SOILSENSE handheld device for soil monitoring

F. Melison; L. Cocola; P. Carletti; L. Poletto

doi:10.1117/12.2557757

22 April 2020 SOILSENSE handheld device for soil monitoring

F. Melison, L. Cocola, P. Carletti, L. Poletto

Proceedings Volume 11421, Sensing for Agriculture and Food Quality and Safety XII; 114210F (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2557757
Event: SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, 2020, Online Only

Abstract

Soil is a precious, essentially non-renewable, resource presently endangered by human activities. The road to protection goes through knowledge: there is the need to raise the global understanding of the importance of soil. Therefore, diffuse measurement of soil properties is central to soil conservation and management. We present a device tailored to monitor the soil quality by adopting a low-cost open-source multi-sensor approach. The device measures in the field soil temperature, moisture, density and pH. Furthermore, the device has a penetrometer to obtain a depth-resolved soil hardness characterization down to 60cm from the surface. The device is controlled via Bluetooth by a custom-built Android App. The application georeferences each data and uploads the generated _les to a server for data elaboration aimed to build and populate a map with all the collected soil quality measurements. The device is equipped with a temperature/moisture sensor, a 0-5kg load cell used as weight scale for density measurements, a reflectance spectra sensor for automatic reading pH test strips and, on the bottom side, a penetrometric tip mounted on a 100kg load cell coupled with an optical time-of-flight sensor for depth-referenced penetrometer measurements. Preliminary test evidenced good correlation between in-the-field observations and traditional laboratory tests. The device is easily also by unexperienced users, allowing for applications both in agronomic and in environmental fields, ranging from educational purposes and ICT learning of soil sciences to scientific projects related to soil monitoring and awareness raising Citizen Science initiatives.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

F. Melison, L. Cocola, P. Carletti, and L. Poletto "SOILSENSE handheld device for soil monitoring", Proc. SPIE 11421, Sensing for Agriculture and Food Quality and Safety XII, 114210F (22 April 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2557757

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available