International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering, Management & Applied Science (IJLTEMAS)

Volume VII, Issue V, May 2018 | ISSN 2278-2540

Remote Monitoring and Control of Poultry Farm

using IoT Techniques
Eric Hitimana*1, Gaurav Bajpai *2, Richard Musabe *3, Louis Sibomana *4
1,2,3
Department of Computer and Software Engineering , 1PhD student ACEIoT
4
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
*
University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda

Abstract—The environmental conditions monitoring and A hatched chick cannot maintain a proper body
control’s ability is crucial and demands a good level of research temperature without help. In the first three weeks of its life, a
in fields ranging from the change in climatic conditions in chick should not be exposed to cool temperatures. Exposing
agriculture and zoology. According to world’s agricultural the young bird to cool temperatures (20oC) for a day or two on
produce survey, chicken is among the most favorite produce, the farm can cause the bird to die from heart problems later.
since it is a nutrient rich food providing high protein, low fat, low Hence, heated premises are a must for brooding. Temperature
cholesterol, and low energy than other kinds of poultries. should be reduced by 3oC per week, until the room
From last few years worldwide, there has been an increased temperature of 20oC is reached. After six weeks of age,
level of awareness regarding the safety of food products like desirable -temperature range in 18 to 21oC. The most widely
chickens and there has been a high demand for good quality and used source of heat, is a heat lamp for small flocks of birds
quantity chicken food. This research focuses on the integration of [1].
wireless sensors and mobile network with a well known sensors
integration platform using remote sensing. System initiates the In poultry farm production, humidity and air pollution are
action automatically to control the environmental parameters critical; during the summer season, birds experience
such as humidity, temperature, ammonia gas (NH3) then, the discomfort due to high humidity combined with high
control will be based on the set threshold value when there is a temperatures. High CO2 levels result in lethargic chicks with
sudden change in climate. The proposed solution will decrease reduced weight gains, while high ammonia gas (NH3) level
the environmental diseases affecting chicken and increase the result in poor feed conversion, reduced weight gain and
productivity and eliminate a lot of manpower who can make increased susceptibility to disease. Smart poultry farm can be
some human errors. The method can care also about the data designed in way that the humidity and air pollution can be
analysis. controlled by ventilations, cooling and heater.
Keywords— Arduino, Sensors, IoT Within this paper, the parameters, like ammonia gas, water
level, humidity and temperature are monitored and controlled
I. INTRODUCTION using microcontroller. The transmitted data should be
received by receiver and then transmitted to the ESP8266
A utomation is increasingly important in modern
agriculture, reducing dependence on labor and liberating
farmers from constant work, increasing management scale and
module through the microcontroller. Data can be saved on
cloud for better analysis.
efficiency, fulfilling the precision and consistency of product II. RELATED WORK
quality control, enabling enforceable traceability as part of
food safety efforts – all of which can help achieve agricultural Based on the poultry farm management perspective, the
sustainability [10]. Poultry farming is the process of raising modern technologies had been used to monitor and manage
domesticated birds such as chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese poultry farm for better production improvements.
for the purpose of farming meat or eggs for food. This
research focused on modern technologies for poultry farming O. M. Olaniyi, et al suggested the low cost of production
to control all environmental parameters like temperature, and high human involvement in poultry farms, could lead to
humidity, ammonia gas that affects on the growth of the low profit and low return on investment. These flaws in the
chickens. If the environmental condition is not up to the mark poor feeding system of chicken prompted this work by
then there may be harmful for digestive, respiratory and developing an intelligent fuzzy logic based system that could
behavioral change in the chickens. If chickens may get mimic the roles of the poultry labors in delivering water and
suitable atmosphere and proper food then it may grow rapidly feed food for birds at specified time of intervals. Water and
and health of chickens will be good so their weights will feed level id sensed by the designed system and dispense
increase. Climate plays quite important role in the growth of intelligently with respect to the variations in water and feed
the chicken. level as chicken consume the water and feed. This system
reduces workload of the poultry attendants, increases cost

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 International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering, Management & Applied Science (IJLTEMAS)
Volume VII, Issue V, May 2018 | ISSN 2278-2540

