ADBU Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (AJEEE) | Volume 3, Issue 1 | May 2019

Arduino Based Automatic Irrigation System

Sandeep Minz1, Ankit Saha2, Mrinmoy Ranjan Dev3
1,2,3
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, School of Technology, Assam Don Bosco University
Airport Road, Azara, Guwahati-781017, Assam, INDIA
1
sandeepminz16@yahoo.in*, 2ankitsaha198@gmail.com, 3mrinmoyranjan123@gmail.com

Abstract: In the present days, the farmers are suffering from severe drought like condition
throughout the year. The main objective of this paper is to provide a system leads to
automatic irrigation thereby saving time, money & power of the farmers, gardeners in
greenhouses etc. Manual intervention is common in traditional farm-land irrigation
techniques. This paper presents a technique for Arduino based Automatic Irrigation
System. With this automated technology of irrigation, human intervention can be
minimized. The moisture sensors will be bed in on the field. Whenever there is a change in
water concentration, these sensors will sense the change and gives an interrupt signal to the
micro-controller. Soil is one of the most fragile resources whose soil pH property used to
describe the degree of the acidity or basicity, which affects nutrient availability and
ultimately plant growth. Thus, the system will provide automation, remote controlling and
increased efficiency. Humidity sensor is connected to internal ports of microcontroller via
comparator; whenever there is a fluctuation in temperature and humidity of the
environment, these sensors sense the change in temperature and humidity and give an
interrupt signal to the micro-controller and thus the motor is activated. A buzzer is used to
indicate that the pump is on.

Keywords: Arduino; Moisture Sensor; Automatic Irrigation; Xbee.

Open Access. Copyright ©Authors(s) and AJEEE. Distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (CC-BY). Article history: Received: 1 Feb 2019 and Accepted: 1 April 2019.

1. Introduction in a targeted area, and which will promote water

conservation too.
In the present senerio, irrigation systems are
manually operated. To use the water efficiently and 1.1 General
effectively, a concept of automated irrigation is
introduced. Sensor-based irrigation system is based This project is about a moisture-sensing automatic
on soil moisture sensor that will measure the level irrigation system under closed environment using
of moisture in the soil and propel the signal to the Arduino UNO. This system reads the moisture
Arduino and accordingly it will irrigate the crops. content of the soil using a soil moisture sensor and
The Arduino plays the role of Micro-controller. switches on the motor when the moisture is below
This will compare the values received from the the set limit of the designated soil under
moisture sensor with the predefined moisture levels consideration. When moisture level rises above the
already stored in the system. Based on the values set point, the system switches off the pump. The
received from the sensors, the Arduino will turn the status of the motor and the moisture level will be
irrigation system ON/OFF. The Arduino will also displayed on a 16×2 LCD display.
provide the functionality of calculating the pH
value of soil. pH is a term that is used to describe For continuously increasing demand and
the degree of acidity or basicity. In addition, the decrease in the supply of food necessities, it is
moisture sensor is attached so that the water important for rapid improvement in the production
content of the soil is detected. Automatic irrigation of food technology. Agriculture is only the source
system proves to be very helpful for those who to provide this. This is an important factor for
travel. If designed and coded properly, the human societies to growing and dynamic demand
automatic irrigation systems can be very cost in food production. Agriculture plays an important
effective and can do a lot of water conservation. role in the economy and development, like India.
Watering with a pipe or with oscillator wastes The farmers use to irrigate the land due to lack of
water and none of these method aim plant roots. water. Irrigation may be termed as the science of
Automatic irrigation systems can be designed in artificial submission of water to the dry land or soil
such a way that gives the required amount of water for making it suitable for plant growth. Moreover,
depending on the soil type, the plant is to be

