Development of Wireless Technique to Regulate Seed Dropping in a Seeder for Intercropping

Abstract

Although intercropping gives additional yield per unit area than sole cropping, yield may also decrease as the crops differ in their competitive abilities. To avoid competition and to accompany complimentary action between the base crop and inter crop in intercropping practise, proper crop ratio of two crops should be maintained. When sowing with available seeders crop ratio was not maintained because of non-availability of a seed hopper, handling two different varieties of seeds and the un controlled seed flow from the hopper to the seed tube when ground wheel is rotating. To look after this problem an experiment was conducted at DFMPE, AEC & RI, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Kumulur by fabricating a seed hopper consisting of two compartments and circular shaped outlet for two variety of seeds and developing an RF (radio frequency) wireless technology to control servo motor in order to restrict the seed drop from seed hopper to the seed tube even though ground wheel is in running condition. In this paper considering a seven-row seeder, the performance of a micro controller coded with appropriate programme in embedded C language which can regulate seven servo motors each at seven seed hoppers, functioning of RF transmitter sketch, functioning of RF receiver sketch, header issue & its solution, angle conversion of servo shaft and power consumption was observed and discussed. Total power required for operating RF electronic setup containing seven servomotors was recorded as 5 V 12 A. The angle of rotation of servo motor shaft was from 0º to 165º when pulse width range in micro controller was set from 0 and 2400 micro seconds. The servo did not respond in the hardware interfacing because both the libraries use timer 1 interrupt which created an error issue. In order to overcome that “Servo timer 2.h” header was issued instead of servo.h. Then sketch was compiled and was executed successfully.