Development of air temperature and soil moisture monitoring systems with LoRA technology

Abstract

One of the problems in agriculture is the difficulty of monitoring agricultural field because its location is far from the farmer’s house. Factors affecting agricultural crops are air temperature and soil moisture. Both factors are important to be maintained so that agricultural output can be optimized. LoRA is a spread spectrum modulation technique derived from spread spectrum chirp technology and the first low cost implementation of spread spectrum chirp. LoRA s able to transmit data within a distance of 7.5 km with a frequency of 433 MHz. In this study, machine-to-machine method with LoRA technology was used to send air temperature and soil moisture data. This method is advantageous because communication can be carried out at frequency of 433 MHz and thus does not depend on cellular frequencies. Monitoring via the internet can be done by connecting LoRA with the ESP32 microcontroller which connected to an access point for sending data online through the Ceyene application. Test environment is build by giving variations in air temperature and variations in the depth of the sensor that was planted in the soil. The research proves that monitoring of soil temperature and humidity can be done with LoRA technology at a low cost.