Microntroller-based hydraulic crop sprayer.

Abstract

In agriculture, a sprayer is an equipment that is used to apply pesticides (including fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, foliar feeds or liquid fertilizers) in a farm field; this could be to control weeds, insects, and plant diseases and also improve on plant growth [1]. There are many kinds of machine-operated sprayers, the most common of which are hydraulic, low pressure, high pressure and air carrier types [2]. The hydraulic sprayers have two types that is; a manual backpack-type sprayer which is carried on the operator’s back and one hand is used to pump the chemical and the hand operated sprayers have an air pump which compresses air into the tank and pressurizes the spray mixture. They often lack any form of propulsion, requiring human power to move them over a farm field thus there is need for a system that automatically sprays crops without human intervention. The developed system is based on IR (Infrared) technology where an infrared remote is used to turn on/off the pump by sending signals to the infrared receiver. The system also has an ultrasonic sensor which detects the level of the chemical in the tank. If the liquid is below threshold, the pump goes off, the buzzer is turned on and the red LED (Light Emitting Diode) is lit. All these processes are controlled by the microcontroller.