An Internet of Things system to monitor environmental conditions in livestock housing

Environmental factors in livestock housing are getting increasing attention due to the need to maintain an adequate condition for animal welfare and to account for the emissions of pollutants. For this reason, an IoT system has been developed and implemented in different livestock housing (pigs, dairy cows, and rabbits). The system is based on nodes that integrate all the necessary electronics and implement the firmware to perform three main functions: raw sensor measurements, local data processing, and data transmission to a gateway. The gateways are hardware/software systems powered by the mains (220V; indoor gateway) or by a solar panel and a backup battery (outdoor gateway). Data is sent to a dashboard presenting all sensor data. The main node developed for environmental monitoring is connected to sensors for: ambient temperature and relative humidity, light intensity, sound pressure, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, particle matter concentration, and volatile organic compounds. The usefulness of the data recorded by the device for the assessment of suitable conditions for the animals have been reported. In particular, in a rabbit housing, the scarce uniformity of the ventilation system has been highlighted by high ammonia concentrations and some hotspots. The recordings in a pig farm have shown a daily pattern in the concentrations of CO2 and ammonia due to the farm operations, giving indications that the feed delivery is the most critical one. The application in a dairy farm has demonstrated the feasibility of a continuous monitoring of ammonia emissions with the use of the developed device.