Remote Agriculture Solution
Blog Links:
#02: Components and Design Structure
#04: Setting up Arduino Nano 33 IOT
#08: Linking Everything to Arduino Nano 33 IOT
#09: Time to See the Work in Action
Introduction
Agriculture has been increasingly getting expensive, time consuming and labour intensive. Through this project, I aim to help farmers manage their crops more easily and remotely. This will allow farmers to increase production by using automated means and in turn reduce expenses.
Agricultural expenses are increasing at a tremendous rate. So are the risks posed by farmers handling hazardous pesticides. By the use of IOT, we can allow farmers to regularly spray pesticides in the farms even in adverse weather and keep them safe from serious health hazards.
Problems faced by farmers
Increasing expenditure on labour and agricultural inputs
Unable to diversify due to lack of time
Health risks in handling fertilisers and pesticides
Wastage of water and other agricultural inputs due to lack of systems to measure required inputs
Problems that this project will be aim to solve:
Automatic irrigation of crops/plants based on humidity and temperature of the soil.
Automatic spraying of pesticides on plants according to the requirement.
Automatically cover the whole field
Detect when pesticide/water level is insufficient in the container and alert the farmer so that crops are taken care of properly.
Monitor the plant surroundings like sunlight, temperature, humidity etc. to help the farmer collect information and improve cropping patterns.
In turn this will contribute in reducing costs by both reducing labour requirements and the amount of inputs used. By using only required amount of water by making use of sensors we can also contribute towards saving water. Importantly, farmers will not suffer from pesticide related diseases. Additionally, the farmers may be able to diversify due to the time saved and reduced expenditure.
Project Plan:
The project will comprise of three parts
Pest control system
Irrigation system
Monitoring system
I plan to make an automatic robot that can move around the field using an ultrasonic sensor and L293D motor controller IC. Which will have the following features:
Pest control system:
I have planned to make a pesticide spraying mechanism buying/creating a peristaltic motor to pump the pesticide from the container and spray it onto the crops. This process will be initiated using Arduino Nano 33 IOT microcontroller. This will also alert the farmer about the level of pesticide in the container and send a notification when it falls below a prescribed level. This will be done using an ultrasonic sensor.
Irrigation system:
I have planned to use a similar mechanism as described above for the irrigation system. Additionally, to make this process fully automatic, I will use a soil sensor to detect the moisture and temperature of the soil. Whenever, the humidity of the soil falls below a threshold, the water pump will start watering the crop.
Monitoring system:
Using the Arduino Nano 33 IOT, I will be able to send real time farm data to the farmer. So, I plan to send the data of the soil sensor, temperature sensor and humidity sensor (for the surrounding). Additionally, I will use an LDR to measure the luminescence of sunlight and share the same using IOT to the farmer. This will allow the farmer to keep track of the crops remotely and evaluate data over seasons to understand the effect of changes applied by the farmer in cropping pattern and their impact. This will allow the farmer to adopt strategies that will enable him/her to increase crop yield with minimum input requirements.
Connect with Me:
Github - aaryan2134