Ilonggo students invent devices for rural communities

By: Emme Rose Santiagudo

ILONGGO high school students invented two innovations that can potentially help rural communities.

For one, a group of students from Philippine Science High School Western Visayas Campus developed a device that can convert noise to electricity.

The “S-Light” device, an electricity storage system that converts soundwaves into storable energy, was invented by PSHS students, Nico Andrei Serrato, Kirsten Dianne Delmo, Joecile Faith Monana, Frelean Faith Engallado, and Raphael Francis Dequil.

Delmo said they were inspired to create the device to help provide light to people in rural communities.

“Ang goal gid ya namon is to provide light to people living in rural areas especially wala silang electricity. So what it does, it converts sound to electricity which can power a light,” she shared.

Electricity is used to power up speakers, but the S-Light reverses the process by converting sound to electricity.

Noise or sound waves will be picked up by the speaker, causing the magnet to vibrate in the coil and generate electricity which is stored in the power box.

Meanwhile, another group of students from Iloilo National High School (INHS) also developed a device that can be an alternative to the high cost and high maintenance of farming machineries.

Vincent Joshua Bendo, Alvin Alexander Buelos, Robert Kobe Garcia from INHS developed a plant monitoring robot that monitors several factors affecting plant growth.

The “Short Message Service Based Plant Growth Monitoring Robot” is an automated system for measuring factors affecting plant growth.

The device alerts the users with a short message system (SMS) when a factor reaches its danger level.

Garcia said the device is equipped with temperature sensors, humidity sensors, and moisture sensors.

“It monitors environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, moisture of the plants. It alerts in two ways. First, it alarms the user via SMS and it also has a buzzer which emits a very high frequency if the phone is not available,” he explained.

With the decline in crop production, particularly rice, Garcia said they wanted to develop an invention that would help lessen the burden of farmers.

“There is a decline in the production of crops and devices used in farming are very expensive and waay gid devices maka-measure sang environmental factors and maka-relay sa mga farmers,” he said.

While the device is currently limited to small-scale crop farming and nurseries and were only tested on rice crops, Garcia said they plan to improve it by making it wireless to cater to far-flung communities.

The two inventions were part of the Iloilo Innovation Expo 2019.

The S-Light was a silver awardee during the Young Inventors Challenge 2019 in Malaysia recently.

Moreover, the group was also one of the two qualifiers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Space Apps Challenge which are set to compete in the global competition alongside two other qualifiers from Davao.

Xavier Romy Braña, the adviser of the PSHS students said he hopes that his students can become an inspiration to other Filipino youth to be creative in working on new innovations.

“I am very proud of them. I hope they will become an inspiration to the youth that if they have opportunities like this to develop their inventions, they will grab it. If may idea sila, and gusto nila i-pursue, pisanan lang nila and they have to be creative and work hard. Tani mangin inspiration sila sa iban nga bata nga magtutom man,” he said.