With a desire for applying science and technology to agricultural production, improving crop productivity, Tran Le Xuan Huy and Nguyen Dai, fourth- year students of the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications, the University of Science and Technology under the University of Da Nang-UD invented the ‘LoRaWan 7in1 wireless soil quality measuring device’. This topic won the first prize at the 2024 Asia-Pacific Smart Campus competition held at the UD in November.

‘LoRaWan 7in1 wireless soil quality measuring device’ won the first prize at the 2024 Asia-Pacific Smart Campus competition held at the UD.

Growing up in a farming family in the countryside of the central province of Quang Ngai, Tran Le Xuan Huy and Nguyen Dai witnessed their parents' hardships from a young age, clearly understanding the importance of soil nutrients for crops, so they wanted to apply the knowledge they learned to support farmers.

Huy said that normally farmers will cultivate based on their feelings, after harvesting the crops, they will let the soil rest for a while and then improve the soil by adding nutrients and fertilizers to prepare for the next crop. Because they do it based on their feelings, they will not know clearly what nutrients are lacking in the soil, what types of plants are suitable to supplement appropriately, leading to uneven productivity in each season.

Based on this reality, Huy and Dai have researched together soil quality measurement equipment to obtain specific parameters for each land area. According to Huy, the soil quality measuring device includes a sensor that can measure 7 soil nutrient parameters such as: temperature, humidity, EC (electrical conductivity of water or soil, showing the conductivity of ions dissolved in solution such as salts, minerals), TDS (total amount of solids dissolved in water, including inorganic salts such as calcium, magnesium, sodium and some organic substances), nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, salt, pH...

The device is quite simple to use, pre-programmed time, after inserting the sensor into the ground for a certain period of time, it will give results. Here, the parameters are processed and sent via LoRaWan (network system and communication protocol based on LoRa protocol) to expand the monitoring and measurement range, indicating soil nutrient quality.

After that, the results are sent to another software in the form of graphs and can save measurement values for a long time. Users can compare the nutritional results of the soil through different stages to be able to supplement nutrition appropriately.

However, when first implementing the research, the team encountered many difficulties, especially in applying the LoRaWan system. Nguyen Dai said that, at first, the team did not have much access to this technology, so they had to spend time researching and learning under the guidance of the lecturer to basically grasp and apply it in practice.

After mastering the equipment, the two students connected with people in the safe vegetable growing area of Tuy Loan, Hoa Vang District to experiment and measure soil quality. According to Dai, using the equipment to evaluate and improve soil quality helps save time and effort thanks to the ability to monitor remotely; increase crop productivity thanks to improved soil nutritional conditions; reduce fertilizer and irrigation costs through optimal use of resources and easy installation and expansion.

Directly guiding the student group to do research, Master Tran Van Lic, the lecturer of the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications, said that from the field trips, surveys, and field trips of students to the Tuy Loan vegetable growing village, through conversations to grasp the current problems of farmers, they came up with ideas for this project by applying IoT technology, sensor technology to measure many different soil indicators and know the actual soil condition.

The application of information technology to agriculture will contribute to the development of hi-tech agriculture, smart agriculture associated with sustainable green digital transformation, bringing many useful values to serve the whole community.

The research team is currently deploying additional integrated software to analyze and evaluate data, giving suggestions to farmers on what future crops that are suitable for the nutritional quality of the soil.

Reporting by CAO MINH - Translating by A.THU