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• Hardware Tools for System
Building a monitoring system requires a set of
hardware tools that measure the values of the environmental
conditions surrounding the plant includes:
1- DHT22 (Digital Humidity and Temperature) is a sensor
for measuring the temperature and humidity of the
atmosphere surrounding the plant. It was characterized by
its accuracy, low cost, and ease of reading its digital
signal by the controller. Its temperature reading ranges
between (-40-80°C) and its humidity reading between (0-
100%). Use this sensor because the temperature and
humidity of the air are among the most critical factors that
affect the photosynthesis process.
2- Analog soil moisture sensor, which measures the
percentage of water available in the soil for automatic
irrigation. To improve the water use of crops and reduce
the appearance of root rot diseases due to the high
humidity of the roots.
3- MQ 135 sensor to measure the percentage of CO2 gas in
the air surrounding the plant for its necessity in the
process of photosynthesis and plant growth. Its ratio in
the air ranges (0-3000 ppm) and the useful ratio of the
plant is between (300-1800 ppm).
4- TDS (Total Dissolved Solid) analog sensor to measure
water quality for irrigating crops, as it measures the
percentage of dissolved solids in water in PPM unit,
where its value ranges (0-500 ppm) suitable for irrigation,
but more than 500 ppm is invalid.
5- The water pump is used to pump water to the farm. It
operates at a voltage of 12 V, weighs 69 G, and pumps
240 L/H.
6- Relay to control of the water pump through the digital
signal.
7- NodeMCU (Node Micro Controller Unit) ESP8266
Wireless has powerful on-board processing and storage
that allows it to be combined with other sensors and
devices through its GPIO modules. It features nine digital
signals and one analog signal.
8- 16 Analog Multiplexer is used to control the analog
signals digitally. It is used here because our work needs
three analog signals while the NodeMCU contains only
one analog signal.
9- Rechargeable lithium battery with a voltage of 3.7 to run
water pump.
• Software Tools for System
To program the sensors and build the
monitoring and irrigation system, we need to open
source Arduino IDE, version 1.8.16. use to program the
NodeMCU with the sensors. Firebase cloud is a
platform developed by Google for realtime mobile and
web applications to store sensor values in the realtime
database. Using Android Studio for building part of the
monitoring and control system application. The steps
below illustrate the process of building a monitoring and
irrigation system.
Abdulla & Marhoon
• Design Monitoring & Irrigation System
At this stage, the monitoring and control system was
designed following several steps: sensors are programmed
through the Arduino IDE program, and the code is uploaded
to the NodeMCU board. The control of the water pump is
done by connecting it to a relay that works as an electric
switch by entering a control signal into it by the controller
board. And through the Esp8266 piece on the board,
NodeMCU sends the sensor values to the firebase cloud
every half hour via WiFi. Fig.11 shows the final design of
the IoT system.
Fig. 11: IoT system design.
• Build Monitoring and Irrigation Application Part
At this stage, created the application section is
responsible for monitoring plant and irrigation remotely
using Android studio. First, Android Studio is connected to
the Firebase to read and deal with the sensor values. In the
monitoring section, the application's front end is built,
consisting of four donut progress bar sfor humidity,
temperature, Co2, and TDS for water, through which data
from the Firebase is read and seen, with alerts printed for
each read value. The remote irrigation interface contains one
donut progress bar to read the value of the soil moisture
sensor and print the alert message. Through the read, value
farmers can use the ON and OFF buttons on the irrigation
interface to opening and closing of the water pump. The
sensor values are read inside the mobile application,
processing and printing the values in the interface for climate
monitoring. Fig.12 monitoring interface contains the values
of temperature, humidity, co2, and water quality .With alerts
set for each sensor if the read values exceed the minimum or
maximum allowed for tomato plants.
In the plant irrigation section, the farmer is controlled by
turning ON and OFF the motor, as shown in Fig 13, where
the soil moisture sensor reads the soil moisture value. If the
value of the sensor is 500-600, the soil is dry, he starts the