Database System for Royal Thai Orchid Plantation in Chiang Mai Province

An orchid plantation under the Plant Genetic Conservation Project under the royal initiation of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn (RSPG) is located in Mae Rim district, Chiang Mai. The plantation hosts a wide variety of rare Thai orchids which are growth densely on the branch of the trees. Hence, it is very difficult to identify their species, locate a specific orchid, and manage orchid data. The staffs were using handwritten papers to tag an orchid. Thus, this approach had several disadvantages and limitations: vulnerability, difficult to read, and hostile to the orchid plants. We have developed an orchid database system for the plantation. The system consists of three components. First, we installed the Internet of Things weather station which are used for collecting environmental data such as temperature, humidity and wind data. Second, we developed a hand held tool for tagging using RFID technology and a Raspberry Pi board. We put hundreds of RFID tags on the branches of the trees. Third, we created an internal website to manage orchid database for the staffs. We evaluated our system by conducting the user satisfactory questionnaire with the stakeholder. The overall system received the score of 4.08 out of 5.