The Waziup project, which aims to develop and deploy open-source IoT solutions for African communities, worked on a pilot project to monitor weather conditions in Nigeria. This pilot project was initiated in collaboration with farmers in the rural community of Oke Ogun in Oyo State, Nigeria, who were interested in improving their farming practices through better access to weather information.
One of the main challenges was to deploy weather stations that were affordable, easy to use, and could collect accurate data in real-time. The farmers needed to have access to information such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, and wind speed to make informed decisions about crop planting, fertilization, and harvesting.
The Waziup team developed a weather station that was based on low-cost sensors and a cloud-based data platform. The weather station was designed to be easy to install and operate, and the data collected was made available to the farmers through a mobile application.
The weather station was equipped with various sensors, including temperature and humidity sensors, a rain gauge, and a wind vane. The sensors were connected to a microcontroller board that transmitted the data to the cloud-based data platform. The data was then processed and analyzed to provide accurate weather forecasts and alerts to the farmers.
The mobile application provided the farmers with access to real-time weather data, including hourly updates on temperature, humidity, and rainfall. The farmers could also receive alerts about impending weather conditions, such as heavy rainfall or strong winds.
The deployment of weather stations helped the farmers in the Oke Ogun community to make informed decisions about their farming practices. They were able to adjust their planting schedules based on weather forecasts and optimize their use of fertilizers based on real-time weather data. This led to increased crop yields and reduced losses due to weather-related risks.
The Waziup team is now working on scaling up the project to other communities in Africa. The low-cost and easy-to-use weather station has the potential to help millions of farmers across the continent improve their farming practices and increase their yields.