An integrated network for agricultural management applications

Modern concepts on methods and techniques for the management and control of agricultural systems-such as greenhouse and animal live stocks-claim for the use of computer systems. Tasks like climate, irrigation and nutrient supply must be controlled, in an economically way, to produce the best crop/living conditions. To comply with these objectives, it is necessary to apply adequate control actions as the result of an integrated system that co-ordinates each action according with specific combination of different sensor inputs. Moreover, this control must be often performed from a remote site. This paper describes the design and implementation of an integrated network that links several communications platforms, as different as controller area network (CAN), wireless technology and Transfer Control Protocol-Internet Protocol (TCP-IP). The main goal is to develop a system that guarantees a low-cost, high performance and flexible distributed control system with an increased functionality. The user interacts with this distributed control system using a transparent and intuitive graphical user interface, (GUI) accessible from remote places.