UGM students develop a tool that can help the fishermen in increasing the result of fish catch named as Modern Revolutionary Multifunctional Cage or Mr. Krabs.
The idea of the tool development is initiated by three students from Department of Electronics and Instrumentation who are the members of Alaska Team in the National Information and Communication Technology Students Exhibition (GEMASTIK) 2017. They are Abdurrohman Alfian Andi Nugroho, Karna Siwantara Suara, and Hanif Baskoro.
Alfian said Mr. Krabs is initiated to address the issue regarding the minimum fish catch in Indonesia. One of the factors is the inadequate fishing technology.
“Most of the Indonesian fishermen are the traditional ones who use conventional equipment in fishing, thus the result is not maximum,” said Alfian on Tuesday (31/10) in UGM.
According to Alfian, the inadequate fishing technology makes the fishermen wait for a long time while fishing, thus it is inefficient. In addition, the fishermen do not know the availability of fish in the fishing area.
“This process is not efficient, the fishermen often go back with no result. Therefore, we try to find a solution for addressing this issue,” he added.
Those three students develop a fishing tool innovation by utilizing red and green LED Superbright. The LED is used to attract the fish to come to the cages.
“Fishermen usually use bulbs to attract the fish but it is ineffective due to the heat emitted by the bulbs. On the other hand, LED Superbright does not emit heat and it emits very bright light so it will attract the fish,” said Hanif.
Then, the fish which goes into the cages will be detected by photodiode sensor through the change of light intensity. If the cage has been full, the sensor will read a certain value and send it using a microcontroller and transmit the signal to make a notification in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) that can be directly received by the fishermen using Smartphones.
“The fishermen are also able to check the condition of their cages in real-time by making a missed call to the Mr. Krabs. Then, Mr. Krabs will scan the condition of the cage and send the information via SMS,” said Hanif.
The tool developed by the students not only helps to increase the number of fish catch but also succeeds to be the finalist in Smart Tool and Embedded System category in the GEMASTIK 2017 competition which is held by Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education from November 4 until 5, 2017, at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta.