DEVELOPMENT OF A MICRO-PHYSICAL ELEMENTS MONITORING DEVICE FOR A TROMBE WALL SOLAR ENERGY POULTRY BROODING HOUSE
An Internet of Things (IOT) data acquisition logger for micro-physical elements monitoring of a Trombe wall powered poultry day-old chicks’ brooding house was developed locally at the Department of Agricultural and Bioresource Engineering, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. The IOT data acquisition device was used to monitor a 24 hours daily behaviour of temperature and relative humidity regime of the poultry brooding house. The IOT data acquisition device consists of two ESP32 microcontrollers and two DHT22 (sensors), Max6675 K-type thermocouples sensors, a network router which communicates to cloud at any point. The data acquisition device was powered by 100 mono-crystalline solar PV module and a 100 Ah deep cycle battery storage that ensures steady power supply at zero power outage. The data logger was used to monitor the physical elements profile of the poultry brooding facility use for poultry brooding operation. The results of the test performance evaluation obtained showed that temperature and relative humidity regime of the brooding house were between 28 – 35oC and 56 – 82% while the ambient conditions were observed to be between 20 – 33oC and 56– 95% temperature and relative humidity respectively. Maximum and minimum solar radiation intensities were 993 w/m2 and 0 W/m2. The use of ESP32 microcontroller showed that data acquisition using the device could be could eco-friendly. With the device, the micro-physical environmental elements of the poultry house could be accessed at any point in time irrespective of location and distance. The Internet of Things data acquisition logger is user friendly. It solved a major problem of 24 hours drudgery of monitoring and data measurement at intervals usually encountered by researchers and scientists in studies of like manner.
