Implementation of An Arduino Based Smart Drip Irrigation System
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Editor IJTSRDImplementation of An Arduino Based Smart Drip Irrigation System
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Editor IJTSRDInternational Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD)
Volume 5 Issue 1, November-December 2020 Available Online: www.ijtsrd.com e-ISSN: 2456 – 6470
Implementation of an Arduino-Based
Smart Drip Irrigation System
Yomi Debo-Saiye, Henry. S. Okeke, Peter. O. Mbamaluikem
Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ogun State, Nigeria
ABSTRACT How to cite this paper: Yomi Debo-Saiye |
An Arduino-based smart irrigation control system has been implemented to Henry. S. Okeke | Peter. O. Mbamaluikem
facilitate the automatic supply of adequate water from a reservoir to domestic "Implementation of an Arduino-Based
crops at all seasons for effective production. The method employed is to Smart Drip Irrigation
continuously monitor the soil moisture level to determine when water is System" Published in
needed in the soil. A pumping mechanism is used to deliver the needed International Journal
amount of water to the soil through pipes with vent holes. The work was of Trend in Scientific
grouped into power supply unit, sensing unit, control unit and pumping unit. A Research and
regulated 12 volts power supply unit was built to power the entire system and Development (ijtsrd),
soil moisture sensor was used to model the electrical resistance of the soil. The ISSN: 2456-6470, IJTSRD38157
control circuit was implemented using Arduino UNO and the pumping unit Volume-5 | Issue-1,
consists of a submersible low-noise micro water pump using a 12 V small dc- December 2020, pp.1130-1133, URL:
operated motor. The System was tested and the results obtained showed that www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd38157.pdf
this system was able to achieve total removal of human control from irrigation
of domestic crops and also optimize the use of water in the process. Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and
International Journal of Trend in Scientific
KEYWORD: Automation, Smart irrigation, Control, Pumping, Soil moisture Research and Development Journal. This
is an Open Access article distributed
under the terms of
the Creative
Commons Attribution
License (CC BY 4.0)
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
1. INTRODUCTION
Automation is currently playing a vital role in effective (Parameswaran & Sivaprasath, 2016). By this means, water
control of water for farm irrigation in agricultural sector and is given directly to the root of the plants hence preventing
this has contributed a lot in the advancement seen in the wastage and littering over unwanted places. Moreover,
increase of food productivity and farm irrigation system smart drip irrigation system has no need of drainage which
monitoring and control (Chate & Rana, 2016). Irrigation aims to prevent water logging within the fields or pot plants
provides water to nourish the plant, allowing it to blossom that may undoubtedly affect the overall productivity of the
and have a quantum yield. Most methods of irrigation system plants or crops (Swetha, Nikitha, & Pavitra, 2017).
control in the past are operated manually. These outmoded Consequently, considering the rate at which people are
methods of irrigation control are being replaced with semi- trying to utilize their immediate environment in farming
automated and automated techniques. The conventional vegetable crops especially in the urban areas, smart drip
methods of irrigation include the use of sprinklers or hose to irrigation control system becomes a necessity for economic
water the plants, digging trenches and pathways to direct the utilization of water and increase in plants or crops
water into various sections of the farm from a water source productivity (Pawar, Wani, Vadapalli, Yashshree & Suraj,
(natural or an artificial water source). These methods of 2018). Automated Irrigation system is implemented either
irrigation are not environmentally friendly as it may lead to based on soil humidity, pH worth of soil, temperature and
water logging. Also, it is detrimental to the health of some lightweight.
crops such as tomatoes, peppers and onions that are usually
grown in gardens. This is because, too much moisture on
their leaves or stems can actually lead to diseases, thereby
reducing the crop yield (Londhe & Galande, 2014).
Additionally, these conventional methods of irrigation are
quite wasteful and doesn’t make for efficient control of the
environment and use of water especially in this region where
water is a scarce commodity (Rafael & Michael, 2015). To
this end, optimal utilization of the limited available water
becomes necessary, hence the need to explore drip irrigation
system. Figure 1: the block Diagram of the ASDIS
In Drip irrigation system, water is gradually dripped towards This paper therefore, presents a smart drip irrigation system
the roots of the plants through ducts made in a narrow tube designed to cater for small areas where watering
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International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
plants/flowers at ordered interval like office premises,
structures, house gardens, parks, hotels, etc., is needed using
the moisture content as a control parameter with Arduino
microcontrollers and C- programming language.
2. DESIGN METHODOLOGY
The Arduino-based smart drip irrigation system (ASDIS) was
designed to continuously sense the moisture level of the soil
and use its status to determine when to water the soil with
the precise required amount of water and then shuts the
supply of water to the plants when the required level of soil
moisture is achieved. The reference level of soil moisture 3.4. Soil Moisture Sensor
content is adjustable for optimal determination of Conventionally, a sensor receives an analog input and
appropriate soil moisture content requirement for a converts it to a digital output. The moisture content is the
particular plant. The block diagram of the system developed physical parameter which is converted into electric signal
is shown in Figure 1. and the Soil moisture sensor measures the moisture content
of the soil (Sonali, Dinesh & Rojatkar, 2015). The output
3. SYSTEM DESIGN terminal of the sensor used are the VCC, GND and the D0
3.1. Power Supply (digital output 0). The D0 takes the digital output from the
Power supply sometimes referred to as an electrical sensor and feeds it to the microcontroller.
converter is an electrical device that supplies electrical
power to an electrical circuit and/or load. The power supply
chosen for this project is 12V. This is because the pump,
relay and Arduino UNO uses 12 V as their input power
supply (Dhakate et al., 2018). The power supply process is
shown below.
