Animal husbandry is a labor-intensive industry on many Southeast Asian farms to this day. Yet traditional methods can hamper an industry already facing labor shortages and climate change. In Taiwan, younger people are shunning the laborious work and outdated facilities in pig farming. The island’s heat and humidity makes it even more challenging to enhance productivity and maintain optimal conditions.
To revolutionize the flagging pig farming industry, Delta Electronics used its automation products and monitoring solution to make more efficient and easy to manage pig barns. Farmers use automated control and monitoring for hog lots on-site while leaving the system to operational data collection for uploading to the cloud.
One farmer in Taiwan adopted a Delta solution with the company’s original Compact Modular Mid-range AS218 Series PLC and the DOP-107 Series HMI for environmental control, scheduling and on-site information display.
The PLCs take environmental parameters (such as temperature, humidity, pressure, harmful gas concentration, ventilation rate, light levels, and water/food consumption) and compare them with target values to adjust blower fans, water pads, dampers and roller blinds via digital or analog output.
The DIAView SCADA System collects operational and environmental information from the PLCs for analysis and data visualization. In addition, data uploads to the DIACloud cloud platform so the farmer can supervise the environmental conditions of his barns and access collected parameters anytime on PCs or mobile devices. The DIAView System even allows livestreaming from surveillance to monitor female pigs in the nursery during gestation and lactation.
In Southeast Asia, farmers can leverage this unique automated management solution in their operations and enjoy advantages including:
• Intuitive operating interface and data visualization: Delta’s DIAView SCADA System gets parameters from on-site controllers and smart sensors, and provides easy-to-read analytics in bar charts or curves. The DOP-107 Series HMIs has a user-friendly and intuitive interface for parameter settings that saves time. You can see the current status, historical data and operations recorded as reference for your on-site adjustments.
• Centralized management with access authority controls for multiple pig barn groups: The AS218 Series Compact Modular Mid-range PLC controller is the master controller for overall management. It achieves central control of up to six pig barn groups and allows different user authorities for managers and operators.
• Flexible user-defined settings: You can self-define temperature, IO points on the DOP-107 Series HMIs and the DIAView SCADA System for flexible control and easy configuration.
• Coordination of ventilation and precise temperature control: Delta’s solution supports up to 15 ventilation grades and coordinates control devices for accurate temperature and ventilation control. The innovative thermometer concept creates correlative configuration among the target and ambient temperatures, providing a comfortable environment for pigs of different ages and conditions in each separate lot.
• Email alarms: The system has alarm display, query and email functions to allow real-time monitoring and immediate reaction to all anomalies on your farm and improve management efficiency.
• Storage on both a cloud platform and local devices: Delta’s Cloud Router DX-2100 Series uploads all the data acquired to the DIACloud platform. You can access your data and can store it on your own servers or devices through data exchange for future reference.
Armed with Delta’s customized automation and management solution, farmers across the region can quickly bring their animal rearing to the next level. Over time, the rich data and history logs will allow reliable traceability and analysis for even better management efficiency and higher yield.