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provided with water for better production and aim is to implement a cost-effective automated
yield. gardening system. This system helps in solving the
above problem by being efficient and using fewer
1.3 Literature Survey resources. The system exploits cost efficient soil
moisture, light and temperature sensors to decide
In the work by Authors A. N. Arvindan and D. when and how much water will be provided for a
Keerthika [1], the Android smartphone was used as specific type of plant under consideration.
a remote control to make Arduino-based automated
irrigation system easy-to-use and an economical In the paper by R. M. Aileni [5], the
one. The design of this system includes a soil author presents a mobile application for healthcare,
moisture sensor that provides a voltage signal which process data from humidity and temperature
proportional to the moisture content in the soil, sensors. The mobile app is based on cloud
which is compared with a predetermined threshold computing SaaS (software as a service) cloud
value. On the basis of this comparison result, the computing model. The cloud-computing
appropriate data are fed to the Arduino Uno infrastructure based on sensors is used in this paper
processor, which is linked by the HC-05 module to for deploying an application, which provides
an Android phone. Android smartphone allows the patients monitoring (moisture, temperature or
user easy remote control for the irrigation system to blood pressure). The data is sent and stored in a
switch on, to the drive motor. The system has the dedicated server for being analyzed later by doctors
potential to be used in the real-time precision or caregivers. The advantages of sensor-cloud also
agriculture application. come from using PaaS (platform as a service) and
IaaS (infrastructure as a service) models.
In the research by the Chandan Kumar Sahu and
Pramitee Behra, the authors present a prototype for In another research by P. Archana and R.
full automation accessing of irrigation motor where Priya [6], the authors proposed a technique in
Prototype includes numbers of sensor placed in which the humidity and soil moisture sensors are
different directions of the farm field. Each sensor is placed in the root zone of the plant. Based on the
integrated with a wireless networking device and sensed values, the microcontroller is used to
the data received by the “ATMEGA-328” control the supply of water to the field. However,
microcontroller, which is an ARDUINO-UNO their system does not intimate the farmer about the
development board. The RASPBERRY-Pi is used field status.
to send messages through internet correspondence
to the microcontroller process. The objectives of In the paper by Sonali D. Gainwar and
this paper were to control the water motor Dinesh V. Rojatkar [7], the authors proposed a
automatically and select the direction of the flow of fully automated system in which soil parameters
water in a pipe with the help of soil moisture such as pH, humidity, moisture and temperature are
sensor. The information, which is considered as the measured for getting a high yield from the soil. In
operation of the motor and direction of water of the this system, the motor pump switches ON/OFF as
farm field, is finally sent to the user using mobile per the level of moisture in the soil. However, the
message and e-mail account. current field status is not intimated to the farmer.

In the paper by D. Baghyalakshmi, In another paper V. R. Balaji and M.

Jenimah Ebenezer and S. A. V. Satyamurty [3], the Sudha [8], the authors proposed a paper in which
authors have presented the implementation details the system derives power from sunlight through
of WSN based temperature monitoring application. photo-voltaic cells. This system doesn’t depend on
The main feature for the authors' proposed network electricity. The soil moisture sensor has been used
is to continuously monitor the temperature in the and based on the sensed values PIC microcontroller
128 nodes High-Performance Computing Cluster is used to ON/OFF the motor pump. Weather
for its smooth functioning. The wireless sensor forecasting is not included in this system
node sense and transmit the current value of
temperature to the base station. This paper explains In the research by C. H. Chavan and P. V.
about performance analysis of the network and the Karnade [9], the authors proposed a smart wireless
various steps involved in the experimental sensor network for monitoring environmental
implementation and maintenance of the parameters using Zigbee. These nodes send data
temperature monitoring network for High wirelessly to a central server, which collects data,
Performance Computing cluster. stores it, and allows it to be analyzed then
displayed as needed and also be sent to the client
In another research by A. K. Tripathy, A. mobile. Weather forecasting and nutrient content is
Vichare, R. R. Pereira, V. D. Pereira, and J. A. not determined in this system
Rodrigues [4], the authors proposed systems main

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In the paper by G. Parameswaran and K. value. Next objective is to display the status of the
Sivaprasath [10], the authors proposed a smart drip soil and the tank using a 16×2 LCD.
irrigation system using IOT in which humidity,
temperature and pH sensors are used. Irrigation 3. System Design
status is updated to the server or localhost using a
personal computer. However, the farmer can’t 3.1 Block Diagram
access the field condition without internet.
The block diagram of the proposed system can be
2. Theoretical Background represented as shown in Figure 1.

