# Development of a Wireless System to Control a Trombe Wall for Poultry Brooding
## 4 Conclusions  
The research work here presented allowed us to conclude that LoRa is an effective way of communicating across long distances using low-powered devices, despite working with low data rates. However, it proved to be a suitable technology to be applied to the Trombe wall case, given that air vents control only requires low data packets to be sent to the network. Furthermore, this technology is characterized by a long range, fitting the purpose, once brooding houses are normally located in large fields that are not reachable by other wireless technologies. The wireless automation of the Trombe wall to the poultry brooding house was successfully idealized, given that it was possible to manage the air vents operating modes by opening or closing the XPS boards in order to control the temperature fluctuation inside the building. In this particular case, it was also concluded that the use of the Trombe wall system is not enough to guarantee the required brooding temperatures during all periods of growth and may require the simultaneous use of other cooling devices. However, it can also be concluded that costs can be reduced by using a renewable energy source. Furthermore, the further optimization of the Trombe wall thermal performance can be performed, namely in what concerns the geometry and material details, as well as air vents management. The advantages of using a low-powered wireless control system that can be used to remotely manage and optimize the Trombe wall thermal performance, as long as there is a gateway in the region, should also be noted.  
Therefore, it can be stated that the main goal of this research work is to save energy by unifying these two technologies: the Trombe wall system and LoRaWAN network topology that uses LoRa modeling. By escalating this low-powered system, it can be applied to mass chicken production, providing a web interface that shows the indoor conditions that can be remotely controlled if needed.  
This experimentation can be very useful once a future network structure can be deployed and decisions can be taken in a central server, delivered by a gateway that could be listening to several devices from different brooding houses, or even from other LoRaWAN secure applications that can be controlled unobtrusively while the end-nodes consume low power, similarly to the one designed in this work.  
As future work, once the used sensors also return humidity values, it is necessary to investigate in which way it may affect the chickens in the early gestation of their living and how the Trombe wall can have a better performance based on this proposed conditions. In addition,further studies are also needed concerning the use of different modeling techniques, the influence of the transmission environment and data set structures, as well as a better understanding of a LoRaWAN mesh. Furthermore, as it is a low-energy-consumption system, it could also be implemented with a solar photovoltaic panel.  
This research work highlights the advantages of the Internet of Things and its applicability in several daily situations. Moreover, it is a project that involves distinct areas inside engineering and brings them into a common work.  
Conceptualization, A.V., A.B.-S. and A.M.; methodology, A.V. and A.B.-S.; software, A.M.; validation, A.V., A.B.-S. and A.M.; writing--original draft preparation, A.M.; writing--review and editing, A.M., A.B.-S. and A.V.; visualization, A.M.; supervision, A.V. and A.B.-S.; project administration, A.V. and A.B.-S.; funding acquisition, A.V. and A.B.-S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
The research leading to these results has received funding by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT--Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia within project PTDC/CCI-INF/29583/2017 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029583).  
Not applicable.