Optimization and Control of Hydroponics Agriculture using IOT

Asian Journal of Applied Science and Technology (AJAST)
Volume 1, Issue 2, Pages 96-98, March 2017
© 2017 AJAST All rights reserved. www.ajast.net
Page | 96
Optimization and Control of Hydroponics Agriculture using IOT
S.Charumathi1
, R.M.Kaviya2
, J.Kumariyarasi3
, R.Manisha4
and P.Dhivya5
1
UG Scholar, Department of ECE, Vivekanandha College of Engineering for Women, India. Email: charumbbs111@gmail.com
2
UG Scholar, Department of ECE, Vivekanandha College of Engineering for Women, India. Email: kaviyamohan2706@gmail.com
3
UG Scholar, Department of ECE, Vivekanandha College of Engineering for Women, India. Email: kumariyarasi@gmail.com
4
UG Scholar, Department of ECE, Vivekanandha College of Engineering for Women, India. Email: manisharaju1995@gmail.com
5
Assistant Professor, Department of ECE, Vivekanandha College of Engineering for Women, India. Email: pdhivyavlsii@gmail.com
Article Received: 24 February 2017 Article Accepted: 08 March 2017 Article Published: 11 March 2017
1. INTRODUCTION
With the advances in technology and the improvement of
people's living standards, hydroponic plants become an
integral part of daily life. Hydroponic plants not only decorate
the environment, but also can delight us. However, traditional
plant cultivation has been mainly performed in the soil. It is
known that a series of drawbacks can be found for such a way.
For example, regular watering and fertilizing have to require
more time and labour. With the development of various
techniques, the soilless cultivation has become a more mature
and popular breeding choice such as hydroponic. Hydroponic
is an eco-friendly system to cultivate crop without soil by
utilizing aquaculture and hydroponics. At present,
hydroponics is mainly used in agricultural production.
Modern people have been always engaged in work and they
have no more extra time to look after hydroponic plants.
Plants need watering and fertilization frequently.
The whole process is compound and onerous. Based on the
above shortcomings, the automatic control system is
proposed. Unfortunately, current automatic control system is
not stable, some unexpected errors occur especially it is
difficult to realize the remote monitoring and control.
Consequently, it is very necessary to design a smart monitor
and control system, especially for people who travel
frequently.
The rapid development of sensor, Internet , communication
and computer technology, the smart life style will become a
popular trend in our future life .To solve the current
shortcoming, this study designs a smart monitor and
controlling system , which can make it easy to implement the
connection of monitoring field and to remote monitoring
centres.
This system can monitor the environment of hydroponic
device through some sensors in a real-time and stable way,
and then accurately, automatically transmit the data of
temperature, humidity, light intensity, water level and pH in
real time.
2. LITERATURE SURVEY
This chapter discusses the research and finding that have been
made regarding this project field. The discussion starts from
the development of monitoring system, controlling system
and wireless communication as well as its function to
acquiring data input and sending output command. All the
related research papers and journals that provide thought and
concept concerning this project ground also is explained into
a simple means.
2.1 Procedure for the Space Certification of a Controller for
Soilless Cultivation
Author: V.Arenella, P., F. Leccese, M.
Aeroponics culture differs from conventional hydroponics,
aquaponics, and in-vitro (Plant tissue culture) growing
because is conducted without a growing medium. By using
ABSTRACT
In a developing country like India, where agriculture is the backbone of the country, agriculture is plagued by several problems like small and
fragmented land holdings, manures, pesticides, chemicals used for agriculture etc. consumers also increasingly demand for the healthy diet that is rich
in quality and free of agricultural chemicals and pesticides. Our project fills in the above said difficulties and demands using hydroponics we can go
organic. Since it is done in the controlled environment, it can be done anywhere like room terrace, balcony etc. also large amount of plants can be
planted in a less place. This type of agriculture could be high yielding if monitored and controlled efficiently. We propose a project that controls the
necessary conditions required for the plant to grow hydroponically and also cultivators may control the agriculture remotely using IoT.
