Concrete curing, irrigation monitoring device invented

Mangalore Today News Network

July 01, 2016: Final year Civil Engineering students of Shri Madhwa Vadiraja Institute of Technology and Management at Bantakal in Udupi have developed a device to monitor concrete curing and irrigation operations.

Problems during concrete curing is the excess use of water, which results in its wastage. Besides this, manpower requirements also need to be monitored properly during the curing process to avoid excessive expenditures.

In the case of agriculture, the government has been providing free or subsidised power for irrigation pumpsets. As a result, farmers irrigate their land day and night at places where there is enough water availability without bothering about the actual requirements of the crop they grow. This also results in wastage of water and energy.

The new device uses a sensor to monitor the temperature of the concrete and another one to track the moisture of the soil. When the sensors observe a predefined threshold value, they trigger a microcontroller to switch on motors to pump water for a predetermined time. Notifications regarding the operation of the motor and various parameters will be updated on the mobile phone of the owner, who has the liberty of manually operating the motor using an android application.

The students claim that their device is a pioneering step towards introducing automation in agriculture using very basic technology. The equipment is cost effective and helps in efficient use of manpower, energy, and water. Most importantly, it provides ease of operation to the user who need not go to the site for performing curing and irrigation.

The project was funded by Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology, Bengaluru.  The students who developed the project are Avinash Kumar, Rayan Benzen Nazareth and Arjun B K under the guidance of Pruthvin C Shetty, asst professor, dept of civil engineering and Deepak Rao M, asst professor, dept of computer science engineering.