DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM FOR CONTINUOUS FEED MEASUREMENT IN POULTRY HOUSES

Abstract

The growth of poultry production and the increasing need for higher productivity have driven the development of technologies aimed at automating feed management. However, many of the available solutions present high implementation costs, making their adoption difficult for small and medium-sized producers. In this context, this study proposes the development of a low-cost automated system for continuous feed measurement in poultry feeders. The developed system uses strain gauge load cells associated with a Wheatstone bridge, a signal conditioning circuit based on the AD620 instrumentation amplifier, and data acquisition performed by an ESP32 microcontroller. Thermal compensation techniques, multi-stage amplification, and measurement stabilization methods were also investigated. The experiments conducted demonstrated an approximately linear behavior of the system within the measurement range from 0 to 1 kg, validating the use of linear regression to model the relationship between mass and output voltage. However, it was observed that mechanical limitations of the structure used influenced measurement stability, in addition to the presence of drifting effects and noise associated with electrical connections and thermal variations in the circuit. Despite the identified limitations, the results indicate that the developed system has potential for low-cost continuous monitoring applications in poultry systems, especially in applications that do not require high metrological precision.