Keywords: IoT, Hydroponics and Agriculture.

Page | 97
aeroponics, we get only polluted plants and that is not nutrient
and organic.
2.2 A hydroponic approach to estimate responses to
nutrients and phytohormones in cotton plants growing and
development
Author: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Cotton plant growth is sensitive to temperature. Cool night
and low daytime temperatures result in the production of few
fruiting branches, but support vegetative growth. However,
the effect of day length on germination, flowering and boll
formation are influenced by temperature. The optimum
temperature of 20oC to 30oC, 18oC to 30oC, 27oC to 35oC
are required for vegetative growth, flowering, and boll
development, respectively. Temperatures above 38oC are
detrimental to growth, development and yield of cotton (FAO,
2001). The cotton plant is also sensitive to frost and a
minimum of 200 frost free days is required for growth and
yield.
2.3 The design and implementation of a hydroponics
control system
Author: Mark Griffiths
The use of the DS3017 RTC caused too many problems with
timing issues. The timings were Irregular and it was difficult
to use SW to counter balance them. A Phi gets pH board was
used first as this was a few Euros cheaper. However the
quality was much lower as the calculations for the exact pH
level had to be done in the SW. The Atlas Scientific circuits
do all the calculations on the HW and they come with a lot
more features. The calibration is also much easier with the
Atlas Scientific, using the Phi gets board requires the SW to
do all of the calculation. This would have increased the code
complexity and size too much, therefore it was considered
better from a quality point of view to just buy the better HW.
3. PROPOSED SYSTEM
In our project we have proposed an idea that would control
the parameters automatically. Also the cultivators can know
the conditions of the plant growth and control the parameters
remotely using IoT technology.
4. EXISTING SYSTEM
In the existing system the hydroponics cultivator can only
monitor the necessary conditions required for plant growth
such as humidity, temperature, water level, light intensity.
The cultivator can know the increase or decrease in necessary
parameters and control it.
This system has a disadvantage because the user control these
parameters if he is in distance ,since the system needs constant
monitoring and control the existing system doesn’t satisfy the
control of this agriculture completely.
4.1 Block Diagram with Explanation
In order for the controller to be used for growing, a study was
made on how people actually use hydroponic systems and
these will be the requirements with which I will base the HW
and SW on. In addition to this, thought has been given to the
people that will actually make the hydroponic system and how
the system can be made easy for them.
4.2 Monitoring and Controlling Using IOT
The HW platform will be the Arduino Mega 328. This will be
used as it is open source and it provides enough pins to
support a 3.2” TFT screen and numerous sensors. In addition,
it provides access to pins which support interrupts making it
ideal for this project. The available space for SW is 250KB,
which is more than enough for this project. It supports
EEPROM storage meaning that any user data can be
permanently stored.
4.3 Arduino
Arduino is an open-source somatic computing platform built
on a simple microcontroller board and a development
environment that implements the Processing language.
Projects done with Arduino can be individual or they can
communicate with software running on a computer. Our
design needs to be co-operating, so it can make it much easier
to create an environment in which learning can be achieved by
doing, receiving feedback and cleansing understanding and
building new knowledge.
4.4 pH level
The control of pH is extremely important, not only in
hydroponics but in soil as well. Plants lose the capability to
absorb different nutrients when the pH differs. Different
plants have a particular pH that is optimal for them, generally
though most plants prefer a slightly acid growing
environment. An ideal pH level is between 5.5 and 7.
Changing the pH level too quickly is not a good idea as this
will stress the plant out too much. Generally, just make sure
that the pH level is between the ranges above.
The controller has the benefits that the pH level of the water is
constantly being reported (every five seconds). The user can
set limits on the pH levels and so there will be a visual cue on
the main screen if the pH level fluctuates outside of the
predefined levels. Without the controller the user would need
to use an external device, which may be carried out only a few
times a day. By which time the pH could be too out of range
causing damage to the plants.

