Journal of Information Technology and Digital World (2019)

Vol.01/ No. 01
Pages: 38-47
https://www.irojournals.com/itdw/
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36548/jitdw.2019.1.005

AUTOMATION USING IOT IN GREENHOUSE ENVIRONMENT

Dr. Jennifer S. Raj,

J. Vijitha Ananthi,
Research Analyst, EJesra, India.
Email: [email protected]

Abstract: Green house is generally a building of small or large structures. The structure of the green house is made of walls and
the translucent roof, with the capability of maintaining the planned climatic condition. It ensures the growth of plants that requires
a specified level of soil moisture, sunlight, humidity and temperature. The green house systems available are human monitored
systems that entail the continuous human visit causing distress to the worker and also decrease in the yield if the temperature and
the humidity are not properly and regularly maintained. This paves way for the concept of the green house automation. The green
house automation formed by the incorporation of the Internet of things and the embedded system addresses the problem faced in
the green house and provides with the automated controlling and monitoring of the green house environment replacing the
undeviating administration of the farmers. This paper also proposes the automation using internet of things in green house
environment by using the Netduino 3 and employing the sensors for the sensing the moisture, temperature, sunlight and humidity,
to enhance the production rate and minimize the discomfort caused to the farmers.

Keywords: Green House, Automation, Internet of Things, Netduino 3, Atmospheric sensors

1. INTRODUCTION

Due to the unexpected climatic changes that occur due to the global warming, human causes and many other natural
causes such as the earth tilt, ocean currents etc. Growth of the seasonal crops such as the millets, beans, cotton and
sugar cane gets affected causing a decrease in the production rate of those crops. So in order to maintain a proper
climatic condition by perfectly controlling the temperature humidity, soil moisture and the luminous entailed by the
crops the green house is preferred in most places.

Green house structured with transparent sheets all over maintains perfect climatic conditions under the human
monitoring. It requires a constant and periodic human monitoring to control the temperature, light intensity, soil
moisture and the humidity to retain the required climatic condition that is entailed for the crop growth. It serves as
protection against the climatic changes to extend the season for the growing the crops.

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ISSN: 2582-418X (online)
Journal of Information Technology and Digital World (2019)
Vol.01/ No. 01
Pages: 38-47
https://www.irojournals.com/itdw/
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36548/jitdw.2019.1.005

Despite the green house being very beneficial for the farmers as it increase the yield of the crops and production rate;
it causes a discomfort for the farmers as they have to keep a periodic check on the green house by making regular
visits and failure to maintain the perfect climatic conditions will result in the destruction of the crops and the
production rate. The fig.1 below shows the general green-house for growing crops under human surveillance.

Fig.1 Structure of Green House

But the emergence of the sensors and the internet of things have changed the situation of the green-house. It has bought
in the automation into the controlling and the surveillance of green-house by employing the sensors, internet of things
and the embedded technology.

The paper puts forward the structure of the green house embedded with the internet of things, sensors and the Netduino
3 Wi-Fi to enable an automated monitoring and controlling in the green house.

The remaining of the paper is organized with the related works in the section 2. Proposed work in section 3, Results
and Discussion in section. 4. and conclusion in section 5.

2. RELATED WORKS

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Journal of Information Technology and Digital World (2019)
Vol.01/ No. 01
Pages: 38-47
https://www.irojournals.com/itdw/
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36548/jitdw.2019.1.005

The Internet of things have become the hear t and soul for a wide range of applications by enabling a connectivity
between the all the tangible things that are enabled with internet connection. The author Sreekantha et al [1], presents
the literature survey on the internet of things for the online crop monitoring. He describes that the IOT enables an
effective and an easy production of the crop, increasing the profits of the farmers. The Sensors also play a vital role
in the monitoring of the crop growth by gathering information about the growth and sending them to the farmer’s
mobile devices for implementing the corrective measures. Suma, et al [2] the author strives to enhance the interest
towards the agriculture by proposing an IOT based smart agriculture by providing a “remote control monitoring for
sensing of the moisture, temperature, intruder, security and the leaf wetness using the GPS module” Yoon et al [3] the
paper is about the farm system that is made smart by employing the low power blue tooth and communication module
of low power wide area network. The controlling and the monitoring functions for the farm system is done by
employing the MQ telemetry Transport” causing a progress in the agricultural IOT development. Vatari, et al [4], the
author initiates a green-house environment combining the IOT and the Cloud, to control the system and enable the
information to be stored respectively. Linlin et al [5], the implementation of the intelligent green-house environment
is developed by the author using the internet of things, sensor and the infrared cameras Vimal et al [6], the author
utilizes the Arduino based frame work for the automated controlling and the monitoring of the environmental changes
in a green-house Ferrández et al [7], paves way for a ubiquitous monitoring of Zhao et al [8], the author formulates
the study on the “IOT, control networks and the information networks and the integration” in order to proffer remote
monitoring for the agriculture using the internet and the wireless communication. Muthupavithran et al [9], proposes
the monitoring of the green-house using the internet of things. Mekala et al [10], presents the survey on the smart
agriculture using the internet of things. Shukla et al [11], the author use the “microcontroller board, IOT and the
Cloud server to develop an intelligent green-house to control as well as monitor the cloud. Talavera et al [12] the
systematic literature review on the application of the internet of things in the agricultural industry and the environment
is discussed in the paper along with the report of the preparation, conveyance and the outcomes.

