Using IoT in Smart Agriculture: Study about Practical Realizations and Testing in a Real Environment

The Smart Agriculture concept has emerged as a solution to provide a decision support system for farm management. Although extensive research has been done in this field, many solutions involve substantial costs and are not feasible for small farms. The development of communication technologies and the accessibility of internet connections facilitate the production of cheap IoT nodes for agriculture. This paper presents a method for creating cheap IoT sensors that can be realized in a hobby manner, such that the data storage and processing steps do not involve supplementary costs. We checked the feasibility and viability of the proposed solution in practice by making the sensors and exposing them to real environmental operating conditions during a period of 6 months. We identified several problems related to the operation of the IoT nodes, tested multiple solutions and constructed a feasible system for data collection and storage for smart agriculture.