International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology

© 2017 IJSRCSEIT | Volume 2 | Issue 3 | ISSN : 2456-3307

Arduino Based Automatic Irrigation System Using IoT

Pavankumar Naik, Arun Kumbi, Vishwanath Hiregoudar, Chaitra N K , Pavitra H K , Sushma B S,
Sushmita J H , Praveen Kuntanahal
Department of computer Science and Engineering, VTU, Karnataka, India

ABSTRACT
India is mainly an agricultural country. Agriculture is the most important occupation for the most of the Indian
families. It plays vital role in the development of agricultural country. In India, agriculture contributes about 16% of
total GDP and 10% of total exports. Water is main resource for Agriculture. Irrigation is one method to supply water
but in some cases, there will be lot of water wastage. Therefore, in this regard to save water and time we have
proposed project titled Arduino based automatic irrigation system using IoT. In this proposed system, we are using
various sensors like temperature, humidity, soil moisture sensors that sense the various parameters of the soil. In
addition, based on soil moisture value land is automatically irrigated by ON/OFF of the motor. These sensed
parameters and motor status will be displayed on user android application.
Keywords: Internet of things(IoT), Arduino, Temperature sensor, Soil moisture sensor, And Humidity sensor.

I. INTRODUCTION
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technology where in a
Agriculture is the backbone of Indian Economy. In mobile device can be used to monitor the function of a
today’s world, as we see rapid growth in global device. The Internet of Things (IoT) is concerned with
population, agriculture becomes more important to interconnecting communicating objects that are
meet the needs of the human race. However, agriculture installed at different locations that are possibly distant
requires irrigation and with every year we have more from each other. Internet of Things (IoT) is a type of
water consumption than rainfall, it becomes critical for network technology, which senses the information from
growers to find ways to conserve water while still different sensors and make anything to join the Internet
achieving the highest yield. But in the present era, the to exchange information.
farmers have been using irrigation technique through
the manual control in which they irrigate the land at the It can also be used to modify the status of the device.
regular interval. According to statistics, agriculture The central processing unit will also include
uses 85% of available freshwater resources worldwide, communication device to receive data from the sensors
and this percentage will continue to be dominant in and to be relayed to the user’s device. This will be done
water consumption because of population growth and using a higher communication device such as a Wi-Fi
increased food demand. There is an urgent need to module. The data processed by the central module is
create strategies based on science and technology for converted to meaningful data and relayed to the user.
sustainable use of water, including technical, The user can view the data with the help of a handheld
agronomic, managerial and institutional improvements. device such as a mobile phone or a tablet. Nowadays
Agricultural irrigation based on Internet technology is water scarcity is a big concern for farming. This project
based on crop water requirement rules. By using helps the farmers to irrigate the farmland in an efficient
Internet technology and sensor network technology we manner with automated irrigation system based on soil
can control water wastage and to maximize the moisture.
scientific technologies in irrigation methods. Hence it
can greatly improve the utilization of water and can The proposed system has been designed to overcome
increase water productivity. the unnecessary water flow into the agricultural lands.

