IPB University Students Invent An Android Based Quail Cage
The team of IPB University students who are members of the 2019 Technology Application Student Creativity Program (PKM-T) makes automatic quail cages that utilize Android phones. They are Mohammad Daffa Valdivia, Rizkia Hadi Safitri and Egy Rizky Ismail from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Biosystems, Faculty of Agricultural Technology. In addition, there are also other members namely M. Lutfi Zayyan from the Department of Permanent Fisheries Resources, Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Sciences and Mirsa Wahyuni from the Department of Feed Nutrition and Technology, Faculty of Animal Husbandry. This team was guided by Lilis Sucahyo, STP, MSi.
Conventional quail cages usually have an unsustainable usage age. Cleaning cages and giving irregular meals and drinks is a separate obstacle for quail farmers. That is why the modernization of quail cages is needed in order to create a sustainable cage that can facilitate cattle breeders in raising quail.
Quails have good productivity if the health conditions and conditions of the cage are good for quails. This can increase the quail egg yield and increase egg quality too. The impact is the increasing profit of quail farmers and farmers can increase the price of quail eggs because of their good quality
“Because of that, we made a cage that could be monitored directly using an android application on each of our cellphones. “We have installed a cage that has been installed. The SQUASH application can monitor the condition of the quail cage via cellphone,” said Daffa as Team Leader.
According to Daffa, this application works automatically, starting from feeding and drinking water, temperature control and automatic cage cleaning. Control of enclosure conditions is done by using a webcam to be recorded into the SQUASH application.
In this application, there are three data that are recorded periodically according to the desired time span, namely temperature, humidity, and noise. The data seen in the SQUASH application is in a graphical form that shows an increase or decrease (temperature, humidity, and noise) in the quail cage.
For the automatic cage cleaning process, they use a conveyor to carry dirt to the left and right sides of the cage. This conveyor is driven by a shaft that is rotated with a three-phase electric motor with a sprocket-chain transmission. On the side of the cage has been provided a paddle that is used for scraping quail droppings attached to the conveyor. The dirt will be accommodated in sacks that have been provided on the left and right sides of the cage.
“SQUAH was created to help quail farmers who have knowledge about good quail raising. Almost everyone has an Android cellphone, both young and old. In addition, technology 4.0 has been widely used to facilitate human work, which is why quail farmers are also encouraged to switch to technology 4.0 to increase productivity, increase profits and ease the workload carried out, “he said. (AVR)
