Development of Water Management System Used IoT in Oil Palm Plantations

Abstract

The objective of this research was to develop a prototype of a water management system in an oil palm plantation using the Internet of Things (IoT) and solar energy to be used with the automatic watering controller. In this research, the Internet of Things (IoT) was utilized to control automatic watering in an oil palm plantation by using soil moisture sensors to control the on-off of the automatic watering system, which can reduce labor and use the right amount of water. In addition, it can also display moisture, temperature, pH, and macronutrients of plants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in the soil through the Blynk application on a smartphone. The users can control the operation of the automatic watering controller from any location, at any time, that connected a Wi-Fi signal to the Internet network. This automatic watering controller used solar energy by installing a water supply system with 22 sprinklers covering an area of 70 x 45 meters. The test results showed that the automatic watering controller can control the opening and closing of water distribution with 100% accuracy. The soil moisture content after watering had the same average moisture content covering the study area. The automatic watering control and the water distribution system are designed to be suitable for application in oil palm plantations where crops are planted between rows of oil palm trees, for example, peppers, and gnetum gnemon.