BY ABIDGAIL MERTA GANGGANG
KUCHING: Back in the day, farmers had to put in a lot of effort in their farming, but today technology has enabled them to utilise modern agricultural techniques.
Take for instance, Eden Greenfeel Tech, an agricultural technology developed by Kolej Komuniti Mas Gading (KKMG), which serves as a solution that can benefit hydroponic farmers in Malaysia.
The developers, KKMG students, Muhammad Zakarriya Rajesh, Yong Che Kent and Xaviearny Bina Linus received a Gold Medal Award for developing the innovation and were crowned champion of the ‘Creative IoT Project’ (CIP) category 2022.
The hydroponic-based greenhouse with a monitoring and control system, allows for remote control of temperature, humidity, nutrient concentration and PH value via an Internet connection.
“This technology is a way to save the time and energy of the farmers since most of their farms are away from home”, said Muhammad Zakariyya when met by New Sarawak Tribune at the exhibition of the 3rd Bimp-Eaga TVET Conference 2023 recently.
“When you’re outstation, travelling, sick or even at night, you can just use any of your devices like smartphones to monitor your hydroponics since it features the ESP32 system”, said the 20-year-old.
The automated system can record plant conditions, while running the process as per our preferences and convenience, he added.
He pointed out that a fully automated hydroponics system for indoor plant growth is much more helpful for new-age growers because it gives access to farms remotely from anywhere.
“ESP32 can perform as a complete standalone system or as a slave device to a host microcontroller MCU, reducing communication stack overhead on the main application processor,” Zakariyya explained.
Meanwhile, Chong Man Lung, 38, the project adviser also mentioned that most farmers are exposed to hydroponics but they are not aware of the technology and knowledge of Eden Greenfeel Tech as they are still doing it conventionally.
“We noticed our farmers have problems with maintaining the consistency of the nutrients for the plants since the watering and fertilising system is done manually,” said the Information Technology lecturer.
“At the same time, Eden Greenfeel Tech helps to reduce the cost of labour and can take more than one crop with different recipes of nutrients with accurate nutrient dosing,” Chong stated.
Another team member of the project, Che, hoped the exhibition will give some exposure to the technology they have invented.
“With this technology, we can help farmers to produce fertile crops that result in much better production quality as we expanded it to a larger scale in Sebuku, Bau,” he said.
They also made Sarawak famous at the Community College Inno-Tech (KK) 2022 National Level Competition which took place in September last year in Gopeng, Perak.