benefits and generates good returns on investment in poultry will automatically perform its action. Hence by using this
farming system [2]. modern technique system can provide a modern technique for
farm automation [7].
Sneba. M. et al proposed an integration of wireless sensors
and mobile system network to control and monitor following Gerard Corkery et al discussed about using smart sensing
environmental parameters: temperature, relative humidity, air technologies into the poultry industry to monitor critical
impurity levels in a poultry farm. They used DHT22 sensor environmental parameters which are relevant to poultry
module for temperature and relative humidity, MQ135 sensor production include inter alia air temperature, relative
module for air pollution level all of those measurements are humidity, light, air speed and air quality (in particular CO2
remotely monitored through the internet. The remote and NH3 concentrations). Current industry practice with
monitoring is achieved by means of a computer system that regard to the measurement of these parameters in addition of
acquires values sensed by sensor and communicates the same the effect of these parameters on bird welfare is reviewed.
to a smart phone connected to the internet [1]. Hence they reviewed about this smart sensing technology in
the poultry industry [8].
Mohannad Ibrahim, et al described an approach to build a
cost-effective standardized environmental monitoring device Siwakorn Jindart et al have designed an intelligent system
using the Raspberry-Pi (R-Pi) single-board computer. The over the embedded system and smart phone for poultry
system was designed using Python Programming language management. To solve the problem author used Paspberry Pi
and can be controlled and accessed remotely through and and Arduino Uno. This system should monitor the
Internet of Things platform. It takes information about the surrounding parameters of poultry environment including
surrounding environment through sensors and uploads it humidity, temperature, climate quality, the filter fan switches.
directly to the internet, where it can be accessed anytime and This system is found very simple and useful for formers, as
anywhere through internet. Experimental results demonstrated they can effectively control the poultry farm at any time and
that the system is able to accurately measure: temperature, from anywhere [9].
humidity, light level and concentrations of the carbon
monoxide harmful air pollutant. It’s also designed to detect The proposed system can be grouped into different units
earthquakes through an assembled seismic sensor [3]. based on the size of the shelter. Sensors are connected to the
Arduino board; coolers, heaters and ventilations are
Rupali B. Mahale et al discussed about monitoring functioning automatically without human interaction, and all
poultry farm by using Wireless Sensor and GPRS based sensed data are sent to the cloud and owner or users can get
Network. This system monitors the water, food level and information of the poultry farm in real-time.
surrounding environmental parameters of a poultry farm
including temperature and humidity. Through this system the III. PROPOSED SOLUTION
person in charge of poultry farm can get internal environment
of a poultry farm at anytime and anywhere with the help of The design below comprises internet based system which
GPRS network [4]. includes remote sensors and Arduino Mega board and
controller. The system can generate real time based
Divyvani Palle, et al proposed measurement and control of environmental based data to the cloud. The user also controls
humidity and temperature that play an important role in the mechanical systems (fans) to adjust or stabilize the poultry
different fields like Agriculture, Science, Engineering and farm.
Technology. Also it becomes essential to monitor the real-
time weather condition of one place from another place [5].
Ms. Minal Goswami, Kirit Bhatt presented the design and
development of CC3200-based Claud IoT for measuring
humidity and temperature. CC3200 is the first SimpleLink
WIFI internet-on-chip LaunchPad developed by Texas
instruments, USA in 2014. The HRT393 sensor is used for
measuring humidity and temperature. Measured parameters
are sent to the Cloud servers of AT&TM2X Cloud technology
(HTTPS). Humidity and temperature measurements made in
real-time are shown graphically. The software is developed in
Energia integrated development environment (IDE) [6].
K. Sravanth Goudet et al elaborated the advanced
technique of wireless sensor network and mobile network to
control and automatically monitor the environmental
parameters of poultry. The environmental parameters can be
monitored by sending SMS back to the system. These
parameters are like temperature and humidity. If system does
Figure 1: Concept Diagram
not receive command from registered mobile number, then it

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 International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering, Management & Applied Science (IJLTEMAS)
Volume VII, Issue V, May 2018 | ISSN 2278-2540

Based on the above diagram, some mechanical components After managing the environmental conditions, it is known
have been omitted, those components include: Exhaust Fan, that chickens drink water a lot, the concern is to make the
Heating Fan, Cooling Fan... system somehow automatic, for reducing the manpower. The
baskets where chickens use to drink water, there are installed
IV. FLOW CHART in such way that the water level sensors will track the
movement of the water in the tank. When the water level
The flow chart explains the functionality of the working reach at a min values set on the sensor, it will switch OFF the
model. The system monitors and read all environmental tank pump to avoid wastage, and as well when the filled water
parameters in poultry farm by Atmega324A microcontroller. is finished by chickens, sensors will track that shortage and
turn the pump ON and so on.
Arduino MEGA 2560 micro controller board is used to
connect and manage all sensors said above. ESP8266 board is
also used to add WIFI local networks to allow all measured
data sent to a centralized database or to the cloud to help users
or owner of the farm controlling and monitoring the nutrition
and environmental condition of his poultry through the
computer or any smart devices. Data gathered can play an
important role in the society especially for business people
focusing on the investing in the poultry farm and also the
ministry in charge of Agriculture and Animal Resources for
advising farms for climate management.

V. CONCLUSION
IoT is an innovative technology for Zoology
environmental condition management especially poultry
farming which can be changed from the routine traditional
farm into smart automated poultry farm. Various
environmental parameters have been continuously monitored
to improve health and growth of chicks and chicken. Water
control mechanism helps to provide time to time water supply
to the chickens as well as help to avoid the wastage of water.
Figure 2: Flowchart of the system Usage of IoT helps the farmer to monitor the internal
environment of poultry farm and also get all details about the
MQ-135 gas module sensor is used to manage the air farm from anywhere and anytime.
pollution, it is suitable for detection of NH 3, NOx, alcohol,
Benzene, smoke, CO2, etc. Among those gases, Ammonia and Usage of mobile devices especially smart phone can help
CO2 are one of the parameters which affect the chicks and the farmers to monitor the internal environmental condition of
chicken in their growth. By using MQ-135 sensor, the said poultry as well as updating data on web portal.
gases are filtered and the threshold values for each gas are set
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 International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering, Management & Applied Science (IJLTEMAS)
Volume VII, Issue V, May 2018 | ISSN 2278-2540

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