Page | 98
4.5 DHT11 Temperature sensor
The controller must be able to measure the air temperature.
For this a DHT11 sensor will be used. This was chosen as its
temperature range falls well into the range required for
growing food, which is 0-50°C It also has a temperature
accuracy of ±2°C. However, this can be improved by using an
offset in the SW to configure it to the actual temperature using
a mercury based thermometer. The sensor can only get new
data once every 2 seconds. This should not be a problem
though for hydroponics. The chances of a big fluctuation in
air temperature within two seconds are not very likely.
4.6 IoT
Smart agricultural is a concept quickly gathering on in the
agricultural business. Present high-precision crop control,
useful data collection, and automated farming techniques,
there are clearly many advantages a networked farm has to off
4.7 Humidity sensor
A humidity sensor (or hygrometer) senses, measures and
intelligences the relative humidity in the air. It therefore
measures both moisture and air temperature. Comparative
humidity is the ratio of concrete moisture in the air to the
highest amount of moisture that can be believed at that air
temperature. The warmer the air temperature is, the more
moisture it can hold. Humidity/ droplets sensors use
capacitive measurement, which relies on electrical
capacitance. Electrical capacity is the ability of two nearby
electrical conductors to create an electrical field between
them. The sensor is collected of two metal plates and covers a
non-conductive polymer film between them.
5. TESTING RESULTS
The experiment application shows that it can obtain the data
from sensors timely and sort a proper control of the
appliances, which indicates that the designed system has
realized the desired functions. Users can see the detail
information of humidity, light intensity, water level, In
addition, users can make a decision whether or not to turn on
the air pump, water pump and lamp remotely according to the
learned information.
5.1 Temperature and Humidity Results
This was chosen as its temperature range falls well into the
range required for growing food, which is 0-50°C It also has a
temperature accuracy of ±2°C. However, this can be
improved by using an offset in the SW to configure it to the
actual temperature using a mercury based thermometer. The
sensor can only get new data once every 2 seconds. This
should not be a problem though for hydroponics. The chances
of a big fluctuation in air temperature within two seconds are
not very likely.
6. CONCLUSION
After a description of soilless culture, a system to control and
monitoring hydroponics culture has been presented. For its
characteristics, the system is a strong candidate for agriculture
applications. . As one of typical applications, more and more
people realize the application of the IoT (Internet of Things)
will bring broad development to the smart life. Meanwhile,
we have an idea that the device of hydroponic can be
connected with social communication platform, which can
realize a wonderful dream that people can interact with their
hydroponic plants on line through a mobile terminal.
REFERENCES
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Production System”, Date of retrieval 28.01.2014.
[2] Blanco, A., Negro, C., Monte, C., Fuente, H., and Tijero,
J., “Overview of Two Main Payment Problems in Reusing:
Slime and Stickies-Stickies Problems in Recycling”, Progr.
Paper Recycl. (2002), 11(2), 26-37.
[3] Blidariu F, Grozea A., “Increasing the economic
efficiency and sustainability of indoor fish farming by means
of aquaponics–review”, Animal Science and Biotechnologies,
2011, 44(2): 1-8.
[4] Gabriele S, Di Giamberardino P, “A unified approach for
heterogeneity and node fault robustness in dynamic sensor
networks”, WSEAS Transactions on Communications, 2008,
7(7): 685-694.
[5] Youquan Huang, “Control system design is engaged in
pisciculture to the intellect”, Development & Innovation of
Machinery & Electrical Products, 2004, 2: 89-90.
[6] Zhai Yanni, Chen Xuedong, “Design of smart home
remote monitoring system based on embedded system”,
IEEE International Conference on Computing, Control and
Industrial Engineering (CCIE), 2011, 41-44.

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