3.5. Electronic Relay
It is a type of electronic switch that is capable of opening and
closing a circuit without any mechanical movement. The
output of the relay has the NO, NC and COM terminals. The
NO and the COM terminals were used such that if the
Figure 2: Power Supply Process. operation satisfies the required condition, the NO terminal
closes which allows a flow of current thereby activating the
3.2. DC Pump pump to perform its required operation(Aslinda& Sheng,
A DC pump uses the current from the power supply to draw 2019).
fluid. It has two opening, one opening is used in drawing in
the fluid (water) while the other is used to take out the fluid 4. Flow Diagram of Proposed System
(water) draw. The DC pump used for this project is 12 V, 3.6 The operation of ASDIS follows the following flowchart:
W (Aslinda &Sheng, 2019).
3.3. Arduino UNO
It is a microcontroller board based on ATmega328P. It has
14 digital input and output pins, 6 Analog pins, a reset
button, a power jack, a USB connection. In this project, the
PIN 8 and PIN 13 were used. PIN 8 was connected to the soil
moisture sensor to extract the state of the soil moisture
information and PIN 13 was connected to the relay for its
operation and control (Parameswaran & Sivaprasath, 2016). Figure 3: the flow Diagram of ASDIS
@ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID – IJTSRD38157 | Volume – 5 | Issue – 1 | November-December 2020 Page 1131
International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
4.1. Circuit implementation
The implementation of the electronic circuitry involved physical simulation of the circuit using a breadboard to ensure proper
operation and the implementation of the circuit on a Vero board. The connection of ASDIS is as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: The Connection Circuit of ASDIS
From Figure 4, it is seen that the 240 V mains power supply is connected to the 240/12 V transformer of the power supply unit.
The channel relay board has three pins on the relay board namely normally open (NO), normally closed (NC) and customary
(C). The most popular pin is linked to NC pin once the relay is off and also to the NO pin once the relay is on. The input pin “INP”
receives logic high from Arduino UNO as well as in turn switches around the relay, thus common is linked to NO which turns
the unit on up until the relay is on. The “VCC” and “GND” pins from the relay are linked to 5 V supply and ground
correspondingly. Figure 5 shows the breadboard configuration
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The system was tested using a pot of sandy soil as a sample, the result is shown in Figure 5. The ASDIS was also tested in clay
and loamy. Figure 6 and Figure 7 shows the result of ASDIS performance on clay and loamy soil respectively.
Figure 5: Graph of ASDIS performance on sandy soil
Figure 6: Graph of ASDIS performance on clay soil
@ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID – IJTSRD38157 | Volume – 5 | Issue – 1 | November-December 2020 Page 1132
International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
Figure 7: Graph of ASDIS performance on loamy soil
In results obtained from the implementation of ASDIS on sandy, clay and loamy soil, it is observed that there is a directly
proportional relationship between the level of soil dryness and the duration in which the water flows during irrigation. The
irrigation water flows for 1.5s, 2.3s and 1.3s in sandy, clay and loamy soil when the soil dryness is 50%. While at 70% soil
dryness the duration of irrigation is 2.5s, 7s and 6s for sand, clay and loamy soil. Then finally when the soil is 100% dry the
duration of irrigation is 4.3s. 13s and 11.5s for sand, clay and loamy soil. The dryer the soil the longer the duration of irrigation.
CONCLUSION [3] Dhakate, K., Kambe, S., & Meshram, S. (2018). A
Arduino-based smart drip irrigation control system has been Review on Arduino Based Smart Irrigation System.
implemented. The prototype of the system worked according 4(2), 623–630.
to specification and quite satisfactorily. The components for
[4] Londhe, G., & Galande, S. (2014). Automated Irrigation
its implementation are readily available and affordable. The
System By Using ARM Processor. International Journal
system helps to eliminate the stress of manual irrigation
of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology, 3(2),
control while at the same time preserving the available
254-258
water supply. This system improves irrigation efficiency,
hence contributing greatly towards improving the [5] Muñoz-Carpena, R., & Dukes, M. D. (2015). Automatic
production of agricultural products. The system was tested irrigation based on soil moisture for vegetable crops.
and from the result, the performance of the system can be Nutrient Management of Vegetable and Row Crops
adjudged satisfactory. For future work on this project, we Handbook, 173.
recommend that for a large-scale implementation a more
[6] Parameswaran, G., & Sivaprasath, K. (2016). Arduino
powerful water pump can be used. Also, IoT technologies
Based Smart Drip Irrigation System Using Internet of
and cameras can be employed to enable remote control and
Things. International Journal of Engineering Science,
monitoring of the farm which will help to monitor the soil
5518(5), 5518–5521.
moisture and to control the application of water to the
https://doi.org/10.4010/2016.1348
agricultural products thereby saving water and increase
production. [7] Pawar, R., Wani, K., Vadapalli, L., Yashshree, P., &
Suraj, P. (2018). An Astute Irrigation System With
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