Developing Smart Agriculture Applications: Experiences and Lessons Learnt

Smart agriculture applications are promising to improve traditional agriculture in developing regions. Farmers use these applications to collect data on agricultural activities and monitor different conditions in modern farms. However, from the development point of view, these applications are often implemented using text-based programming languages that require experienced programmers. Visual languages can be an alternative to text-based languages that may allow non-expert programmers (e.g., farmers) to implement these applications and make adjustments to existing ones. This study considers two exemplars of concrete and deployable smart agriculture applications (WebLog and UtafitiLog) developed using two different technologies. The study defines a set of parameters to evaluate these exemplars from which lessons are drawn that can be generalised to other smart agriculture applications.