Smart Surge Irrigation Using Microcontroller Based Embedded Systems and Internet of Things

Surge Irrigation is a type of furrow irrigation and one of many efficient irrigation techniques. It is one of the economical techniques and requires minimum labor for monitoring it. In surge irrigation, water is applied intermittently to a field to achieve uniform distribution of water along the furrows, which is important while irrigating, as it ensures that there is enough water near the root zone of the crop. The uneven distribution can cause a loss in crop productivity. Surge irrigation uses a surge valve, which is an electro-mechanical device that irrigates a field. The commercial surge valves available on the market are made to control only the time for the irrigation. However, their functionality is limited and requires human intervention to control and monitor the irrigation process. Therefore, monitoring the irrigation with these controllers is a big challenge. The lack of monitoring may result reduced irrigation efficiency. The purpose of this thesis is to design and develop an embedded system for surge irrigation that resolves the drawback associated with the commercial surge valves. In this thesis, a “Surge Controller” is designed, implemented, and tested on the farm. The surge controller is a microcontroller-based embedded system, which runs the real-time operating system FreeRTOS on a single core ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller for multitasking. The important feature, which makes the surge controller “Smart”, is the Internet of Things (IoT) that enables the controller to send irrigation data over the Internet to a remote station. During the Spring and Summer, 2017, the surge controller was developed and tested in the field at Rice Research and Extension Center of the University of Arkansas. Five irrigation events were run in a 20 acres soybean field. The controller was tested for the durability of the components in the environment and field conditions, performance and overall feasibility of the device to achieve successful results from an irrigation event. After the successful testing, the IoT feature was added in Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 and tested for its functionality by running a few irrigation events in the Laboratory. The surge controller worked as expected continuously without interruption

Design of Laboratory Scale Fluid Level Measurement Device Based on Arduino

Measuring the height of a liquid using analog is very difficult, and its accuracy is very low. It is more accurate to measure liquid level using digital technology. Measurements of the correct fuel level are needed to measure fuel purchases at fuel stations or fuel retailers. The study aimed to design laboratory-level fuel level measurements based on the Arduino Uno microcontroller. The method used was a direct comparison between the measuring instrument and a ruler as a measuring standard. This device used a gas gauging sensor on the vehicle and an Arduino Uno microcontroller to process data and display data on the LCD and LabView. The results of the fluid level measurement could be used to determine the height of fuel surface. The error rate of the measuring instrument was ± 3% in a calm and bumpy state. The results showed that the device is suitable for use in measurement

A smart voltage and current monitoring system for three phase inverters using an android smartphone application

In this paper, a new smart voltage and current monitoring system (SVCMS) technique is proposed. It monitors a three phase electrical system using an Arduino platform as a microcontroller to read the voltage and current from sensors and then wirelessly send the measured data to monitor the results using a new Android application. The integrated SVCMS design uses an Arduino Nano V3.0 as the microcontroller to measure the results from three voltage and three current sensors and then send this data, after calculation, to the Android smartphone device of an end user using Bluetooth HC-05. The Arduino Nano V3.0 controller and Bluetooth HC-05 are a cheap microcontroller and wireless device, respectively. The new Android smartphone application that monitors the voltage and current measurements uses the open source MIT App Inventor 2 software. It allows for monitoring some elementary fundamental voltage power quality properties. An effort has been made to investigate what is possible using available off-the-shelf components and open source software

Arduino Based Automatic Irrigation System

In the present days, the farmers are suffering from severe drought like condition throughout the year. The main objective of this paper is to provide a system leads to automatic irrigation thereby saving time, money & power of the farmers, gardeners in greenhouses etc. Manual intervention is common in traditional farm-land irrigation techniques. This paper presents a technique for Arduino based Automatic Irrigation System. With this automated technology of irrigation, human intervention can be minimized. The moisture sensors will be bedded in on the field. Whenever there is a change in water concentration, these sensors will sense the change and gives an interrupt signal to the microcontroller. Soil is one of the most fragile resources whose soil pH property used to describe the degree of the acidity or basicity, which affects nutrient availability and ultimately plant growth. Thus, the system will provide automation, remote controlling and increased efficiency. The humidity sensor is connected to internal ports of microcontroller via comparator; whenever there is a fluctuation in temperature and humidity of the environment, these sensors sense the change in temperature and humidity and give an interrupt signal to the micro-controller and thus the motor is activated. A buzzer is used to indicate that the pump is on

