These engineering students predict rains for farmers using dish TV signals

Their device, BhuGoal, is installed between the set-top box and dish antenna. It records variations in signal, which are then run through AI algorithms to give precise predictions

We all watch television. Over 800 million Indian households own TV sets. Viewers experience signal distortion when it’s cloudy or when it starts raining. This is because it is the dish antenna signals that tell us about the weather.

To address the issue weather forecast, three engineering students from Punjab, along with their professor, have built a device called BhuGoal using similar technology. Installed between the set-top box and the dish antenna, the device records the variations in signal, which are then run through AI algorithms to give precise predictions.

“It is similar to Google maps, but monitors live and precise weather rather than traffic,” says Kartik Vij, co-founder of TooDecimal, the start-up that has built the BhuGoal device. Vij, along with other co-founders Debarshi Ghosh and Rahul Kinra, who are final-year engineering students, and their mentor Nitin K Saluja  want to build a sort of weather prediction map via BhuGoal that would track weather changes in real time.

The start-up is currently being incubated at IIM Bangalore, though most of the research work is being done at Chitkara University near Chandigarh where, the co-founders are studying.

BhuGoal tracks the movement of clouds. There is a pattern of signal strength whenever cloud movement is captured on the dish antenna. The device records the instantaneous signal strength in digital form and sends it to a remote server in Chitkara University through a wireless channel. The data received at the remote server get analysed continuously in real time and is then fed into the artificial intelligence engines to come out with an accurate weather prediction.

“Analysing the data, we are able to find the direction of the clouds, the density and the rate of change of density of the cloud,” says Vij

The device, which currently costs $5, can track the weather of a particular area in a radius of five km. According to the company, BhuGoal predicts the rain two hours in advance with about 95 per cent accuracy. The India Meteorological Department uses satellite image data that is 24 hours old.

Toodecimal claims its data analytics algorithm can help in increasing crop-yield by up to 40 per cent in agriculture and reduces grain warehouse losses by 70 per cent. In just six months, the start-up has installed 48 BhuGoal devices in Punjab basically for farmers, while it is in talks with several potential customers, including cricket boards and airport authorities, to implement its patented technology for weather predictions. The company which has raised funding from the government, last week won an award at the Nasscom Foundation’s “Tech For Good” summit.

“Our device is currently capable of providing information on rain. In the next phase, we will be targeting snow, fog and humidity,” says Vij.

According to the company, the deployment of BhuGoal device nationwide for 15 million farmers will help reduce water consumption for irrigation by 47 per cent. This can also help in reducing the spend on chemicals, especially pesticides and weedicides, by 50-70 per cent, while the cumulative saving for farmers could be around $100 an acre. “It would also help in taking the right decision regarding the sun-drying of warehoused commodities,” says Vij.