An Automated Greenhouse Monitoring and Controlling System using Sensors and Solar Power

In traditional farming, farmer has to visit the farming land regularly to measure the various environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, light intensity and soil moisture to cultivate the right crops at right time in right soil. Even though this traditional farming system have been used for years, the system is hectic and fail to prove high productivity rate as farmer usually unable to measure all the parameter accurately [1]. In contrast, greenhouse farming is a system where farmer cultivate crops in ecosystem environments where all environmental parameters are adjusted based on crops types. Automation in greenhouse is a method where farmer is able to monitor and control the greenhouse environment automatically from anywhere in the world any time [3]. In this paper, authors proposed an automated greenhouse monitoring and controlling system that incorporate various sensors such as temperature sensor, humidity sensor, light sensor and soil moisture sensor to collect possible environmental parameters of greenhouse as well as integrate Arduino Uno R3 (to store and process data), GSM module (to send the measured value of the various parameters to the user cell phone via SMS to ensure efficient growth of plants), solar power system with rechargeable battery (to make sure continuous power supply to the greenhouse system). Moreover, Internet of Things (IoT) is used to store data to a database and process the collected data and finally send the information to the android apps which has been developed for monitoring and controlling of greenhouse by the user. Moreover, the authors compared the proposed greenhouse model with some recent works and found the proposed system cost effective, efficient and effective by analyzing major environmental parameters. Finally, authors analyze the cost associated with the deployment of proposed greenhouse model which depict quite affordable for farmers and worth deploying.