IoT Based Smart Plant Monitoring System

Agriculture is a vast area that needs to be studied. Technology development has brought us to the situation where there are sophisticated agricultural tools and systems. About 80% of India’s surface water is used for agriculture. Applying IoT becomes necessary to ensure proper use of water resources and high-quality output. Because optimal irrigation in fields can provide better crops, this paper presents an open-source technology-based smart system to predict irrigation requirements of a field using sensing of ground parameters like soil moisture, environmental conditions like temperature and humidity, and external parameters like obstacle detection or intruder alert using an infrared sensor. The proposed system is based on an algorithm that takes into account sensed data in addition to the previously mentioned parameters. The entire system has been created and deployed on a pilot scale, and it wirelessly collects sensor node data over the cloud using web services, while a both web and mobile based information visualization and decision support system offers real-time insights based on the analysis of the sensor. The analysis displayed clear differences between the monitored and unmonitored environment and how it affects the plant health in both short and long term. The graphs help in visualizing the differences between the environment at fixed time intervals. In the future, this system can be combined with other technologies to predict rainfall, manage pH levels, and secure the vast amounts of data created and saved over the cloud by sensors. This would improve the system’s long-term viability and make it more independent of human operation.