Journal of Robotics and Control (JRC)

Vol. 1, No. 2, 2020, March 2020, pp. 55-58

ISSN: 2715-5072, DOI: 10.18196/jrc.1212 55

Design of Automatic Watering System Based on

Arduino
Ipin Prasojo1, Andino Maseleno2, Omar tanane3, Nishith Shahu4
1
Sarjana Terapan Elektromedik, ITS PKU Muhammadiyah Surakarta, Indonesia
2
Institute of Informatics and Computing Energy, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia.
3
Faculty of Sciences Ben M'sik, University Hassan II of Casablanca, Casablanca, Morocco
4
Department of Electrical Engineering, Gujarat Technological University, India
rmprasojo@gmail.com, andimaseleno@gmail.com, omar.tanane@univh2c.ma, nish2687@gmail.com

Abstract— Food self-sufficiency is a government program CAN2.0B module with the ISO11783 protocol [1]. Ahmed
that has been being actively promoted so that Indonesia to reach and Ladhake designed a very low mobile-based embedded
food independence. Indonesia is a maritime and agricultural system for irrigation. The system consisted of an
country with rainy and dry seasons. In the rainy season, food ATMEGA32 microcontroller, an RTC DS1307, a Nokia
plants usually do not need to be watered, while in the dry season,
6610 Mobile, and a pump motor [2]. Ma Yuquan, Han
the plants must be watered regularly according to the soil
moisture conditions. Farmers usually do not grow food plants in Shufen, and Wang Qingzhu investigated a new
the dry season for fear that it will not grow well. The farmer’s environmental parameter monitoring and control system for
dependence on the season causes the production to decline and greenhouses based on the distributed master-slave. The
becomes an obstacle in the success of the food self-sufficiency system consisted of a soil moisture sensor, an air humidity
program. An information and communication technology-based sensor, a temperature sensor, and an AT89C51
agricultural device is needed to overcome the problem. The microcontroller [3].
research aimed to design a programmed microcontroller chip to
control watering automatically based on soil moisture detected Ganesh and Girisha examined the embedded controller in
using a domestic soil moisture sensor. This device detected the farmer's Solari's water pump automation. The system
whether the soil was dry or not. The farmers did not need to do consisted of solar panels, pump motors, current sensors, and
watering manually. In addition to helping farmers, the device a PIC 16F877 microcontroller [4]. While Pradeep et al
could also be installed on plantations, seedbed nurseries, urban examined a PV pump farmer automation. The system
parks, hotels, offices, and homes. consisted of a PIC 16F877 microcontroller, a water level
Keywords— Soil moisture, microcontroller, arduino.
sensor, and a pump [6]. Li and Yu investigated a high
accuracy temperature control system based on ARM9 using
I. INTRODUCTION a microcontroller type S3C2440A, a temperature sensor, and
Some farmers in Indonesia still depend on the rainy control using a Fuzzy algorithm [5].
season for farming. It makes the production of agricultural Prema studied online control of remote agricultural robots
products unstable. In the dry season, the prices of agricultural operated using fuzzy controllers and virtual instrumentation.
products increase significantly due to their small production, The system in the robot consisted of a microcontroller, a DC
while in the rainy season, the production is abundant that motor, and a Fuzzy logic controller algorithm [7]. Polpitiya
decreases the price. It causes loss and disappointment for et. al. researched wireless agricultural sensor networks
many farmers. During the dry season, farmers who want to consisting of a temperature sensor, a humidity sensor, a pH
do farming must spend extra energy and costs to do watering level sensor, a light sensor, a microcontroller, and a WSN [8].
manually. Idris and Muhammad Ikhsan Sani monitored and controlled
Hence, an automatic watering plant that works both in the the aeroponic growth system for potato production. The
rainy season and the dry season is necessary to design. The system consisted of a microcontroller, a temperature sensor
device used a microcontroller chip programmed based on the and pH, humidity, and fogging sensors [9].
detection of agricultural soil moisture sensors. When the soil Martin implemented a Wireless Accelerometer Mems to
was dry, the device automatically watered the plants. detect red palm beetles using MEMS sensors,
Conversely, if the soil was wet, the device would not water microcontrollers, and Bluetooth [10]. Patel et. al. investigated
them. It led to healthy plants because the need for water had a microcontroller-based drip irrigation system using smart
been fulfilled all the time. sensors. The system consisted of agricultural sensors such as
Several researchers have conducted research in temperature, air humidity, and soil moisture sensors, a
agriculture such as Qingmei, Zhili, and Mingzhu who microcontroller, and a wireless module [11]. Sathish Kannan
designed communication nodes in tractor control networks and Thilagavathi studied online farming based on embedded
based on the ISO11783 Protocol. The tractor was equipped systems and wireless sensor networks. The system consisted
with a GPS module that can be controlled remotely with the of a temperature sensor, a soil moisture sensor, a water level

