Imager can be used for real time water stress assessment of crops
A new RGB-Thermal imager for spatial data collection with location coordinates and real time data processing which can be integrated with actuation system for real time communication has been developed and launched by India Council of Agricultural Research, ICAR and Central Institute of Agriculture Research, Bhopal on the occasion of 92nd founding day of ICAR.
Commercially available thermal imagers are useful for crop stress monitoring, real time application of irrigation scheduling and measuring surface temperature of fruits, seeds, vegetables among other uses but cannot be used for real time data processing and communication.
The new imager has been developed using Raspberry Pi 3B+ micro-controller board, Raspberry Pi RGB module V2 (8 MP), thermal module AMG 8833 (0 to 80 degree C), 7 inch HDMI display, GPS module NEO 6M V2 and keypad buttons supported by 20000 mAh power bank. The Raspberry Pi board is driven by NOOBS operating system with 64 GB memory.
The software of the imager has been developed in Python 3 using its libraries pygame (for image display), RPIO (for keypad button), AMG 8833 (for thermal sensor) and time (timer library). The imager is user friendly, robust, low cost, under R15000 and unaffected by temperature changes and rainfall.
