SEMEA-TEC
What it is
SEMEA-TEC (Sowing Technological Solutions in Family Agriculture) is a university extension project at UNIFESP — São José dos Campos campus (ICT) — working at the intersection of computing, electronics, rural extension and participatory methodologies. It develops low-cost, low-energy social technologies for family agriculture, tackling the digital exclusion that deepens historical inequalities in the countryside.
The project is organically linked to my doctoral research at PPGIT/UNIFESP: while the extension operates as a living laboratory of listening and co-creation, the PhD investigates the technical-scientific foundations for maximum energy autonomy (harvest-energy batteries) and economic viability at scale.
Prototypes
- JavAlarm — electric fence monitoring over LoRa radio to prevent wild boar invasions: a transmitter reads the fence’s high-voltage pulses and retransmits alerts until the receiver acknowledges them, so no fence failure goes unnoticed.
- Shitakiometer — autonomous environmental sensing station for mushroom greenhouses (temperature, humidity, CO₂), with solar power and real-time dashboards.
How we work
Action Design Research: before any line of code or solder, we go to the field with partner organizations for active listening and participatory diagnosis. Farmers are co-producers of the innovation, not beneficiaries. Partners: Associação Portal Sem Porteiras (Monteiro Lobato-SP), Akarui (São Luiz do Paraitinga-SP) and Associação Apoena.
Technologies
- LoRa radio (915 MHz), ESP32 and RP2040 firmware with deep sleep
- Solar power and 18650 batteries with charge management
- MQTT (Mosquitto), Node-RED, InfluxDB and Grafana dashboards