Skills shortage ‘holding back IoT adoption in agriculture’

Hello All  I Dr Pushan Kumar Dutta from Kolkata India have made a protype model on how IoT is and can be made useful for Smart Farming application. I am also an IET Member.

I am presently working on IoT based applications in the field of irrigation and water conservation. I feel as a Scientist I should contribute using smart technologies which can be implemented purely having large scale scientific, research and critical avenues in agricultural applications in India and surrounding areas. I have been working on GIS based and satellite remote monitored LANDSAT, Cartodem data for topography based analysis. I am presently working on a IoT based smart farming application. I have developed the prototype model to  propose a simple but efficient, low-cost power efficient embedded system for solar based Off- Grid irrigation by orientation of the solar panel in the direction of the sun for providing the necessary power source in remote areas or in the field for irrigation where it is not possible to provide charge through a stable current supply. The solar panel is used for charging 5V supply. We have used Soil moisture

sensor to sense the moisture conditions of the soil. Based on moisture sensor values, a water pump is connected to switched on and off automatically. When moisture level of the soil reaches to low, the soil moisture sensor is sending the signal to microcontroller to start the pump by using stored solar energy. At the same time, using GSM, microcontroller sends message on farmers mobile about pump status. The microcontroller receives the pump status, moisture condition of the soil and moisture and temperature in air or enclosed region and provides this

information over a data acquisition device.  The system can be utilized in varied domains by regulating the voltage necessary including mobile phone charging, access drip irrigation and also

weather data monitoring and irrigation facilities. 

I am looking for Partners and industrial collaborators for this project.

I would observe that very few students are learning IoT embedded firmware skills in the UK, this area falls into a gaping chasm between engineering and computer science skill sets. Also silicon manufacturers can't even give away free training in UK, they end up canceling courses due to poor uptake. I am curious as to why this should be?

I agree with Alex, I work at CENSIS, innovation centre for sensors and imaging systems. We get involved in a lot of IOT projects in all sectors. There is a large skills deficit in firmware engineering. Not enough emphasis is given by companies to release engineers for training.