Design and Implementation of Fibre Optic Sensor for Soil Moisture Detection

In this paper, the design and implementation of a fibre optic sensor system for moisture detection are reported. The basic concept of a fibre optic sensor is to detect any changes in the intensity of light that travels inside the fibre. The paper describes the sensor design, the experimental setup and four examples of sensor prototypes. A phototransistor is used to detect light in the fibre optic, while Arduino nano is utilised to read the output data. Four different sensors with different length and width are employed to detect the level of soil moisture. The effects of sensor dimensions on the soil moisture detection are studied. The most stable response provided by two sensors, one with 1-inch width and 0.63 inches length and the other design is with the dimension of 1- inch and 0.87 inches length