Progress 09/15/22 to 09/14/23
Outputs
Target Audience:During this period, IEM maintained communication with several local farms, including Brookbound Farm, Cunningham Lake View Farm, Willow Marsh Farm, and Smith's Orchard Farm, at various points in and around the Capital District of New York. IEM will be increasing our contact with these farms, and other local animal caretaking associations, for testing purposes in the second half of this project.. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?IEM was visited during this period by Timothy Connor from the USDA, during mid-June of 2023. This included an overview of the work done to that point, with an assembled first prototype of the Survey Node. Mr. Connor had several useful suggestions to apply to the project going forward, as well as possible applications for IEM technology in other areas such as food safety. This aids in the dissemination of IEM's progress to USDA, which is naturally one community of interest. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?With the new Survey Nodes completed, IEM will perform the planned survey of ventilation effectiveness in actual livestock areas, barns, etc., to determine the best use-cases for CAVES in real-worled locations. This will include more outreach to local farms and such (and possibly large animal shelters/zoos/nature preserves with indoor animal housing), Cooperative Extensions, and so on. IEM also intends to contact theARS (Agricultural Research Service), possibly through the Technology Transfer office, to see if a test/demonstration location is available for final demonstration of CAVES. Once the Survey Nodes have acquired sufficient data in different locations, IEM will be in a position to analyze the data and construct appropriate operational profiles for the CAVES system, including number and location of sensing nodes, the likely operational load expected with CAVES and thus the expected savings of energy for the relevant institutions, and also a determination of which sensors are most vital for these functions. Reducing the number of sensors would be economically wise, if the same basic results can be obtained. Based on these results and operational plan, IEM will be able to design the final Sensor Nodes (which may or may not all incorporate fan control capability, depending on manufacturing practicalities), Gateway System, and the software to support a practical, simple user interface demonstrating the operation of CAVES. These systems will be tested in one or more local barns and, if feasible, at a USDA-connected facility for demonstration.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In this period, IEM moved forward on a number of the goals of the CAVES Phase II project. As detaled further below, IEM: Surveyed multiple sensor types and vendors Tested samples of all sensors of interest Selected Phase II sensors for all analytes Incorporated sensors, communications, power, and data processing elements to an initial Survey Node design Verified performance of these designs Finalized the designs for the Survey Node Produced a ruggedized, deployable version of the Survey Node for testing Initial work focused upon the sensors for the project. For Phase II, it was necessary to select sensors that would be usable in field testing and demonstrations, thus in addition to basic sensitivity to the target analytes, the sensors had to be rugged enough for use in real-world conditions, as well as reasonably affordable, compact, and preferably of the same form factor to allow substitution of other sensors for other applications envisioned for CAVES. IEM examined sensors from six different candidate vendors, rating them on these and other qualities (for example, warm-up/activation time, power consumption, integration electronics required, additional functionality such as included temperature or humidity sensors, and so on). One sensor (CO2) had to be selected separately from the others, as there are very limited modes of sensing that are accurate for CO2. The remainder were all acquired from a single vendor who also offered numerous other sensors that will be relevant to some of the other applications (community air quality monitoring) contemplated for the system. All four of these sensors have a generally cylindrical profile, making them easy to incorporate into a line of circular sockets for easy mounting or replacement. These sensors also come with their signal conditioning board included and are factory calibrated, removing two other challenging elements of sensor use; factory calibration, especially, is useful as it removes the need for IEM to construct or lease a sealed calibration environment controllable to one percent or better precision. The original plan to use the current of an existing fan to provide a signal of when the fan was on or off encountered some challenges. This would be simple if the system were to be a "pass-through" design for a plugged-in fan, but that design will not happen until the final Fan Control nodes are created. CAVES required another means to sense when the fan corresponding to a Survey Node was active; after considering several methods, IEM selected a sensitive differential pressure sensor that would respond to a sudden increase in air motion at a selected location (selected via a simple extended tube). Testing showed that this worked quite reliably when the tube was placed near the intake side of the fan. IEM also examined the power system needed both for the Survey Node and the more general CAVES nodes in the future. For the Survey Node, the units need to be independent and self contained, able to function for as long as feasible without maintenance or intervention. This allows IEM to simply place the Survey Node at the chosen location in the target barn and leave it there until the time has come to recover it. One challenge faced by the current sensors is that they are fairly power-hungry and require notable warm-up times. This may have to be addressed for the final design, but for the Survey Node the solution is simply to have extra batteries. The current design incorporates four lithium polymer batteries with a total charge of 10 A-H which will run the Survey Node for considerable time. IEM then designed an initial version of the Survey Node; this included the selected sensors (and temperature and humidity, which were included in the other sensors' designs), increased computational power in a new microcontroller board, a field display, onboard storage, and data communications (both USB and LoRA based). These designs proved acceptable in performance, with a few minor issues. IEM addressed these issues and produced a revised version of the Survey Node designs, the primary changes being to ruggedize the system prior to full demonstration. Accordingly, thisfinal, rugged version of the Survey Node is in the process of being assembled; this design incorporates all the functionality of the prototype assembled earlier in this period, but also adds a weather-sealed protective case, secured tiedowns for all cabling, vibration/impact resistant socketing of all key compoents, and provisions for even more power storage if needed.
Publications
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