Smartphone warns producers when to irrigate mango trees

摘要

The dendrometer has become essential equipment for predicting controlled deficit irrigation (CD!) in precision agriculture. The information provided by the instrument is proportional to the tree behavior, surpassing algorithms using soil moisture sensors and evapotranspiration. The dendrometer installed in mango tree stems, captures the data provided by a linear sensor, stores them in an SD memoty and transmits them via bluetooth. The acquisition system must monitor the variations of the trunk size every 10 minutes with 10 repetitions per cycle to obtain an accurate knowledge of the tree behavior. The greatest difficulty found by producers in using dendrometers lies in interpreting data together with its statistical management. The application of asmartphone allows the activation of the dendrometer bluetooth to transmit data to the cell phone and indicate if it is necessary to irrigate the trees. Bluetooth high energy consumption causes battery energy decay: so it is advisable to use a switch activated by the producer. Also, another screen shows environmental (temperature. RH) and dendrometer variables such as battery status and memory load. The system has already been used successfully in Guerrero Mexico.