How to monitor the foliage Evapotranspiration with arduino
-
Good day all,
I actually monitor the amount of water of some appale tree in a orchard with 3 Watermark sensors.
In order to have better result on how and when to watering the apple orchard, I would like to monitor the evapotranspiration of the crop or better, the foliage.I once saw an evapotranspiration sensor but I can not find anymore.
Someone would have a recommandation to monitor the evapotranspiration of the plants, with Arduino? (sensor, how to?...) Is there sensore for that purpose?
Many thank for any tips and hints to start my task
-
Good day all,
I actually monitor the amount of water of some appale tree in a orchard with 3 Watermark sensors.
In order to have better result on how and when to watering the apple orchard, I would like to monitor the evapotranspiration of the crop or better, the foliage.I once saw an evapotranspiration sensor but I can not find anymore.
Someone would have a recommandation to monitor the evapotranspiration of the plants, with Arduino? (sensor, how to?...) Is there sensore for that purpose?
Many thank for any tips and hints to start my task
Wikipedia has some clues. A scintillometer which measures fluctuations in refractive index of air, just add math.
Satellite imagery +math
Lysimeter - measure the weight of a column of soil, im guessing dry soil is lighter.
All of thoose sound like lots of money.
A scintillometer seems doable as diy. For an area like a tree, I'd start with a laser diode ( i dont know which frequency, but as a complete guess id try infrared, possibly red, and stay away from green and blue), the other end would be either a phototransistor or a photocell. A low noise (probably high gain) amplifier and a quality anolog to digital converter (maybe a 24 bit sound card, probably a pi zero attached not an arduine or esp)
This is all very speculative(pun intended) on my part, it could be completely wrong, i am guessing based on the few words in wikipedia.
-
Wikipedia has some clues. A scintillometer which measures fluctuations in refractive index of air, just add math.
Satellite imagery +math
Lysimeter - measure the weight of a column of soil, im guessing dry soil is lighter.
All of thoose sound like lots of money.
A scintillometer seems doable as diy. For an area like a tree, I'd start with a laser diode ( i dont know which frequency, but as a complete guess id try infrared, possibly red, and stay away from green and blue), the other end would be either a phototransistor or a photocell. A low noise (probably high gain) amplifier and a quality anolog to digital converter (maybe a 24 bit sound card, probably a pi zero attached not an arduine or esp)
This is all very speculative(pun intended) on my part, it could be completely wrong, i am guessing based on the few words in wikipedia.
Hmmm. Looking up scintillometers, I see they are advertised as "large aperture", so you may need an array of photo[diodes,cells], which adds a lot of complexity, matching, summing etc,but maybe you could get away with a condenser lens.