WSN Hardware Prototype for Irrigation Control and Multi-Parameter Plant Growth Monitoring Using IoT
Ketan Joshi1, Swapnil Jain2, Ashish Patwari3

1Ketan Joshi, Final year Student, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, VIT University, Vellore (Tamil Nadu), India.
2Swapnil Jain, Final year Student, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, VIT University, Vellore (Tamil Nadu), India.
3Ashish Patwari, Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, VIT University, Vellore (Tamil Nadu), India.
Manuscript received on 07 April 2019 | Revised Manuscript received on 20 April 2019 | Manuscript published on 30 April 2019 | PP: 1643-1650 | Volume-8 Issue-6, April 2019 | Retrieval Number: F4045048619/19©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Abstract: The agriculture sector has always been a crucial factor in India’s growth. It is utmost important to bring efficiency and precision in farming. This paper proposes the use of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to develop an automated and intelligent irrigation system. The SENSEnuts embedded platform is used to create and maintain the WSN. The proposed system uses soil moisture data from different nodes which are deployed at various locations in the crop field. The nodes form a WSN. Each node (consisting of NXP JN5168, a 32-bit microcontroller) collects the data regarding the soil moisture and transmits it to the coordinating station (through Zigbee) which then takes the decision on whether or not to activate the sprinkler/motor pump. The decision is communicated to the corresponding node for further action. This enables precise watering only in the dry portion of the cultivation field and reduces the wastage of water or overwatering other moist areas. Apart from the soil moisture data, readings from the temperature, light, and humidity sensors are also transmitted to the coordinator. Such data is useful for indoor, underground or nursery crop monitoring. A working prototype of the proposed WSN is made and the functionality is verified. The data from various sensors is uploaded to the Thing Speak Internet of Things (IoT) platform for remote monitoring and further data analytics.
Keyword: Internet of Things (IoT), SENSEnuts, Soil Moisture, Thing Speak, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), Zigbee.
Scope of the Article: IoT