Smart irrigation system: an IoT based approach prototype

Abstract

Agriculture, especially crop cultivation, is one of the most important economic activities that contributes to the growth of most developing countries. Mostly practiced in African countries crop cultivation depends on irrigation and improvements in irrigation methods can improve yields. The use of IoT, cloud technologies and microprocessors like Raspberry Pi can be used to create better irrigation solutions. This research takes advantage of these technologies to create a smart irrigation system prototype that would improve irrigation methods for farmers. This system uses a Raspberry Pi, sensors for soil moisture, pH, temperature and humidity, a web application, and a cloud-based database. The smart irrigation system assesses environmental conditions by analyzing data from the sensors and comparing it to the values stored in the database which determine the conditions needed to cultivate the crop. Results from testing the system show that irrigation actions were successful after analyzing soil moisture; when moisture is low, pH range; higher or lower and temperature; higher than required, while no irrigation was triggered when all conditions were in required bounds according to the values saved in the database for the maize crop. Unfortunately, humidity sensor yielded erroneous readings that could not be used to decide whether irrigating the field was required.