The demo can be used to Monitor critical parameters which decide the health of the crops, Display the data on a Dashboard using Grafana.

What will you need?

1. Raspberry Pi 3/4 (or any variant of these)
2. mcro-SD card and micro-SD card Reader/Adapter.
3. Temperature, Pressure sensor - BME280
4. Soil Moisture sensor
5. Analog to Digital Converter - PCF8591 module
6. OLED Display (128x64) (optional)
7. Female to Female Du-point cables
8. Laptop or Server Installed with Influxdb and Grafana

Steps

Make your own Farm datalogger following these steps.

1. Install Shunya OS
2. Write Code
3. Connect Hardware
4. Compile and Run

Step 1: Install Shunya OS

Shunya Interfaces is built on top of Shunya OS and comes pre-installed with Shunya Interfaces. Shunya OS is an linux-based OS that runs on your hardware, it light-weight and configurable.

Install Etcher

Etcher allows you to Flash Shunya OS on the micro-SD card.

• Windows
• Ubuntu

For Ubuntu 16.04

Installing Etcher is Simple, just run few commands in the terminal

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install balena-etcher-electron

Flash Shunya OS

1. Download Shunya OS
2. Right click on the downloaded zip file.
3. Click Extract here.
4. Open Etcher.
5. Click Select Image.
6. You will find the Shunya OS .img file in the folder that we had extracted earlier.
7. Select shunya-aaaa-image-xxxx.img file.
8. Insert SD card.
9. Click on Flash.

This will load the micro-SD card with Shunya OS.

Booting Up with Shunya OS

1. Insert the micro-SD card into the board.
2. Connect peripherals like Keyboard, Mouse and HDMI monitor.
3. Connect Power Supply.

The board should boot up with Shunya OS.

Login to Shunya

Login with these credentials:

• Username : shunya
• Password : shunya

Step 2: Lets code!

Open up your editor on Shunya OS and lets start coding.

Our application must be able to

1. Read Temperature
2. Read Pressure
3. Read Soil Moisture
4. Send it to Dashboard
5. Repeat 1-4 after 10 minutes

Basic structure of Shunya Interfaces

Use the basic structure as a reference and Paste code into the structure as per your app logic.

• C/CPP

/*Include this header file into your program */
#include <shunyaInterfaces.h>

/* Main Function */
int main(void) {
        /* Initialize the Library*/
        initLib();


/*####################################
 *       PASTE CODE BELOW
 *####################################*/


        return 0;
}

API for reading Temperature from the sensor is

• C/CPP

/* Add this line to your main function 
 * to read data from the sensor */
float temp = getCelsius();

API for reading Pressure from the sensor is

• C/CPP

/* Add this line to your main function 
 * to read data from the sensor */
float pressure = getPa();

API for reading Soil moisture from the sensor is

• C/CPP

/* Add this line to your main function 
 * to read data from the sensor */
int moisture = getAdc(1);

Send the Data to Dashboard

• C/CPP

/*Include this header file into your program */
#include <curl/curl.h>

#define DASBOARD_IP_ADDR "192.168.0.109"
#define DB_NAME "foo_farm"

/* Add these line to your main function  */
sprintf (&buf, "measurement,host=sensor value=%.2f", temp);
sendToDashboard(buf);

warning

This guide assumes that you already have installed Influxdb and Grafana on your server or laptop and the applications are running. For Installing Influxdb and Grafana Check these guides, InfulxDB & Grafana

Summary

Your Code should look something like this.

• C/CPP

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

#include <shunyaInterfaces.h>
#include <simple-mode.h>
#include <functions.h>

#define DASBOARD_IP_ADDR "192.168.0.109"
#define DB_NAME "foo_farm"

int sendToDashboard(char *msg) {
        CURL *curl;
        CURLcode res;
        char addr[1024];
        sprintf (&addr, "http://%s:8086/write?db=%s", DASBOARD_IP_ADDR, DB_NAME);
        curl = curl_easy_init();
        if(curl) {
                curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, addr);
                curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, msg);
                res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
                if(res != CURLE_OK)
                        fprintf(stderr, "curl_easy_perform failed: %s\n", curl_easy_strerror(res));
                curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
        }
        curl_global_cleanup();
        return 0;
}

void main(void)
{
        char buf[36];

        /*Initialize Shunya Interfaces library*/
        initLib();
        
        while (1)
        {       
                /* Read data from the sensor */
                float temp = getCelsius();
                float pressure = getPa();
                int moisture =  getAdc(1);
                
                char buf[128];
                /* Send data to dashboard */
                sprintf (&buf, "temperature,host=bme280 temp=%.2f", temp);
                sendToDashboard(buf);
                sprintf (&buf, "pressure,host=bme280 pressure=%.2f", pressure);
                sendToDashboard(buf);
                sprintf (&buf, "soil.moisture,host=pcf8591 moisture=%.2f", moisture);
                sendToDashboard(buf);

                delay(10*60*1000);
        }
}

Step 3: Connect Hardware

Now its time to put all the hardware together, use the diagram below to connect hardware.

Step 4: Configure, Compile and Run

Configure

Tell Shunya Interfaces your hardware connections.

You can configure by running command.

$ sudo vi /etc/shunya/interfaces/config.yaml

Sensor ID's and Connection ID's

You tell all your Hardware connections to Shunya Interfaces via Sensor ID's and Connection ID's.

Each Sensor is given a special ID which the Shunya Interfaces library recognizes. And each Hardware pin on the Sensor is given a Connection ID.

So when we write pin 1: 1.1 Shunya Interfaces understands it as <Sensor 1>.<Sensor pin 1> connected to pin 1 of Raspberry Pi.

In our case, we have connected 2 devices to the Raspberry Pi (BME280 and PCF8591) to pin 3 (SDA) & pin 5 (SCL) respectively.

Our Config file will look like.

pin 3: [1.1, 6.1]
pin 4: null
pin 5: [1.2, 6.2]

Make sure to save your changes to the config file.

Compile and Run

Compiling code is same as compiling C program. Just link the libraries.

tip

While running the code use sudo to give appropriate permissions to your app.

$ gcc -o iotfarm iotfarm.c -lshunyaInterfaces_user -lshunyaInterfaces_core -lcurl
$ sudo ./iotfarm

Now your IoT device is ready and publishing data to the server.

Step 5: Create Dashboards

Now that the IoT app is up and running, configure Grafana to create Beautiful Dashboards for you.

Grafana provides amazing guides for users to configure Grafana, take a look at them.

• Guide to help you connect Influxdb to grafana.
• Guide to help you create Dashboards.

Want to Build your own Application?

Click on the Next button, below.