Presentation av examensarbete för högskoleingenjörsexamen

Abstract

Technology in agriculture has in recent years gone from being classic equipment for agriculture to digital monitoring systems, data collection, and optimization of various processes. The technology within the agriculture domain is called AgTech. Agricam is an AgTech company that has developed a product called Bacticam that combines software, hardware, and veterinary expertise to solve problems in milk production for farmers. Bacticam is a station for bacterial cultivation that is located on the farm and operated by the farmer. Bacticam enables farmers to grow bacteria and analyze milk samples on the farm, with the help of an AI, to determine the condition of the milk and the overall health conditions of the cow.

Bacticam analyses bacterial colonies by taking two photographs of the bacterial growth on the milk samples. These two photographs are taken within certain time intervals with two different light settings to highlight certain parts of the bacterial growth sample images for analysis. The process of photographing the samples is done by using a fixed Android mobile phone. Today, the Bacticam requires the customer to switch the light settings manually which poses a risk of contamination to every analyzed sample. A solution to this problem would be to automate the change of light setting during the photography process by connecting custom control electronic, through Bluetooth, to the Android device.

The problem attended to in this thesis was the lack of designs of systems that control lighting remotely from Android devices and custom control electronics through a Bluetooth interface with a focus on customer experience (CE) and developer experience (DE). The goal was to contribute to new solutions in the AgTech domain with a focus on CE and DE. 

Our proposed solution to the stated problem is called the Automatic Bacterial Lighting System (ABLS), which automates the process of changing the light setting during the photography session of bacterial colonies in milk samples for the Bacticam. The ABLS increase the reliability of the Bacticam by reducing the number of interactions the customer has to perform. The ABLS has been developed to establish a stable Bluetooth connection between an Android device and custom control electronics with a focus on both CE and DE. A literature study was made prior to the development of the ABLS to confirm that the thesis problem was unique and that the ABLS therefore would solve a unique problem. An evaluation model was established to facilitate the analysis, and confirm the validity of the ABLS.  

Keywords 

AgTech, Bluetooth, Android application, control electronics, user experience