Design and Construction of a Rice Drying System Using Microcontroller-Based Canopy Control

Abstract

The rice drying process is an important post-harvest stage to produce good quality grain, but conventional methods that rely on sun drying and manual canopy operation are still vulnerable to unpredictable weather changes, so the grain is at risk of being exposed to rain and decreasing its quality. This study aims to design and build a rice drying system with automatic canopy control based on a microcontroller that can work without continuous manual supervision and can be monitored remotely. The method used is Research and Development (R&D) with the stages of needs identification, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation. The system is built using an ESP32 microcontroller as the main control unit integrated with a DHT22 sensor, Light Dependent Resistor (LDR), and an FC-37 rain sensor to detect temperature, air humidity, light intensity, and rain; a servo motor as a canopy driver; a DC blower to help air circulation; an I2C LCD as a local monitoring medium; and a Telegram Bot as a real-time remote monitoring medium. The test results showed that the DHT22 sensor had a temperature reading error of 0.98%–1.38% and humidity of 1.33%–1.54% compared to the benchmark, while the LDR sensor and FC-37 rain sensor were able to control the canopy position and blower status precisely in all test scenarios. The system successfully opened and closed the canopy automatically according to environmental conditions, kept the blower active at night as long as the grain was not dry, stopped its operation when rain was detected or the grain was dry, and sent the system status to Telegram in real-time. These results indicate that the integration of environmental sensors, actuators, and IoT connectivity based on Telegram Bot can be an effective alternative solution to reduce reliance on manual supervision and the risk of grain damage due to unpredictable weather.