Low-cost IoT framework for irrigation monitoring and control

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this work is to make an IoT-based low-cost and power-efficient portable system to control irrigation using a threshold value algorithm and to measure soil-irrigation-related parameters such as soil moisture, soil temperature, humidity and air temperature.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a threshold value algorithm to optimize power consumption and to control irrigation process.

Findings

The system uses ESP-12F 8266 as the main microcontroller unit to monitor and control irrigation system. The system also consists of an actuator system that triggers automatically based on a threshold value algorithm. An open-source cloud platform is used to monitor and store all the data for future perspective. To make the system run for a long time without any human intervention, a solar panel is used as an alternate source of energy for charging the 12V lithium-ion battery. The battery takes 2.64 h for full charging considering peak intensity of sunlight. A capacitive moisture sensor is included using less expensive 555 timer and calibrated to measure water content in the soil. The 555 timer is used in astable mode of configuration to generate a signal of 572 KHz. The calibrated sensor data when compared with a standard SEN0193 moisture sensor shows an error of 3.4%. The prototype model is made to optimize the power consumption. This can be achieved by utilizing sleep mode of ESP-12F 8266. The total cost involved to make the system is 3900.55 Indian rupees and around US$54.90.

Practical implications

The device is tested in a flower garden during winter season of Nagaland, India, for 75 days to collect all the data and to automate the irrigation process.

Originality/value

The proposed threshold value algorithm optimizes the power consumption of the device, and wastage of water is reduced up to 60% as compared to the traditional method of irrigation.

Citation

Borah, S., Kumar, R. and Mukherjee, S. (2021), "Low-cost IoT framework for irrigation monitoring and control", International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned Systems, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 63-79. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJIUS-12-2019-0075