Journal Web site: http://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/jrc Journal Email: jrc@umy.ac.id

Journal of Robotics and Control (JRC) ISSN: 2715-5072 56

sensor, a PIC type microcontroller, a water pump, and a voltage, which then was read by the microcontroller in the
Zigbee communication [12]. embedded system so that the device worked following the
results of the research. Figure 1 illustrates the phases of the
The paper aimed to design an automatic watering system
research, namely, to design the hardware and software for
for plants. Several references were used. Rosinski researched
Arduino boards [26]–[30].
an unattended flower watering system using a soil moisture
sensor and a comparator to replace the function of the
microcontroller [13]. Tapak and Csiba investigated the Soil Display
watering of IoT plants using an Ethernet, a light sensor, a soil Moisture LCD
moisture sensor, a temperature sensor, a humidity sensor, a sensor
Arduino
water level sensor, and a solenoid valve [14]. Selmani et. Al.
investigated the multithreading design for irrigation systems Power Driver
Supply Relay
using solar power. The system consisted of a temperature
sensor, a soil moisture sensor, a water level sensor, a
Raspberry PI, and a solar panel water pump [15].
Solenoid
Divani, Patil, and Punjabi examined an automatic Valve
watering system using a soil moisture sensor to detect the soil
requiring water, a microcontroller, and a water pump [16]. Fig. 1. System block diagram.
Azam examined a hybrid water pumping system for hilly
farm locations using a microcontroller, a water pressure III. IMPLEMENTATION
sensor, a flow rate sensor, and a pump motor [17]. Padalalu The automatic plant watering device used a soil moisture
et. al. investigated the smart water droplet system for sensor designed based on the specially programmed Arduino
agriculture. The system consisted of a PH sensor, a board technology. The moisture sensor detected the level of
temperature sensor, a soil moisture sensor, a microcontroller, the drought of agricultural land. When the soil was dry, the
and a water pump motor [18]. microcontroller commanded a solenoid valve to open and
A context-aware wireless irrigation system was water the plants, but when the soil was wet, the solenoid valve
investigated by P et al. The system consisted of a temperature closed, and water stopped flowing.
sensor, a humidity sensor, a PH sensor, a chemical sensor, a The specifications of the automatic sprinklers designed
microcontroller, and a Zigbee [19], while a web-based were a 220V AC, a single sensor, a 12V output Relay, a 220V
automatic irrigation system using wireless sensor networks solenoid valve AC, an AT Mega Processor, a 16x2 LCD, and
and embedded Linux boards was investigated by Tarange, a 20x40x15cm dimension. Figure 2 displays the working
Mevekari, and Shinde [20]. The system consisted of a principle of the automatic plant watering device.
temperature sensor, a soil moisture sensor, a Raspberry PI,
and a Zigbee. Ishak et al. investigated the prototype of an
activated GSM watering using a humidity sensor, an Arduino
microcontroller, and a GSM module [21]. Start
Relay OFF
The difference between the previous study and this study
is that it aims to design an automatic plant watering device Stand by
utilizing a soil moisture sensor. This device is expected to be
developed and help farmers overcome problems in watering Valve ON
their crops. Sensor Reading