CSEIT1723272 | Received : 09 June 2017 | Accepted : 25 June 2017 | May-June-2017 [(2)3: 881-886] 881
Temperature, moisture and humidity readings are soil moisture value and temperature value which
continuously monitored by using temperature, moisture displayed on the farmer mobile application.[6]
and humidity sensor and send these values to the
assigned IP address. Android application continuously ―Irrigation Control System Using Android and GSM
collects the data from that assigned IP address. Once for Efficient Use of Water and Power‖ this system
the soil moisture values are exceeded the particular made use of GSM to control the system which may
limit then the relay, which is connected to the aurdino cost more so to overcome that proposed system used
microcontroller controls the motor. The android arduino yun board which already consist of in build
application is a simple menu driven application, with 4 wifi module[13]
options. This includes motor status , moisture ,
temperature and humidity values. The motor status ―Microcontroller based Controlled Irrigation System
indicates the current status of the pump. for Plantation‖ In this paper old generation with lesser
memory microcontroller is used to control the system
II. LITERATURE SURVEY but proposed system made use of arduino yun board
which is user friendly and it helps to dump the
Primary investigation is carried out under the following programs easily.[15]
stages, such as Understanding the existing approaches,
Understanding the requirements, Developing an ―A wireless application of drip irrigation automation
abstract for the system. supported by soil moisture sensors‖ in this paper
irrigation is carried out using soil moisture values but
In this paper, soil moisture sensor, temperature and extend to this proposed system displays temperature
humidity sensors placed in root zone of plant and and humidity values.[18]
transmit data to android application. Threshold value of
soil moisture sensor that was programmed into a By referring all above papers it is found that no such
microcontroller to control water quantity. Temperature, systems are existed with all integrated features but
humidity and soil moisture values are displayed on the proposed system includes these all features such as
android application. displaying temperature, humidity and soil moisture
values and also automatic switching on and off of
This paper on "Automatic Irrigation System on Sensing motor by considering soil moisture values.
Soil Moisture Content" is intended to create an
automated irrigation mechanism which turns the III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
pumping motor ON and OFF on detecting the
dampness content of the earth. In this paper only soil This below figure 3.1 is a overall block diagram of
moisture value is considered but proposed project arduino based automatic irrigation system which
provided extension to this existed project by adding consist of three sensors which are connected to
temperature and humidity values. [2] controller and sensed values from these sensors are
send to the mobile application .
―Remote Monitoring in Agricultural Greenhouse Using
Wireless Sensor and Short Message Service (SMS).In
this paper they are sending data via sms but proposed
system sends the values to mobile application.[5]

This proposed paper is arduino based remote irrigation

system developed for the agricultural plantation, which
is placed at the remote location and required water
provides for plantation when the humidity of the soil
goes below the set-point value. But in this we did not
aware about the soil moisture level so to overcome this Figure 1: Block Diagram of Automatic Irrigation
drawback proposed system included with extra feature System

Volume 2 | Issue 3 | May-June-2017 | www.ijsrcseit.com 882

Figure 1 shows the block diagram of smart irrigation
system with IoT. Farmers start to utilize various
monitoring and controlled system in order to increase
the yield with help of automation of an agricultural
parameters like temperature, humidity and soil
moisture are monitored and control the system which
can help the farmers to improve the yield.

This proposed work includes an embedded system for

automatic control of irrigation. This project has
wireless sensor network for real-time sensing of an
irrigation system. This system provides uniform and Figure 2: Flowchart of Temperature/Humidity Sensor
required level of water for the agricultural farm and it
avoids water wastage. When the moisture level in the
The DHT11 is a basic, digital temperature and
soil reaches below threshold value then system
humidity sensor. It uses a capacitive humidity sensor
automatically switch ON the motor. When the water
and a thermistor to measure the surrounding air, and
level reaches normal level the motor automatically
spits out a digital signal on the data pin(no analog pins
switch OFF. The sensed parameters and current status
needed).It is simple to use, but requires careful timing
of the motor will be displayed on user’s android
to grab data. Humidity sensors are used for measuring
application.
moisture content in the atmosphere. Then current
temperature, humidity values are send to the
OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
microcontroller, those values will display in the users
android app.
The main objective of this project is to provide an
automatic irrigation system thereby saving time, money
& power of the farmer. The traditional farm-land SOIL MOISTURE SENSOR
irrigation techniques require manual intervention. With
the automated technology of irrigation the human This below figure 3 shows the procedure of displaying
intervention can be minimized. soil moisture value.

IV. DESIGN

Design of a system explains temperature, humidity and

soil moisture values using flow chart.

A. Flow Chart

A flowchart is a graphic representation of a logic

sequence, work or manufacturing process,
organization chart, or similar formalized structure.
The flowchart is a means to visually present the
flow of data through an information processing
systems.