Irrigation is the artificial application of water to the

land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of
agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and
revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and
during periods of inadequate rainfall. When a zone
comes on, the water flows through the lateral lines
and ultimately ends up at the irrigation emitter
(drip) or sprinkler heads. Many sprinklers have
pipe thread inlets on the bottom of them, which
allows a fitting and the pipe to be attached to them.
The sprinklers are usually installed with the top of
the head flush with the ground surface. When the
water is pressurized, the head will pop up out of the
ground and water the desired area until the valve
closes and shuts off that zone. Once there is no
more water pressure in the lateral line, the sprinkler
head will retract back into the ground. Emitters are Figure1: Block Diagram
generally laid on the soil surface or buried a few
inches to reduce evaporation losses. Healthy plants Here Arduino is the main control centre.
can transpire a lot of water, resulting in an increase From where moisture sensor, Xbee transmitter and
in the humidity of the greenhouse air. A high pH sensor are connected .The values shown by the
relative humidity (above 80-85%) should be moisture sensor is calculated, and if the value is
avoided because it can increase the incidence of less than the reference value, the pump will start;
disease and reduce plant transpiration. Sufficient otherwise, it will not perform. The Xbee is used to
venting or successive heating and venting can control the system remotely. Again, if the water
prevent condensation on plants surfaces and the level in the tank is low, it will be refilled back.
greenhouse structure. The use of cooling systems
during the warmer summer months increases the 3.2 Circuit operation
greenhouse air humidity. During periods with
warm and humid outdoor conditions, humidity
control inside the greenhouse can be a dare task.
Greenhouses located in dry, desert environments
benefit greatly from evaporative cooling systems
because large amounts of water can be evaporated
into the incoming air, resulting in significant
temperature drops.

2.1 System Design

The microcontroller based system is designed in

Figure 2: Block Diagram of Xbee
such a way that it turns the motor on and off on
detecting the moisture content of the soil. A GSM
module acts as a transmitter and receiver, which
can be used to view the readings and stats of the
sensors and the moisture level of the soil.

The aim of the system is to monitor the

moisture content of the soil using a soil moisture
sensor. The objective is to turn the pump ON when
the soil moisture falls below a certain reference

