The conducted analysis of the technical provision of machine-tractor fleet of Russian agricultural enterprises for the implementation of crop production technologies revealed a lack of technical support of agricultural production, which leads to a reduction in acreage or stretching of agricultural terms of technological operations. All this leads to a significant loss of agricultural products. The qualitative conditions of enterprises are described by four stable zones, which are directly dependent on the level of technical equipment of production: a zone of minimizing the scale of production, and in many cases the termination of the enterprise’s operation; zone of extended agrotechnical terms of technological operations; zone of optimal agrotechnical terms established by the requirements of technological maps; zone of strengthening the protective properties of the enterprise and increasing the reliability of its operation. The method of determining the need for agricultural machinery was developed, which showed that the best level of technical provision is a level that ensures reliable performance of all technological operations in the optimal agrotechnical terms, on the basis of which the boundary conditions of technical security are developed.

The modern technical development condition is closed due to tough business competitiveness, so the innovative information for teaching students on the best examples of engineering and designing is not available. This is one of the basic reasons that diminish engineering education effectiveness in the field of technical knowledge in modern agricultural production. The scientists of engineering departments work above the solution of this problem and adapt the results into practice-oriented teaching technologies. The example is the development of moisture meter for agricultural crops seeds on the world-famous microcontroller Arduino-based platform, oriented to master the foundations of real-time information technologies shown in this article. The principle of the moisture meter operation is based on the most common method for measuring humidity of seeds – dielectric technique. The classical algorithm of conversion, such as permittivity, capacitance, frequency, table-based transformations and temperature correction is given. In the research process the methods of software structural designing, including functionally-oriented techniques for realizing the functions of real-time information systems were used. The hardware and software for solving such tasks as measuring the humidity of crop seeds, as well as studying microcontroller devices operating on the base of classical measurement methods have been developed. It can be used to solve other engineering and scientific problems in the field of agriculture where capacitive sensors are used.

The article presents the result of an information-measuring system development for quality control of agricultural products based on the assessment of their moisture content, chemical composition, presence of organic and mineral impurities. It also substantiates the relevance of the use of such systems by the agro-industrial complex enterprises. The proposed information-measuring system is based on the author's dielcometric method for determining the electrophysical parameters of capacitive sensors, the principle of which is to decompose the measuring process into two stages. The study of this method was carried out using simulation modeling in the SimInTech environment, while custom operational amplifier blocks and sample-and-hold circuit were built. As a result of the operational amplifier model research, graphs of the dependency of the output voltage on the change in the integration time constant and amplification gain were plotted, on the basis of which the optimal values of these quantities were selected. Studies of the constructed models of the first and second measurement stages using the proposed method showed a high accuracy in determining the electrophysical parameters of capacitive sensors filled with agricultural products, with a relative error not exceeding ±0.2%.

The article describes the result of algorithms studies for measuring sensor parameters to determine the moisture content of dry and liquid agricultural products. Measuring circuits are given and an algorithm for determining the moisture and impurities of agricultural products based on measuring the parameters of multi-element two-terminal devices in steady and transient modes is described in detail.

The article presents a functional diagram of the proposed information-measuring system, based on the developed method for determining the moisture content of dry and liquid agricultural produce. Additionally we present the measurement algorithm.