Development of KOSEN Weather Station and Provision of Weather Information to Farmers

Abstract

In recent years, environmental information monitoring in the agricultural field has become an important issue. There is an increasing demand for meteorological information in local areas such as a rice field, a greenhouse, etc., owned by an agricultural worker. Conventional research has been actively conducted on weather stations in local areas. However, weather stations that are inexpensive, highly accurate, and have achieved stable measurements indoors and outdoors for long periods of time (over a year) are not reported. In addition, there is a lack of research that simultaneously acquires weather information, stores weather information, and provides weather information to farmers. These three functions are important in the agricultural field. In this paper, we discuss the development of a meteorological observation device, the construction of a cloud server for storing meteorological information, and the provision of information to users. First, we develop the novel meteorological observation device (KOSEN-Weather Station), which applies a simple Aßmann’s aspiration psychrometer for highly accurate temperature and humidity measurements. To evaluate the reliability of KOSEN-WS, we compare the weather information measured by KOSEN-WS with that of WXT520. As a result, it is shown that KOSEN-WS is viable. Then, KOSEN-WS is installed in the field, and the stability and durability of KOSEN-WS are examined. As a result, the KOSEN-WS has been operating stably over 19 months and provides weather information to users. Then, it is shown that the KOSEN-WS is able to operate continuously under the environment of −16.5 °C to 44.9 °C. Next, for the storage of meteorological information, we construct the cloud server. Then, a webpage is created to provide easy-to-understand weather information to farmers. Furthermore, to prevent damage to crops, if the current temperature is lower than the set temperature, or if the current temperature is higher than the set temperature, an alert is sent to the farmers. As a result, the system is highly evaluated by agricultural workers and JA staff. From the above results, the effectiveness of this system is shown.