Smart Irrigation System with Indigenous Multilingual Mobile Application
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63746/njtd.v23i1.3378Keywords:
Firebase, Flutter, Indigenous languages, Multi-lingual mobile application, Smart irrigationAbstract
African farmers produce about 80 percent of the food consumed in the African continent yet a large percentage of them are cut off from agricultural innovation due to illiteracy and language barriers. Previous studies have developed mobile applications for smart irrigation systems in English language. This work develops a multilingual mobile App in three major indigenous Nigerian languages Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo to make the smart irrigation innovation accessible and adaptable to indigenous farmers. The mobile App was developed using Flutter while the English version was translated to indigenous languages. A microcontroller-based laboratory-scale smart irrigation test bed was also developed to which the App was interfaced for testing. Performance evaluation revealed the ability of the App to perform remote control of the irrigation process and display soil moisture, temperature, and humidity of the farm environment on its graphical user interface in English and indigenous languages of Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo. Further tests under Wi-Fi and Internet network revealed the Wi-Fi network was stable up to 50 meters, beyond which stability declined. The Internet connection remained stable up to 400 km except at certain weak or unavailable coverage points (45 km, 105 km, 210 km). The unique contribution of this work is that while previous studies developed mobile App for smart irrigation system in English language, the multilingual mobile App bridges communication gap and will make smart irrigation technology accessible and adaptable to indigenous farmers in their mother tongues to enhance food security.
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