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Table 1: List of Components

Sl. Components Range Quantity

No.
1 Arduino Uno ATmega328P, 1
Xbee 5v
transmitter
2 LCD 25C, 64Hz, 1
5.0V
3 Resistor 5
4 BC547 45v, 100mA, 1
625mW,
300MHz
5 Diode 1
Figure 3: Circuit Diagram 6 Pump 1
7 Potentiometer 1
1. The moisture sensor, pH sensor, Xbee 8 LED 2
transmitter, are connected to the analog inputs 9 Float Switch 1
of Arduino. 10 Moisture 1
2. Then, from the digital inputs of Arduino, an Sensor
LCD is connected to display the results. 11 Xbee 2.4 GHz, 250 2
3. The pumps are connected by a motor drive Kbps
circuit using diodes IND40007 and BJT. They
are connected in reverse bias mode and 4. Result and Analysis
resistance grounded for protection and to flow
current only in one direction only. 4.1 Soil testing
4. A float switch and LED are used to indicate the
water level of tanks. To measure and set the base value for the pump to
5. If the water level of the tank is not sufficient, be activated, we have calculated the resistances of
then with the help of level detector another various types of soils. Soils with high water
pump will pull water from underground and contents will have low resistance as compared to
allow it to pass through a filter which will soil with less water. Then we calculated the water
purify the water and make it free from content % of each sample of 50gm using wet-dry
impurities and store it in the tank soil testing as shown in Table 2. It is given by the
6. Then as the tank gets filled up, the pump will formula %water = wet soil(weight) - dry
automatically turn off by another Arduino soil(weight) / 1000gm per cubic cm.
working independently of the 1st Arduino
connected to the main circuit. Table 2: Water content testing of different soils
7. Then with the help of Xbee the transmitter
Soil Type Water Content Moisture Level
sends the data to a remote location for
references and evaluations. sandy 0.1 Low
8. The moisture sensor will collect the data from low clay 3.5 High
the soil and feed it to Arduino, and if the loam
moisture level is low, the pump will activate wet soil 5 High
and water the area. If the moisture level is high; loam 0.2 low
the pump won’t turn on.
9. Similarly, the pH sensor will collect the
percentage of nitrogen in the soil and will work water content %
by providing fertilizer.
loam
We designed a system using the given wet soil
components. The system was designed to keep the clay loam water
cost at a bare minimum as well as efficient system. content %
Arduino is the central to the whole system. Table 1 sandy
shows the component list.
0 2 4 6

Figure 4: Graph representation of soil testing

results

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ADBU Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (AJEEE) | www.tinyurl.com/ajeee-adbu

5. Conclusion and Future Scope International Conference on Electronics,

Computers and Artificial Intelligence (ECAI),
The Cultivation Management System based on Bucharest, 25-27 June 2015, pp. Y-1-Y-4.
cloud is a very effective system for the user, which Doi: 10.1109/ECAI.2015.7301167
cultivates the plants on the farm field by this farmer
can examine their farm field information and detail [6] P. Archana and R. Priya, “Design and
from anywhere in between range The proposed Implementation of Automatic Plant Watering
monitor tool gives soil moisture details, water level System”, International Journal of Advanced
details which can help to increase in productivity Engineering and Global technology, Vol. 04,
by using such automated irrigation system. Issue 01, Jan. 2016, pp. 1567-1570. Retrieved
from http://ijaegt.com/wp-
The proposed system can be extended in content/uploads/2016/01/409692-pp-1567-
future by adding the feature for remotely 1570-Archana.pdf
monitoring sensors that can detect crop growth and
livestock feed levels. In the future, adding the [7] S. D. Gainwar and D. V. Rojatkar, “Soil
features that can remotely manage and control their Parameters Monitoring with Automatic
smart connected other irrigation equipment in the Irrigation System”, International Journal of
proposed system can be investigated. Science, Engineering and Technology
Research (IJSETR), Vol. 04, Issue 11, Nov.
2015.
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Minz et al., AJEEE, ISSN: 2582-0257, Vol. 3, Issue 1, May 2019, pp. 31-36 | Page | 35
ADBU Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (AJEEE) | www.tinyurl.com/ajeee-adbu

Authors’ Profiles

Sandeep Minz, is currently

pursuing B.Tech in Electrical
and Electronics Engineering
(final semester), in the School
of Technology, Assam Don
Bosco University, Airport Road,
Azara, Guwahati -781017,
Assam, INDIA.

Ankit Saha, is currently

pursuing B.Tech in Electrical
and Electronics Engineering
(final semester), in the School
of Technology, Assam Don
Bosco University, Airport Road,
Azara, Guwahati -781017,
Assam, INDIA.

Mrinmoy Ranjan Dev, is

currently pursuing B.Tech in
Electrical and Electronics
Engineering (final semester), in
the School of Technology,
Assam Don Bosco University,
Airport Road, Azara, Guwahati
-781017, Assam, INDIA.

Minz et al., AJEEE, ISSN: 2582-0257, Vol. 3, Issue 1, May 2019, pp. 31-36 | Page | 36