Development of Low-cost Soil Moisture Monitoring System for Efficient Irrigation Water Management of Upland Crops

Abstract

With the advancement of information and communication technology, various types of soil moisture sensors have been developed. Coupled with data loggers, these sensors could prove useful in monitoring soil moisture in upland crop production areas which in turn could be used for efficient irrigation water management. However, most of these sensors are costly and unaffordable to most farmers in developing countries. Hence, a low-cost soil moisture monitoring system intended to facilitate irrigation water management in upland crop production systems was developed in this study. The device was built with a capacitive soil moisture sensor, an ESP8266 Wi-Fi mini board, and a datalogging shield with RTC. Soil moisture measurements are transmitted via ESP-NOW to a server which also uses an ESP8266 Wi-Fi mini board. The low-cost soil moisture monitoring system was evaluated based on its measurement of volumetric water content and transmission of data via ESP-NOW. The performance of the capacitive soil moisture sensor was compared with the ICT International MP306 soil moisture sensor. Statistical analyses showed that volumetric water contents measured by the capacitive soil moisture sensor are comparable to those of the MP306 soil moisture sensor, thus conceived as a low-cost alternative to the high-end sensor. Moreover, test results on the range of ESP-NOW showed that data can be successfully transmitted over long distances. With regards to this, the low-cost soil moisture monitoring system may be integrated with other technologies to enable irrigation scheduling and automation for efficient irrigation water management in upland crop production systems.