Professor develops IoT based system for watering plants | Fusion - WeRIndia

Gardeners often worry about watering their plants during vacation. For some people, friends or neighbours help. However, not all gardeners have that advantage.

To help such people, a Gujarat-based associate professor came up with an innovative solution. Parth Shah developed IoT based system and sensors to monitor the vital parameters in the soil, like soil moisture, humidity etc., and water the plants automatically.

Nowadays, many urban citizens are growing vegetables on their terrace gardens through organic methods. However, many of them are not aware of providing adequate water for better yield. Improper watering can affect the health of a plant. At the same time. excess watering also impacts plant health. Moreover, water will be wasted.

Considering all these things, Parth built a system to monitor the vital parameters of plants on terrace gardens. He says that monitoring the moisture level in the soil is one of the vital things. Hence, urban garden setups also need technological help like commercial farming to get better produce.

The system developed by Parth works as follows: The sensor is fitted in the soil to monitor the vitals. It is connected to a control board with Microcontroller Unit. The sensor analyzes all vitals and sends data to the system.

Users can read the data on their smartphone using the Android app designed for it by Parth. Thus, one can track plant health.

The ideal soil moisture level ranges between 10 per cent and 45 per cent. The sensors send an alert to users on their smartphones if the moisture level drops below 10 per cent. It also sends a signal to switch on the water pump automatically to restore the required moisture level.

One sensor can cover the entire terrace garden to monitor moisture levels up to 3 metres deep. But, each potted plant needs a separate sensor. Parth is currently working on the commercial viability of the model.

Image from Pxhere (Free for commercial use / CC0 Public Domain)

Image Reference: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/878942