Architecture for Extending Agrikiosk Services to Mobile Phones

Transcription

1 Architecture for Extending Agrikiosk Services to Mobile Phones Attiya Akram University of Arid Agriculture Rawalpindi, Pakistan Muhammad Afzal Dr. A. Q. Khan Institute of Computer Sciences & Information Technology (KICSIT), Pakistan Junaid Zubairi ), Department of Computer Science, State University of New York at Fredonia, ABSTRACT: The recent advances in technology have enabled the use of electronic gadgets in every day life. The increase in use of mobile phones can be exploited to make them effective tools for e-learning and information dissemination. AgriKiosk project was initiated with an intention to use technology to abridge the digital divide and bring the benefits of technology to the doorsteps of the farmers. In the initial phase, the project was developed for the touch screen devices i.e. kiosk machines to deliver the agriculture information to the farmers in forms of audio, video and text in English and local languages. In this paper we present architecture to extend the AgriKiosk services to mobile phones and use this cheap and really easy to use technology to deliver the critical and needed information to the farmers. KEYWORDS: Agriculture, kiosk, mobiles, architecture, ICT for Agriculture 1. INTRODUCTION During the past few years we have seen a dramatic increase in the use of portable mobile devices, such as cellular telephone, pager, Personal Digital Assistants and laptops in every day life. Especially the recent increase in use of mobile phones has revolutionized the communication. Pakistan is also getting the benefits of this revolution. The number of mobile users in Pakistan has grown to 53 million [1]. The AgriKiosk project was started at University of Arid Agriculture Rawalpindi with a view to use the information technology as a tool to disseminate the agriculture information to the farmers living in the far flung areas. The project assimilates the information present in form of videos, audio, text, graphics and websites. The project was developed in.net framework with multilingual support. The interface of the Application was easily understandable. It had large buttons for easy usage and self depicting icons with voice help [2]. The project contains features which are approved by various projects world wide using Information Communication Technology in Agriculture. With the recent increase in the use of mobile phones, it is felt that the mobile phones can also be effective tools for information dissemination. The mobile phones are becoming inexpensive; smaller in size and easy to use. The introduction of multimedia and multilingual support has enabled an illiterate man to use a mobile phone in his everyday life. The mobile phone has evolved from communication tool to e-learning, e-business and a service providing tool in different countries of the world. For example in Philippines it is being used for ticket reservation [3]. In this paper we present an overview of different models using the mobile as an e-learning and distant education tool. We also justify the porting of AgriKiosk project to mobile devices and architecture for extending the AgriKiosk project to mobile devices. In an earlier paper Extending AgriKiosk Project to Mobile Devices we have justified this extension and in this paper we are going to present the extension model. 2. MOBILE PHONE - A TOOL FOR E- LEARNING AND DISTANT EDUCATION In Ghana a project with the name of Trade Net [4] is initiated that allows farmers to access prices and offers from traders by mobile phone. F@rmphone in Germany uses mobile phones and PDAs to assist farmers in surveying, navigation, and tracking tasks[5]. In Bangladesh, Grameen Telecom is currently providing GSM mobile phones to villagers [6]. In china website launched by China Mobile Communication Corporation sends text and voice messages to farmers in Chinese, Tibetan, Uygur and Mongol about planting techniques and farm produce [7]. In Pongola South Africa, a weekly SMS is sent to farmers notifying them whether to irrigate their sugar crops or not [8]. The project is initiated by SASA (South Africa Sugar

