By Asmahanim Amir
Pictures by Ikhwan Hashim

BANGI, 4 July 2019 – Now, the breeders need not worry about the health of their livestock anymore because they can monitor their livestock from as far as 20kilometers with LoRa (Long Range) wireless network technology.

“The target of this project is to automate animal farming using the Internet of Things. Nowadays, most of the breeders monitoring their livestock’s through the manual method, which has been proven inefficient and involves so much operational costs.

“With the Internet of things for livestock, it will facilitate the automation work for breeders and understand how their animals are in the field,” explained by Prof Madya Ir. Dr. Rosdiadee Nordin, the project leader.

The project equipped the drone with LoRa technology in gathering data from sensors installed in animals as well as water quality sensor at its source.

“Data will be collected through transmission from the sensor to the drone and smart devices of the breeders through,” he said.

The development of such technology is the future of the breeding industry where the patrolling time of the farmers can be optimized into different added-value activities.

Furthermore, fast information about the livestock’s health can be obtained on a real-time basis. Moreover, the level of water quality supplied to livestock can also be monitored in avoiding contaminated water from being consumed.

The project is carried out with Aishah Mohd Noh (Master Student) has received technical and industrial services from Aerodyne Group, a Malaysian-based international solution provider.

“Three successful field trials three times has been conducted to test LoRa network coverage performance. The trial will continue from time to time to improve the functions and performance of the drone and the LoRa network” he said.

Prof Madya Ir. Dr. Rosdiadee hopes the project will be able to assist breeders in the future so that they can automate and simplify the operations of farmers, especially for large animal farms.