IoT-Based Smart Aquaponics System Using Arduino Uno

As global population continues to rise, several challenges among which are climate variation, soil degradation and water scarcity continue to impact agricultural productivity. These challenges bring rise to lack of access to water sources for different activities such as vegetable watering with fish cultivation, thereby impacting food security negatively. The solution to the latter can be provided through aquaponics farming. This paper proposes an aquaponics system that saves water through circulation and utilization of ammonia released by fish to produce minerals such as nitrites and nitrates for plants in an aquarium tank. The system uses sensors, actuators, and microcontrollers to monitor and control water quality. The sensors are used to collect data and the data are transmitted with the aid of a Wi-Fi module to an IoT cloud platform called Thingspeak and actuators are applied to resolve the abnormalities detected by the sensor. The experimental results show that the quality and water circulation were well preserved. These are presented in this paper through linear regression analysis and R-squared plots that showed strong relationship between days and plant height as well as fish weights. The system reduces water wastage and increases aquaponics yield.

I. Introduction

Studies have shown that a continual increase in human population globally seems unavoidable as the birthrate across the different continents of the world continues to rise [1].