2 Association) to help the farmers so that they may not over irrigate their crops. In Uganda CELAC (Collecting and Exchanging of Local Agriculture Content) project has started CELAC SMS NEWS in English, LUGANDA and LUO which sends farming instructions to the farmers. The farmers can send a request SMS to a specified number [9] and then after successful subscription they receive agriculture news. In Queens Land an SMS is sent to farmers about their local weather [10] In Philippines SMS - Based Rice Seed Stock Inventory System for Rice Farmers is initiated by UNDP in collaboration with the Pacific Asia Networking (PAN) Asia Networking, APNIC, Internet Society and Microsoft[11] with the amount of 30,000 USD. In Kenya a project with the name of DrumNet provides marketing, financial services and information services to the farmers [12].Similarly in Ireland Irish Farmers Journal are providing same services to the farmers through SMS [13]. In India there are several projects initiated which are using the Mobile phones as information dissemination tool. In Ahmednagar district an SMS service is being used to send weekly SMS on weather forecast, disease forecast, market information and important information about different training programs. About 360 registered farmers are getting benefit of this service [14]. 3. SHIFTING FROM KIOSK MACHINES TO MOBILE PHONE The main aim of the AgriKiosk project is keep the farmer up to date about the weather condition in their respective city, prices of different commodities and to provide them effective communication to traders for selling their products. It is felt that the kiosk machine based infrastructure is effective but difficult to implement due to lack of proper infrastructure. The number of villages electrified in March 2006 is 99,595[15] out of total villages [16]. The total number of telephone users is 5.2 million [15]. As compared to telephone lines the numbers of mobile users in the country are increasing rapidly. Figure 1 compares the total number of users getting benefits of both the technologies Fixed Cellelur Figure 1: Mobile density compared to the land line numbers in Pakistan The comparison depicts the exponential increase in mobile users over the years. Hence this rapidly increasing, inexpensive technology can be used to abridge the digital divide. 4. MODERN DAY GSM/GPRS MODEMS Although the current day GSM and GPRS modems at their initial stages but still they provide a lot of flexibility and a good SMS sending rate. A typical GSM modem take 5 seconds to send an SMS which implies that in 1 minute 12 SMS can be sent [17].While using the GPRS modem 30 SMS per minute can be sent.[18] 5. ARCHITECTURE FOR EXTENDING THE AGRIKIOSK SERVICES TO MOBILE PHONES To extend the AgriKiosk project services to Mobile phone users a distributed architecture is implemented. The architecture utilizes the SMS service available at very cheap prices for keeping the farmers up to date. The actual application will reside on the UAAR servers. A backend database is maintained which contains the phone numbers and cities of all the subscribers. Along with this the database also contains the list of all websites providing the information which a farmer needs e.g. weather information, market prices etc. The two main services the application is currently provide are the weather information and market prices. Along with this the application can also send special messages alerts to users. The overall architecture of the system is shown in the Figure 2. As the part of extension a web portal is designed that will be accessible through the Internet. The agriculture experts such as plant pathologist, food technologist, veterinary doctors etc respective agricultural institutes and organization will be registered on this site. They will have their own accounts from which they can login and then view the questions asked from them by different farmers. They can submit their answers from the web portal which will be inserted into the database and then these will be SMSed to the respective farmers

3 Figure 2: System Architecture for extending the AgriKiosk project services to Mobile Phones The architecture presented is developed in.net platform using SQL Server as a backend database. A SMSLibrary is developed using the AT&T commands to send and receive SMS from the GSM modem/mobile phone which is connected to PC through Bluetooth or USB. The library is tested with the Nokia 6600 and Nokia 7600 mobile phones. The client server interaction of the system is shown in the figures 3. information extraction pattern. Then based on this information extraction pattern (.iep) it parses the content of respective page and saves the extracted information into the destination table specified in the information extraction pattern (.iep) file. An iep file is a simple text file defining the destination table into which the extracted values are to be inserted, the columns in the table in which the new values will be inserted, the starting point in the.html file from where the parsing will be started, the ending point where the parsing will be stopped. The file also specifies the tags between which the information is to be extracted. For every HTML page downloaded there is one.iep file which specifies to the parser the path to traverse in the file to extract information. In database the names of the web pages and their respective.iep files are stored. One assumption for the parser is that the data in the HTML file must and always have some pattern. For example the weather information is gathered from the PakMet site [19 the.iep file structure is Figure 3: An.iep file structure Figure 4 shows a snapshot of the PakMet site which is parsed against the above.iep file. Figure 3: Server and client interaction in the AgriKiosk Mobile Extension On the server, time-triggered Web crawlers are initiated which crawl over the web to download the required content from the Internet. The names of these pages are stored in the database along with the associated.iep file path. This information is stored in local disk until a parser is initialized. The parser takes each and every file and parses it to extract the needed information from the file. The parser is a generic parser which needs a structure defining the information extraction pattern from the web pages.this structure is defined by.iep files which define the Figure 4: PakMet site The application provides an interface for writing and editing the.iep files. Hence, the.iep file can be changed if the format of the page changed on the web. After the data is inserted into the database, the application starts sending SMS to the subscribers. It will take all the subscribers from the database and depending on their city information sends them the weather and/or market information in the form of SMS.

