Low cost aparatus for aparent soil electrical conductivity measurment based on direct currente

Abstract

Soil Electrical Conductivity (ECa) has been used as one of the tools to aid decision-making process in the realm of Precision Agriculture. Due to the lack of research regarding ECa in the Northen part of Mato Grosso, the difficulty to access the commercial available ECa tools given the high acquisition cost and the large demand of studies in the region which is the major grain producing state in the country, the objective of this study was to develop a low cost system for ECa measurement based on DC current. The apparatus was based on the classic measurement method known as "four electrode method", and the data acquisition setup was built based on a low microcontroled board utilizing modules for data storage and visualization. The tests for evaluating the setup capacity to measure the necessary parameters for ECa calculations, was accomplished utilizing digital multimeters as references for measuring the voltages differences across the reference resistor and output probes. Simple regression analyses was accomplished to evaluate the dada showing promising results and indicating that the developed setup was able to measure the necessary parameters for soil ECa calculation.