Autonomous fertilizer mixer through the Internet of Things (IoT)

Abstract Organic fertilizers have been used since the dawn of mankind to improve soil fertility and promote crop growth. However, the process of preparing organic fertilizers for use in agricultural activities is a labour-intensive and time-consuming procedure. Thus, in order to reduce labour costs and improve the efficiency of organic fertilizer preparation, automated organic fertilizer mixers were developed. For this research work, an improved organic fertilizer mixer based on the Internet of Things (IoT) technology capable of monitoring the status of fertilizer production remotely and providing updates and alerts to workers was developed. The aim of this work was to further reduce labour workload and costs, thus increasing efficiency of the organic fertilizer mixing process. In order to accommodate the IoT monitoring system, several modifications and design changes were carried out on the prototype of an automated organic fertilizer mixer. Tests conducted on the prototype unit showed that it performs as required. The IoT monitoring system successfully captures and uploads information on the weight of agricultural waste mixture in the storage drum to the IoT platform. This information can then be used to alert workers on when to add more agricultural waste material to the mixture or remove the processed organic fertilizer. Furthermore, an overall operational cost comparison of different organic fertilizer production methods showed that the automated organic fertilizer prototype provides operational cost savings of over 5 times when compared to current automated systems. Future work includes further automation to the agricultural waste filling and organic fertilizer removal process.