9.