A SCADA COMBINED WITH A SCALE MODEL OF TRICKLE IRRIGATION SYSTEM FOR AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION

During the last three decades, SCADA systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) are being widely used in agriculture applications and specifically in irrigation system management. The objective of this paper is to describe a SCADA system for irrigation programming, combined with a DAQ-card and a scale model of a trickle irrigation system. All of these elements are adapted to educational use. This application is thought for students in Agricultural Engineering. The SCADA application is programmed with LabVIEW®. The used DAQ-card is a NI USB 6008® employed for data collecting of transducers and for the activation of actuators in irrigation systems. This tool includes the advantages of a high range irrigation programmer and a low cost. With the combination of the SCADA and the DAQ-card is possible to automate, in different grades, different types of irrigation systems. Moreover, because this SCADA application is developed with a programming language, complex mathematical models could be implemented for irrigation programming. Additionally, as this SCADA application works in a PC, data sampling and on line irrigation programming by Internet are included. Finally, various possibilities of this DAQ-card to increase the features of this software are presented.