Development of a Smart Grain Storage Silo Using the Internet of Things (IoT) Technology

Abstract

Food security is the aspiration of every nation. To achieve this, particularly in
Developing Countries, there is a need to reduce wastage by storing staple foods
grains beyond their production seasons. Longer storage requires human presence,
monitoring and control of the storage environment which may be laborious,
demanding and sometimes outrightly unsafe. Therefore, the needs to employ
automation and artificial intelligence become necessary to control this storage
environment. This study developed an automated, intelligent silo bin that controls
the storage environment of the system for the small-scale rural farmers, of which
over 70% of their population still depend on agriculture, using Internet of Things
(IoT). The developed system consists of three units interfaced together. These
units are the pro-type 2-ton (2,000 kg) silo structure, the embedded system (made
up of the microcontroller, sensors and relays). The system is integrated to an IoT
system (made up of mobile application (BLYNK), Wi-Fi module and ultrasonic
atomizer) and the air blowing system (consisting of blower fan and heater). The
developed smart system was tested and the test run results showed that it
successfully monitors and controls storage air temperature, humidity, air
pressure, grain moisture, insect infestation and CO2 levels, the key parameters
for long term storability of grains. The coding process could be set to suit different
grains and storage conditions required for their effective storage. Although the
silo bin structure used for testing was for a particular proto-type, it can be
geometrically scaled for many silo structures.