4 The application can also be used to send alerts or special messages to the farmers. For this an interface is provided through which the intended receivers can be selected and then the SMS can be sent to those intended subscribers. The system extensively used a threading model to avoid unnecessary delays in execution. Due to economical, administrative and technological reasons, the system will need multiple modems, at least two for each Mobile Server provider MSP).Each MSP will be installed in different area and depending on the information from that area, the MSP will generate SMS for the end users. The physical architecture of the system is given in the diagram 5. is to use GPRS modem instead of GSM modem which supports speed of about 30 SMS per minute. This actually doesn t need any change in the application and the overall architecture but still 30 SMS per minute is not enough considering the increase in the number of subscribers over the years. Therefore, it is proposed to use the SMSC (SMS Center) or SMS service provider. The current architecture is enough flexible enough to fit in to the new architecture. This will only need a plug-in to application which will generate an to an SMSC center containing the message to be sent and the mobile numbers of the recipient. The request specific user driven information can still be sent through the above architecture. Also the information retrieval technology currently being used is not much efficient.the.iep files can be generic up to a certain limit. This can be replaced with the RSS technology which will perform the more well-organized retrieval of information. Figure 5: Network Layout for the Mobile Extension 6. SERVICES AVAILABLE FROM THE AGRIKIOSK SMS Following services will be available from the AgriKiosk SMS service. Market information Weather services Timely updates Alerts Auction Information Ask an Expert 7. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The extension of AgriKiosk project to mobile phones is another step forward in using the technology to abridge the digital divide. The currently implemented system is using the GSM modem for sending the SMS to subscribers. Using the GSM modem, the application can send 8-12 messages per minute (off course depending on the content length) and hence can transmit to almost users in an hour. The number of subscribers is expected to increase by the time and then the use of GSM modem will not be effective. Another solution Further, with the evolution of technology the new types of mobiles are being introduced in markets which support Multi Media Messaging Service (MMS). So it is further proposed to extend the AgriKiosk services to receive MMS so that they can send voice messages and also the pictures, videos of their fields, crops and cattle to get diagnoses from the experts. Thus, the provision of the examination/diagnostic services at the farmers door step will not only help the farmers in utilizing the expertise of professional who otherwise are not accessible but will also reduce their traveling cost and time delays. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are thankful to M/S Genuses Solutions for providing a real kiosk machine to carryout the first phase of the project and the University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi for providing the support and agriculture research material for the project. REFERENCES [1] Associated Press of Pakistan Cell phones fast emerging as staple need of life Saturday, 14 April &task=view&id=7694&itemid=57 [2] M Afzal, J Zubairi, A Akram, S Kausar and S Ahmed (2005); Enabling Technologies for AgriKiosk Project in reaching out Remote Area Farmers ; Proceedings of International conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing, USA

5 sp?isnumber=34623&arnumber= &count=63&index=25 [3] Angelo Juan O. Ramos, M.D. The Viability of Mobile SMS Technologies for Non-Formal Distance Learning In Asia [4] Tatum Anderson, Mobile phone lifeline for world's poor Monday, 19 February 2007 [5] Windows Mobile GPS phone/pda assists farmers, Feb. 20, [6] [7] Rob Katz, China: SMS Service Helps Farmers' Profits, Peoples Daily Online: 28th October 2006, World Resource Institute: 30 th October html farmers-profits [8] Rob Katz, S.A. Farmers Use Weather SMS, World Resource Institute: 30 th October [9] CELAC SMS Page [10] ABCNEWSOnline Central Old farmers receive SMS weather reports, 29 th March m [11] ICT R&D Grants Programme for Asia Pacific [12] White African, Farmers in Kenya Using a Mobile Information Exchange, 19 th March 2007http://whiteafrican.com/?p=414 [13] line.shtml [14] [15] Overview of Economy: [16] [17] Application.pdf [18] [19