FARMER'S NOTEBOOK
A more affordable way to monitor weather
M.J. PRABU
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The device measures six basic parameters that can help farmers
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—Photo: Special Arrangement
Sensor technology: The automatic weather monitoring station named Indradhanu.
MARK TWAIN’S famous saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” applies very much for agriculture.
“While nothing much can be done to change catastrophic weather from destroying crops, advances in meteorology today to an extent predict what kind of weather patterns are likely to prevail, and also urge farmers to be prepared for emergencies,"
says Mr. Sameer, CEO, Neurosynaptic Communications, a Bangalore based engineering company, which developed an automatic weather monitoring station (named Indradhanu) at a moderate rate for farmers.
Weather reports
But most villages still go by their traditional wisdom to study the climate, rather than by weather station reports.
“True, setting up of weather stations requires high capital and there are certain practical difficulties in obtaining a weather data report for a particular area.
Weather stations in major cities are not of much help to a farmer living far away.
What a farmer needs is the local weather information in his area for adopting some agronomic practices to face adverse weather conditions,” explains Mr. Sameer.
An Automatic Weather Monitoring Station (AWMS), developed by the company measures six basic parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, atmospheric pressure, and rain fall.
Use of advanced sensor technology and modifications in the designs make it feasible.
Two categories
“Basically there are two types of categories. For example the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) requires highly accurate data to feed into the weather forecasting models such as floods, hurricanes etc.
Farmers and insurance companies comprising the second category require a fairly accurate data with relatively low resolution to meet their needs,” explains Mr. Rajeev Kumar, Chief Operating Officer. If the server is dependent on the connectivity in remote locations, data availability becomes a problem.
In case of poor or unstable connectivity in hilly terrains, data does not get transferred on a regular basis. To take care of this, changes have to be done in the system to recover data at a later date (It can store data for one year), when the connectivity becomes available again.
Insurance policy
An insurance policy cover mitigates the risk of theft and other physical damage to the unit due to vandalism. The units are priced at Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 50,000 depending on the features required. So far about 500 stations have been sold in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
“To commercialize the product Rs.1.5 crore was required over a period of 2 years. We approached Villgro for an interest free loan of Rs. 25 lakh to add specific features. The Incubation Support from Villgro offered us guarantee funding for these instalments,” explains Mr. Sameer.
Incubation Support
The incubation support from Villgro primarily offers the company funding for the instalments on the successful achievement of every milestone.
Apart from the monetary support, the company requires guidance in market development, and coming up with different derived services models for farmers- such as selling agriculture advisory services based on weather data to farmer clubs etc.
For more details contact Mr. Sameer Sawarkar or Rajeev Kumar, Neurosynaptic Communications Pvt. Ltd, No: 6, 29th Main Road, BTM Layout II Stage, Bangalore, mobile : 09379272601, phone :080-41110450.
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