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Chicken meat is currently the main source of protein consumed in several countries (Time & Taste Inc) and it continues to show signs of increase for the following years' projections. With poultry farming being currently at its peak, it demands a large quantity of dedicated manpower and technology, while the conditions at which both animals and workers are often put through have been the target of lots of publicity and criticism (Brazilian Journal of Poultry Science).
With this in mind, ChickenIO was developed to innovate the way to monitor and manage a poultry farm. This involves completely removing the need of human interaction when tending to or feeding the animals, as well as giving a solution for monitoring chicken coops while being particular to each chicken's physical characteristics, with the objective of providing them with a healthy growth and environment.
The system consists of two parts: an smart feeder for chickens and a nest management system.
To give a more concrete idea of what the smart feeder itself actually is, the Figure 1 illustrates the functionalities and connections of this module. At its core, the embedded system links the physical structure of the chicken coop with the server, which is then used by a web application. The fowl at the coop is under constant surveillance and its information is being recorded by the embedded system. This system establishes communication with the cloud server via Wi-Fi, which stores the current data and is also where historical data can be accessed. Finally, a front-end tool is responsible for the interface with the user, where several settings can be set and data displayed and analyzed.
At first, the system will not be tested with hens due to the pandemic moment, but will be prepared to be used by fifteen hens.
Figure 1 - Chicken feeder diagram
The another system module is the nest management system that consists at an RFID reader on the nest that detect and identify the hen and a load cell in the eggs deposit to measure the the eggs weight, so when a hen laying an egg the RFID will detect and register that the hen was in the nest, and when the egg comes to the deposit the system will detect a weight difference and send to the server a register that hen laying an egg.
The Figure 2 illustrates the functionalities and connections of this module.
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Figure 2 - Nest management system diagram
The system will consist of an embedded control system that will be capable of reading multiple sensor outputs such as humidity, luminosity and temperature around the chicken house, as well the output of a camera for monitoring the hens. The embedded system will also be able to control a food dispenser system with inputs from two scales, to obtain weight reading from both the food and the hen. At first, the project will use a DC motor to simulate feed control. In the future, it can be integrated to a proper engine, which can controls a helical propeller, like in the above diagram.
The hen being fed will be identified through an RFID tag reader. All the information is sent via HTTP protocol to a cloud server hosting a database to be processed and shown to a user via a web application.
The base station is the set of components responsible for weighing, identifying, and feeding the hens, as well as taking the readings of the sensors around the hen house. It is divided in three subsystems, classified according to their functions: