For Jude Nkereuwem, a 26 year old embedded system developer, developing products that solve real-time problems was a passion which came to reality with the help of the Raspberry Pi technology.
Nkereuwem who shared his experience at the Raspberry pi corporate Business event recently in Lagos said with the help of the pi, he has been able to develop products needed to solve real life problems.
According to him, “Raspberry Pi is a series of small computers that’s used for a variety of purposes, including learning, teaching, and making. It was developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
“It is basically a full-size computer compressed to the size of a credit card. It also has additional ports through which you can connect other electronics peripherals to it.”
He said with the help of the Pi, he has been able to work on different solutions with recent one being a ‘Driver Drowsiness Detection System’
“This device tracks and monitors the drivers eyes to check if they’re closed (sleeping) or not. Because one of the major causes of accidents are drivers dozing off while they are on steering,”he said.
Explaining the device, he said it’s a raspberry pi 5-based system with a camera that can be placed on the driver’s dashboard.
“An AI model running locally on the raspberry pi computer monitors the driver’s eyes through the realtime feed from the raspberry camera. Once the system detects that the driver is sleeping it makes a very loud noise using a buzzer to try and wake them. The system also has a pan/tilt camera mount which has two motors that move horizontally and vertically to make sure the driver’s face is always in the camera frame for adequate tracking and monitoring.”
Also, the developer said he has also used the Raspberry pi to train a group of female students on how to apply AI and Internet of Things (IoT) in Agriculture.
He said, “We built a system in that consensus that uses sensors to monitor dryness and wetness of the soil and how hot the farm is and other things that contribute to plant health. The device has a camera that monitors the color of the leaves to check if they’re healthy or not. An AI model was then trained to take the values gotten from the sensors and the real time feed from the camera, run an inference then predict to the farmer the current state of their farm.”
An added feature to this device according to him was Internet connectivity which allowed the device to stream the entire data and AI prediction to the farmer from anywhere in the world through a mobile application.
He stated that through the device, a farmer in Lagos can easily monitor their plants and products in Ibadan and may only go there when necessary.
He said Raspberry pi has become his easiest platform to develop products and solve real-time problems through his years of experience.
Citing programmers, he explained that the Raspberry pi can also be used for most basic programming works as a laptop with the additional advantage of being very small in size and GPIO pin outlet for connecting peripherals like sensors and actuators. It can also be powered with a regular 5v power bank.
Cofie Abraham, Co-founder, AgriSync solutions limited said they are utilizing the Raspberry Pi to develop innovative agricultural solutions integrating Internet of Things (IoT) and Integrated Precision Agriculture (IAP) with the goal to achieve agricultural sustainability.
He said the solutions were possible leveraging the Raspberry Pi as the core platform for the IoT systems.
“With the AGRISYNC solution, we’re able to monitor various activities on the farmland in real-time, gaining valuable insights into the state of the farm.
“Our IoT system collects data from diverse sensors, including soil temperature and moisture content, Air temperature and humidity, Light intensity and spectral analysis, Crop health and growth monitoring, Weather stations for forecasting, Soil pH and nutrient level sensors,” Ibrahim said.
He said the data-driven approach enables the organisation to provide actionable recommendations for optimized farm practices, leading to enhanced crop yields, improved resource allocation, and better farm prices.
The Co-founder explained that AgriSync also automates various operations on the farmland, including Automated irrigation systems, Precise fertilization application.
Meanwhile, Ken Okolo, sales manager, Middle East and Africa Raspberry Pi ltd Speaking at the event said the product aims to address the large and fast growing markets for computing platforms.
“Our products address large, fast growing markets for computing platforms.We have ready built subsystems that incorporate processor, storage and networking.
He added that the company also manufacture stand alone embedded computers with standard base external interfaces.
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