TEMPERATURE AND HUMIDITY SENSOR

This below figure 2 shows the sensed values of

temperature and humidity. Figure 3: Flow chart of Soil moisture sensor

Volume 2 | Issue 3 | May-June-2017 | www.ijsrcseit.com 883

Soil moisture sensors measure the water content in soil. readable text to transmit data objects consisting
Moisture in the soil is an important component in the of attribute–value pairs and array data types (or any
atmospheric water cycle.Sensor module outputs a high other serializable value). It is a very common data
level of resistance when the soil moisture is low. It has format used for asynchronous browser/server
both digital and analog outputs. Digital output is simple communication, including as a replacement for XML in
to use, but it is not as accurate as analog output based some AJAX-style systems. JSON is a language-
on moisture level motor gets turn on/off automatically. independent data format. It was derived
from JavaScript, but as of 2017 many programming
V. IMPLEMENTATION languages include code to generate and parse JSON-
format data. The official Internet media type for JSON
The proposed agricultural system is designed to solve is application/json . JSON filenames use the
to find an optimal solution to the water crisis. The extension .json .
design implements IoT technology using an android
device, a main controlling unit (MCU), sensors to B. PROTOTYPE
measure various parameters and a water pump, which
will be used to supply water to the farm.

A.PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES

This programming technique includes explanation

about thingspeak web server and it uses JSON format
to convert stored data into human readable form.

THINGSPEAK
According to its developers, "ThingSpeak is an open
source Internet of Things (IoT) application and API to
store and retrieve data from things using the HTTP
protocol over the Internet or via a Local Area Network.
ThingSpeak enables the creation of sensor logging Figure 4: Prototype of Automatic Irrigation System
applications, location tracking applications, and a
social network of things with status updates". Figure 4 shows the prototype of automatic irrigation
ThingSpeak was originally launched by ioBridge in system. The microcontroller arduino is connected to
2010 as a service in support of IoT applications. temperature sensor, soil moisture sensor, humidity
ThingSpeak has integrated support from the numerical sensor, relay and motor. These sensors sense the
computing software Matlab from Math various parameter of the soil, motor is used to provide
works. Allowing ThingSpeak users to analyze and water to the land. And relay is used control the motor.
visualize uploaded data using Matlab without requiring Although a conclusion may review the main points of
the purchase of a Matlab license from Math works.
ThingSpeak has a close relationship with Math works. VI. OUTCOME RESULTS
In fact, all of the ThingSpeak documentation is
incorporated into the Math works' Matlab
documentation site and even enabling registered Math
works user accounts as valid login credentials on the
ThingSpeak website. The terms of service and privacy
policy of ThingSpeak.com are between the agreeing
user and Math works.
JSON FORMAT
In computing, JavaScript Object Notation or JSON is
an open standard file format that uses human-

Volume 2 | Issue 3 | May-June-2017 | www.ijsrcseit.com 884

 analyzing and researching the network hierarchy
features, functionality and the corresponding software
architecture of precision agriculture water irrigation
systems, actually applying the internet of things to the
highly effective and safe agricultural production has a
significant impact on ensuring the efficient use of water
resources as well as ensuring the efficiency and
stability of the agricultural production.

With more advancement in the field of IoT expected in

the coming years, these systems can be more efficient,
much faster and less costlier. In the Future, this system
can be made as an intelligent system, where in the
system predicts user actions, rainfall pattern, time to
harvest and many more features which will make the
system independent of human operation.

VIII. REFERENCES

Figure 5 : Home page [1] Anurag D, Siuli Roy and

SomprakashBandyopadhyay, ―Agro-Sense:
Precision Agriculture using Sensor-based
Wireless Mesh Networks‖, ITU-T ―Innovation in
NGN‖, Kaleidoscope Conference, Geneva 12-13
May 2008.
[2] C. Arun, K. Lakshmi Sudha ―Agricultural
Management using Wireless Sensor Networks –
A Survey‖2nd International Conference on
Environment Science and Biotechnology
IPCBEE vol.48 (2012) © (2012) IACSIT Press,
Singapore 2012.
[3] Bogena H R, Huisman J A, OberdÊrster C, etal.
Evaluation of a low cost soil water content sensor
for wireless network applications [J].Journal of
Hydrology, 2007.
[4] R.Hussain, J.Sehgal, A.Gangwar, M.Riyag―
Control of irrigation automatically by using
wireless sensor network‖ International journal of
Figure 6: Sensed values displayed on user android
soft computing and engineering, vol.3, issue 1,
application march 2013.
[5] Izzatdin Abdul Aziz, MohdHilmiHasan, Mohd
Jimmy Ismail, MazlinaMehat,
VII. CONCLUSION
NazleeniSamihaHaron, ―Remote Monitoring in
Agricultural Greenhouse Using Wireless Sensor
The application of agriculture networking technology is
and Short Message Service (SMS)‖, 2008.
need of the modern agricultural development, but also
[6] Jeonghwan Hwang, Changsun Shin, and Hyun
an important symbol of the future level of agricultural
Yoe ―Study on an Agricultural Environment
development; it will be the future direction of
Monitoring Server System using Wireless Sensor
agricultural development. After building the
Networks‖, 2010.
agricultural water irrigation system hardware and