3. PROPOSED WORK

To overcome the draw backs in the existing system, the proffered system uses the sensors to monitor the temperature,
humidity, moisture and the light, the sensors are connected to the input pins of the Netduino and the output from the
Netduino is given to the motors and the relays to regulate the flow of the climatic condition. Based on the threshold
value set for the temperature, moisture, humidity and the light the Netduino operates the driver circuit to regulate the
flow of the of the air and the temperature. The Wi-Fi connectivity in the Cloud enables to transmit the information
gathered from the sensors to the cloud and gets stored in the cloud data base. The information stored in the cloud is
regularly transmitted to the farmer’s mobile device over the internet to initiate a remote monitoring. This enables to
elude the human to machine interaction and provides a machine to machine interaction.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.36548/jitdw.2019.1.005

Fig .2 Proposed Structure

The proffered internet of things platform provides an automated form of green- house environment enabling a
significant connections among the people and the tangible things around, it allows a real time information gathering,
analysis, processing and meditation employing the social networking that are connected through an application
interface that is open source to aid variety of platforms. The system put forward for providing the automated
controlling and monitoring gathers and conveys the sensor information using the Google cloud IOT core, to have an
anywhere and a anytime access of the information that are sensed in the green house, this would enable production
rate increase and be beneficial for the farmers reducing the weariness in them.

3.1. HARDWARE USED

3.1.1. NETDUINO 3 Wi-Fi

The Netduino is open source hardware, and ensures the execution of the application that was constructed with the Dot
Net frame work. The Netduino is capable of and are utilized in constructing any connected thing. It resembles the
conception of the Arduino. The Netduino is more effective and provides a robust hardware. The Netduino is the vital
core of our this project, it is a single board, built with the Cortex-M4 @168Mhz, flash memory of 1408 KB, RAM of

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.36548/jitdw.2019.1.005

164+ KB , inbuilt Wi-Fi, Bluetooth connectivity and has network connectivity with 802.11b/g/n with SSL /TLS 1.2
support. It is powered with the built in USB adapter and accepts input voltage of 5V to 12V. The steps to run the
Netduino initiates with the installation of the Netduino on the SD card Slot, the python programming is done on the
windows platform. The programming of the Netduino and the application programming are run simultaneously using
the XMING .

Fig .3 Netduino 3 Wi-Fi

3.1.2. Soil moisture sensor

The automated system utilizes the YL69 moisture sensor to sense the moisture in the soil. The soils moisture sensor
is powered by the operating voltage of 3.3v to 5v and current of 35mA. The tow electrodes found in the moisturizer
are placed in contact with the soil. Initially when it is placed into the soil the voltage fluctuates, an increase in the
voltage is found if the soil moisture is less and voltage decrease with the increase in the soil moisture. [4, 5, 6, 9]

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Vol.01/ No. 01
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.36548/jitdw.2019.1.005

Fig. 4 Moisture Sensor

3.1.3. Humidity and temperature sensor

Fig.5 Temperature and Humidity Sensor (DTH11)

It is a digital sensor to monitor and gather information about the temperature and humidity that is prevailing in the
green house. It is operated in the voltages of the 3 to 5 volts with the maximum current of 2.5mA. Range for the
temperature is fixed to zero degree to fifty degree and the humidity percentage is set in between 20 to 80 percentages.
The thermistor present inside engages a negative temperature coefficient and component to sense the humidity to
identify the moisture content in the air.

3.1.4. Light sensor

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This enables an incorporated control of the green house environments; GL5528 detects the light intensity of the
environment. It is powered by the input voltage of 5V. The output voltage of the light sensor changes based on the
light intensity whenever the light intensity increases the voltages sensed at the output is very high and when the
intensity of the light decreases the output voltage decreases.

Fig.6 Light Sensor

Along with the sensors the motor driver circuit IC L293D along with the coolers and the sliding windows are set to
assist the motor to run and retain the temperature for regulating the air flow within the green house.

4. Results and Discussion

The hard ware setup of the proffered system consisting of the Netduino 3 Wi-Fi, temperature sensor, moisture sensor
humidity senor, motors used along with the coolers and the sliding window is given below in Fig.7

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Fig .7 Hardware Setup

The fig.8 below is the snapshot of the result visualized by employing the automated greenhouse system that is equipped
with the coolers, sliding windows and the sensors. The fig.9 below is the SMS Alerts transmitted to the user on regular
intervals.

Fig .8 Results Acquired Fig.9 SMS Alert

5. CONCLUSION

The automated system for the green house management (control and monitoring) in the paper is done by employing
the sensors of temperature, moisture, humidity and light for the monitoring of the environmental changes and the
Netduino to regulate the driver circuits to maintain the normal climatic conditions within the green house. The remote
monitoring and the control of the green house is enabled in the system using the IOT platform and the cloud services
that store the information and sends the regular SMS alters to the farmer about the room conditions. The Wi-Fi
connectivity in built in the Netduino enables an easy information transfer to the cloud. The Google Cloud IOT core
used in the system enables the conveyance of the information gathered about the green house to the farmers. The

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proffered system using the Netduino ensures production increase and a stress reduction for the farmers providing a
capable automated system for green house management with a SMS alters to the users.

References

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ISSN: 2582-418X (online)
Journal of Information Technology and Digital World (2019)
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Pages: 38-47
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.36548/jitdw.2019.1.005

[11] Shukla, Ami J., Mr Viraj Panchal, and Mr Sahil Patel. "Intelligent Greenhouse Design based on Internet of Things
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