Monitoring system for working performance of belt-type corn seed-metering device

Abstract. With the corn planting area in China enlarge and economic effect increase, the precision sowing technology of corn has made great progress and development. However, the reliability and accuracy of seed-metering device is still not high, resulting in high rate of miss-sowing. To enhance seeding stability and avoid miss-sowing appear, a monitoring system for working performance of belt-type corn seed-metering device was developed based on photo-electricity sensor. For optical signal acquisition, a detector of monitoring system was designed with infrared emission diode and infrared photodiode as transmitting terminal. The structural and installation parameters of detector were optimized by evaluating and calculating the monitoring blind area. Then the gathered data was sent to the controller and a seed cup fixed at electric putter would fetch the seed. A hardware circuit of monitoring system with functions of seeding signal acquisition, working speeding gathering and seeding control was developed, which could not only judge normal seeding, seed missing and reseeding, but achieve precision seeding. This system can meet the requirement of working monitoring for belt-type corn precision seed metering device and to improve sowing quality.