Automatic irrigation system based on solar energy

Abstract

The use of proper method of irrigation is important due to the lack of rains and scarcity of land reservoir water. The continuous extraction of water from earth is reducing the water level due to which lot of land is coming slowly in the zones of unirrigated land. The unplanned use of water results a significant waste of water. To solve this riddle the present study deals the use of automatic plant irrigation system. This system drives power from solar energy through a photovoltaic route. Hence, dependency on erratic commercial power is not required. The solar energy is used to operate the irrigation system. The circuit comprises of sensor parts built using op-amp IC. Op-Amp´s are configured here as a comparator. Two stiff copper wires are inserted in the soil to sense whether the soil is wet or dry. A microcontroller is used to control the whole system by monitoring the sensors and when sensors sense dry condition of soil, then the microcontroller will send command to relay driver IC, the contacts of which are used to switch on the motor and it will switch off the motor when the soil is in wet condition. The microcontroller performs the above task as it receives the signal from the sensors through the output of the comparator, and these signals operate under the control of software which is stored in ROM of the microcontroller. The condition of the motor running i.e., ON/OFF is displayed on a 16X2 LCD which is interfaced to the microcontroller.