FarmBook : A Social Life Network for Farmers

Guided By : Prof. Dr. O.G. Kakde

Introduction

Folk Computing-Folk Computing is communicating through the natural

human senses, not just the usual text and images. Experiential environments can serve even the illiterate and impoverished in the remotest human societies. An approach for using technology to support co-present

community building inspired by the concept of folklore. Computing for Masses – focus on people in remote parts of

even underdeveloped world. Focuses towards reducing the Digital Divide. Communicating using natural human senses(Experiential

Environments).

Social Life Networks

Social Life Networks are web-based services that allow individuals to: construct a public or semi-public profile within a

bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share

a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those

made by others within the system. Experiential environments : Users apply their senses to

observe data and information of interest related to an event (conceptual and perceptual analysis) and interact with the data based on what they find interesting.

Social Life Networks:Connecting People to Resources

Resourceso Physical: food, water, …o Informational: weather, goods …o Transportationo Spiritual

Timeliness Efficiency

The Idea

Objective

We are developing a web-based social networking application for android mobiles that will benefit Indian farmers.

The aims of our project are:o To enable farmers to discuss his/her problems

with some central authorityo To enable the center to provide useful farming

information, and address the problems of farmers in its region

o To provide farmers with a social network to interact with other farmers

Assumptions

The farmer is more or less illiterate Farmer has a smartphone running

Android OS The phone has internet connectivity Illiterate people can identify numbers Farmers can converse in Hindi

FarmBook Infrastructure

It consists of: An Android application on client side Project is being developed in

Platform : Android 2.1SDK Google APIs Development Tool : Eclipse IDE Virtual Smartphone : 5554 Emulator2.1(5554 is socket

connection of emulator with local Computer) A Web Panel for center administration Apache Server MySQL Database connecting various users to center

and among themselves PHP scripts to communicate between Android

application and Server database

Features of Android Application

Heavy use of cartoon-style pictures Voice output in local language (Hindi) Audio-based messaging Image-based messaging Text-based messaging for ease of literate

farmer Icon based functionality using touch

screens Audio help instructions

Features of Android Application

Integrated Camera for Capturing and Uploading images

Integrated Sound Recorder for Recording and Uploading audio files

Ability to post status updates, ask questions and find solutions to problems using text, image and audio based messaging

Ways to connect with fellow farmers Location based friend suggestions Capability to add friend from another region

Posts created by farmers can be made visible to the center as well as fellow farmers

Information Provided by Center to Farmers

News Types of crops and seeds, their prices, advantages and

disadvantages Quality and prices of pesticides and fertilizers Weather conditions Agricultural land prices, water and electricity supply Information about pests, insects and crop diseases Information about soil Details about equipment like farming tools, tractors etc. Government Yojnas for farmers Farming practices Centre will provide list of categorized products used in

farming which a farmer can rate and recommend to other farmers

Android Activities

An Android Application consists of various activities Each activity is a Java class and one of them is the

main activity, which comes up during application start-up

A separate class can be defined for the application itself

Each activity represents a particular component of the application

Various activities are interconnected using Intents The layout of each activity can be defined either as

an XML file or dynamically in the activity code itself

Activity Life Cycle

Components of Android Project The application name and all its

activities are defined in the Android Manifest file (an XML document)

Media used in the application, such as images, audio and animations, are stored in the ‘res’ folder of the project

On building the project a .apk file is created which can be ported to android smartphones

Connection between App and Server

It is not possible to connect an android application directly to a MySQL database (using JDBC connector). Hence this connection is done through PHP scripts.

PHP scripts act as middleware between the MySQL database and the application.

Database reads and writes, as well as uploading and downloading of files to and from the server, are performed by creating appropriate PHP scripts at the server side and accessing the scripts at the client side through the system HTTPClient

Screen Shots

User Registration

One time registration page which comes up when the app is installed and run for the first time on a smartphone

Details are filled by app vendors.

Home Screen

It consists of :o Profileo Camerao Query Pageo Uploado Weathero Market Updateso Audio Recordo Friends Suggestionso Notification

Local Friends

Contains friend suggestions from people in same locality

Play/Pause button for audio help instruction

Find Friend

Weather

Shows weather forecast and current weather condition

Create Post

There two buttons for uploading image and audio files

User can send one image and one audio file along with text (optional) at a time

Play/Pause button for audio help instruction

User Profile

It contains user personal details like : Name Profile Image Phone number Location Gender

User can see all of his/her friends Number of post created by user

Market Updates

It shows general messages broadcast by center related to : Farming goods like seeds, fertilizers etc Equipments and Utilities like tractors,

plough etc New government Yojna Market prices for various crops Land prices in his locality Suggestion on popular crops based on

customers demands

Notifications

Farmer will receive a notification whenever his post is replied by either center or his/her fellow farmers

Notifications about recent market updates

Notifications about weather alerts Somebody added him as friend New User registers in his/her locality

Queries/Posts/Comments

Farmer can send image, audio and text altogether in a single post or individually in different posts

Posts will be ordered according to their timestamp

Images, audio and text files will be stored at the server and its link is stored in database

Queries/Posts/Comments

Comments are of two types: New Post (already described in create post) Reply to some older post in which case

notification will be send to that particular user

There are different color codes for user, center and his/her fellow farmers

Schemas

members (phoneno, profile_img, deviceid, sex, firstname, lastname,

location) admin_members

(admin_id, username, password, firstname, lastname, location)

friends (phoneno, friends)

farmer_post (query_id, phoneno, img_link, audio_link, text, timestamp)

Schemas

center_post (query_id, admin_id, img_link, audio_link, text,

timestamp) query_reply

(query_id, reply_id, user_level) news

(news_id, img_link, audio_link, text, timestamp) market_update

(update_id, type, img_link, audio_link, text, timestamp)

Web Panel for the Center