Proposed Automated Plant Watering System Using IoT

Abstract

In daily operations related to farming or gardening watering is the most important cultural practice and the most labour-intensive task. Manual process of watering requires two important aspects to be considered: when and how much to water. In order to replace manual activities and making gardener's work easier, the project builds an IOT device that can initiate the watering of the plant system automatically whenever the moisture content in the pot drops below a threshold value, which will help the plants to reach their fullest potential as well as conserving water. This type of system can be implemented on projects like green building concepts, roof farming, gardening etc. Using sprinklers or drip emitters, or a combination of both, we will design a system that is ideal for every plant in our yard. For implementation of automatic plant watering system, Arduino and sensors such as moisture, soil fertility, temperature and water level sensors will be used. The system will have a distributed wireless network of soil-moisture and temperature sensors placed in the root zone of the plants. In addition, a gateway unit will handle sensor information, trigger actuators, and transmits data to a mobile application. The system is planned to be powered by photovoltaic panels and will have a duplex communication link based on a cellular-Internet interface that allowed for data inspection and irrigation scheduling to be programmed through a application. It reports its current state as well as remind the user to add water to the tank. All these notifications will be made available to the user through mobile application. Because of its energy autonomy and low cost, the system will have the potential to be used in water limited geographically isolated areas. This system will ensure quality gardening with conservation of water.