Design of Automatic Watering System Based on Arduino

Food self-sufficiency is a government program that has been being actively promoted so that Indonesia can reach food independence by the end of 2019. Indonesia is a maritime country and also an agricultural country with two seasons namely rainy season and dry season. In the rainy season, food plants usually do not need to be watered, while in the dry season, the plants must be watered regularly in accordance with soil moisture conditions. Farmers usually do not grow food plants in the dry season for fear that it will not grow well. The farmer’s dependence on the season causes the production to decline and becomes an obstacle in the success of the food self-sufficiency program. An information and communication technology-based agricultural device is needed to overcome the problem. The research aimed to design a programmed microcontroller chip to control watering automatically based on soil moisture detected using a domestic soil moisture sensor. This device detects whether the soil is dry or not. The farmers do not need to do watering manually. In addition to helping farmers, the device can also be installed on plantations, seedbed nurseries, urban parks, hotels, offices, and in homes that have parks or plants that need regular watering

Development on automated plant watering system for soil humidity / Irni Hamiza Hamzah

This study presents the development and design process of an automated plant watering system for soil humidity in the potted plants. The study was materialised based on the developed 32-Bit Arduino Uno microcontroller system. Three main transducers used in this project to collect the respective data were soil moisture sensor, humidity sensor and temperature sensor. The LM393 soil moisture sensor and the DHT11 humidity and temperature sensor were placed half the height of the soil in the pot to measure the environment and the surrounding for the soil in the pot. The system was connected with motor pump for irrigation. The motor pump started to water the plants when the soil dried. During this process, the measured data was then being displayed at LCD screen and monitored in real time at GUI created by Visual Basic. The data were displayed in degree Celsius for temperature and for soil humidity in a scale of 0 to 1030. The bigger the scale, the dryer the soil was. As a conclusion, an automated plant watering system was successfully implemented using Arduino Uno to control the soil moisture and capable in monitoring data and analysis the parameters in the garden

Design and implementation of smart farming system for fig using connected-argonomics

This paper proposes a design and implementation approach of smart farming system using connected-agronomics technique for fig farm application. Nowadays, fig plants having a rapid growth in the current market demand due to its rich in natural health benefiting nutrients, antioxidants and vitamins where some farming systems have been used  in maintaining fig plant’s environmental resources to grow without fail. Smart farming is a system applied to provide user with real time information and plan for desired plant such as time intervals for watering systems. There are two major problems on maintaining the fig fruit quality; watering system fail during emergency blackout and a contagious disease known as leaf rust due to external environments. The system implements two microcontrollers, the Arduino Uno & Raspberry Pi along with smartphone Android application. The system performance is evaluated based on the requirement specification, irrigation soil, surrounding temperature and moisture. It is found that all data collected by the sensors are within the optimal range of values, which are 1500 µS/cm to 1599 µS/cm for the EC reading of the fertilizer while 6.0 to 6.5 for the pH value of the soil. This prototype of smart farming was well developed and can be applied to the fig plantation environment

Microcontroller-based Vertical Farming Automation System

Food is a basic necessity of life. It is the means by which man is nourished and strengthened to carry out his daily activities. The need for food for the upkeep of man has placed agriculture at the helm of man’s affairs on earth. With a rapidly increasing population on earth, man has invented newer and innovative ways to cultivate crops. This cultivation is mainly concentrated in rural areas of countries around the world; but with the massive urbanization happening in the world today; it is becoming increasingly difficult to have enough agricultural produce that will cater for the massive population. Taking Nigeria as a case study, the increased urbanization has placed a massive demand on land, energy and water resources within urban areas of the country. Majority of the food consumed in the urban areas is cultivated in the rural areas. This system however requires longer transportation times from rural areas to urban areas which lead to contamination and spoilage in many instances. This research paper provides a solution in which food crops can be cultivated easily in urban areas by planting in vertically stacked layers in order to save space and use minimal energy and water for irrigation

Implementation of a Camera Sensor Pixy 2 CMUcam5 to A Two Wheeled Robot to Follow Colored Object

This article discusses the design of a colored object follower robot. The colored object used has a simple shape. For the detection process, a wheeled robot that uses sensors based on digital images of Pixy 2. Pixy2 can learn to detect objects that you teach it, just by pressing a button.  Additionally, Pixy2 has new algorithms that detect and track lines for use with line-following robots. Pixy2 camera is able to recognize and track all objects whose color has been memorized. In maneuvering, this robot has 2 wheels on the right and left. Movement control is carried out by the Arduino Uno microcontroller board. This robot moves according to the direction of movement of the object. The conclusion obtained in this research is that this wheeled robot can be examined from the left, front and right side objects properly, then it follows the direction of the detected object