Volume 2 | Issue 3 | May-June-2017 | www.ijsrcseit.com 885

[7] Ning Wang, Naiqian Zhang, Maohua Wang, [16] Yunseop (James) Kim, Member, IEEE, Robert
―Wireless sensors in agriculture and food G. Evans, andWilliam M. Iversen, ―Remote
industry—Recent development and future Sensing and Control of an Irrigation System
perspective‖, published in Computers and Using a Distributed Wireless Sensor Network‖,
Electronics in Agriculture 2006. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
[8] Pepper Agro, ―M-Drip Kit‖ Internet: INSTRUMENTATION AND
www.pepperagro.i/mdripkitmanual.htmlSiuli MEASUREMENT, Volume 57, Number 7,
Roy, SomprakashBandyopadhyay, ―A Test-bed JULY 2008.
on Real-time Monitoring of Agricultural [17] Venkata Naga RohitGunturi, ―Micro Controller
Parameters using Wireless Sensor Networks for Based Automatic Plant Irrigation System‖,
Precision Agriculture‖ 2007. International Journal of Advancements in
[9] Yiming Zhou, Xianglong Yang, Liren Wang, Research & Technology, Volume 2, Issue4,
Yibin Ying, A wireless design of low-cost April-2013.
irrigation system using ZigBee technology, [18] MahirDursun and SemihOzden, ―A wireless
International Conference on Networks Security, application of drip irrigation automation
Wireless Communications and Trusted supported by soil moisture sensors‖, Scientific
Computing , IEEE 2009. Research and Essays, Volume 6(7), pp. 1573-
[10] Zhang xihai, Zhang changli Fang junlong. Smart 1582, 4 April, 2011.
Sensor Nodes for Wireless Soil Temperature [19] Joseph Bradley, Joel Barbier, Doug Handler:
Monitoring Systems in Precision Agriculture Available online at :
2009. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/inno
[11] R.Suresh, S.Gopinath, K.Govindaraju, T.Devika, v/IoE_Economy.pdf consulted on February
N.SuthanthiraVanitha, ―GSM based Automated 2014.
Irrigation Control using Raingun Irrigation [20] Z. Shelby, Ed, S. Chakrabarti, E. Nordmark and
System‖, International Journal of Advanced C. Bormann: "RFC 6775 - Neighbor Discovery
Research in Computer and Communication Optimization forIPv6 over Low-Power Wireless
Engineering Vol. 3, Issue 2, February 2014. Personal Area Networks (6LoWPANs)",
[12] Pavithra D.S, M. S .Srinath, ―GSM based November 2012[online], Available at:
Automatic Irrigation Control System for Efficient http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6775 [consulted on
Use of Resources and Crop Planning by Using an February 2014]. November 2012.
Android Mobile‖, IOSR Journal of Mechanical
and Civil Engineering (IOSR-JMCE) Vol 11,
Issue I, Jul-Aug 2014, pp 49-55.
[13] LaxmiShabadi, NandiniPatil, Nikita. M, Shruti. J,
Smitha. P&Swati. C, and Software Engineering,
Volume4, Issue 7, July 2014. ―Irrigation Control
System Using Android and GSM for Efficient
Use of Water and Power‖,International Journal of
Advanced Research in Computer Science
[14] Shiraz Pasha B.R., Dr. B Yogesha,
―Microcontroller Based Automated Irrigation
System‖, The International Journal Of
Engineering And Science (IJES), Volume3, Issue
7, pp 06-09, June2014.
[15] S. R. Kumbhar, Arjun P. Ghatule,
―Microcontroller based Controlled Irrigation
System for Plantation‖, Proceedings of the
International MultiConference of Engineers and
Computer Scientists 2013VolumeII, March 2013.

Volume 2 | Issue 3 | May-June-2017 | www.ijsrcseit.com 886