AN IoT BASED REAL-TIME MICROCLIMATE MONITORING AND CONTROLLING SYSTEM FOR GREENHOUSE

Abstract

In recent years, the agricultural industry has witnessed a significant transformation due to the advent of Internet of Things (IoT) technology. IoT has revolutionized the agriculture with real-time monitoring and controlling systems. Though, greenhouse provides a controlled environment for cultivating crops, maintaining optimal microclimatic conditions inside the greenhouse in real-time is crucial for maximizing yield and quality of produce. Hence, a study was conducted to develop a web enabled microcontroller embedded system with sensors and IoT technology for greenhouse, to monitor and control the various microclimate parameters in real-time. The study was conducted in a naturally ventilated polyhouse. The web enabled system consists of microcontroller, temperature & humidity sensor, light sensor and actuators (exhaust fans and foggers). The developed system was evaluated with and without crop inside polyhouse. The developed system was able to monitor and control the microclimate parameters in real-time, both in manual and automatic mode through IoT platform anywhere in the world. It was found that, whenever the temperature inside the polyhouse exceeded 28°C, the controller switched ‘ON’ the exhaust fans and reduced the temperature and turned ‘OFF’ when the temperature reached below 25°C. It was noticed that the actuator, exhaust fan alone was not able to reduce the temperature up to the desired level. Hence, fogger was also connected to the system to maintain temperature as well as relative humidity (RH). It was found that when the temperature exceeded 35°C, fogger automatically switched ‘ON’ and switched ‘OFF’ when the temperature reached below 32°C. The average temperature, RH and light intensity during the test period (09/01/2023 to 15/01/2023) without crop was found 34°C, 64.33% and 32,000 lx respectively, whereas the same during the crop growing period (20/01/2023 to 21/05/2023) was found to be 37°C, 59.22% and 35,000 lx respectively. A reduction in temperature of 3°C and increase in RH of 4% was able to achieve inside the polyhouse throughout the experiment. Monitoring and controlling was also made possible using a GSM module where manual and automatic control was achieved using an Android mobile phone.

Besides the continuous real-time data monitoring, it showed past one hour, one day, seven days and 15 days interval temperature, RH and light data as graphical insights. The system was able to monitor and control both in manual and automatic mode using GSM from different locations through SMS. Temperature, RH and light intensity inside and outside the polyhouse were compared with and without crop after the installation of IoT based system inside the polyhouse. Usually, temperature inside the polyhouse is higher and RH is less compared to outside of polyhouse. After the installation of IoT based automation system, it was found that there was lower temperature and higher RH inside the polyhouse than outside. The observations on growth and yield parameters of the crop were also found satisfactory. Crop yield of 11 t/ha, which is approximate to the average yield of bhindi for ‘Anjitha’ variety was obtained.