II. METHOD
Timer End?
This research investigated the use of a soil moisture ADC Conversion
No
sensor as a determinant of the time when the plants need
water to water them automatically. A soil moisture sensor by Yes
utilizing a voltage divider circuit was used. By measuring the
Relay OFF
resistance of the soil, the value of soil moisture can be
obtained.
Microchip technology has developed since the discovery ADC value < limit? Valve OFF
of semiconductor material as an electronic component. This No
discovery reduced the size of computers. The semiconductor
as an IC (Integrated Circuit) material makes microchip and End
microcomputer technology advance rapidly. In this study, the
researcher used an Arduino microchip or microcontroller Yes
[22]–[25] that had been specifically designed to make it
easier for prototype designers to test the device. Fig. 2. System workflow.

The sensor used in the research was a resistive metal plate The process shows a library for wire.h connections to
sensor to measure soil moisture converted to an analog connect to the LCD with Liquid Crystal lyric_I2C.h. The

Ipin Prasojo, Design of Automatic Watering System Based on Arduino

Journal of Robotics and Control (JRC) ISSN: 2715-5072 57

Pin_Analog is read at pin 0, the Pin_Digital is read at pin 13, V. CONCLUSION

and the relay is at Pin 8. Junk and String variables are for The designed automatic plant watering device uses a
characters, and the humidity variable is for hum. The soil copper plate sensor working as an electrode to measure soil
moisture sensor will detect the level of soil moisture. If the resistance that is converted into analog voltage and then into
soil is dry, the microcontroller will activate the relay driver digital data so that it can be processed by the Arduino Uno
so that the solenoid valve gets an electric current to open the processor. The determination of the upper limit for the
tap so that water from the pipe can flow to water the plants. watering process is carried out by trials on different soil
Conversely, if the ground is wet, the microcontroller will conditions. The use of solenoid valves to reduce the use of
deactivate the relay driver and the solenoid valve closes and electrical energy is more effective compared to pumps that
the water stops flowing. This device uses a 220-volt power require greater electrical energy.
supply unit (PSU) to activate the solenoid valve and a 5-volt
voltage regulator IC 7805 to provide a 5-volt voltage to the REFERENCES
microcontroller and LCD. [1] C. Qingmei, Z. Zhili, and Z. Mingzhu, “The Design of
Communication Nodes in the Tractor Control Network Based on
IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION ISO11783 Protocol,” in 2010 International Conference on
A test on the hardware was carried out to make sure each Intelligent Computation Technology and Automation, 2010, vol. 3,
pp. 772–775.
part of the device works properly. The parts tested were the
soil moisture sensor, the driver relay, and the solenoid valve. [2] V. Ahmed and S. A. Ladhake, “Design of Ultra Low Cost Cell
Phone Based Embedded System for Irrigation,” in 2010
a. Soil moisture sensor test International Conference on Machine Vision and Human-machine
Interface, 2010, pp. 718–721.
The sensor consisted of copper plates as electrodes to
measure soil moisture. Measured soil moisture is the [3] Ma Yuquan, Han Shufen, and Wang Qingzhu, “New environment
parameters monitoring and control system for greenhouse based on
conversion of electrical voltage converted into digital data. master-slave distributed,” in 2010 International Conference on
The result is shown in Table 1. Computer and Communication Technologies in Agriculture
Engineering, 2010, vol. 1, pp. 31–35.
TABLE I. MEASUREMENT RESULT FOR SENSOR TEST
[4] K. Ganesh and S. Girisha, “Embedded controller in farmers pump
No. Water volume (cc) Moisture (%) by solar energy (Automation of solarised water pump),” in 2011
International Conference On Recent Advancements in Electrical,
1 1 30 Electronics And Control Engineering, 2011, pp. 226–229.

2 2 35 [5] X. Li and Y. Yu, “A high accuracy temperature control system based

on ARM9,” in 2011 International Conference on Electrical and
3 3 37 Control Engineering, 2011, pp. 23–26.

4 4 42 [6] E. Pradeep, R. Ganeshmurthy, K. Sekar, and E. Arun, “Automation

of PV farmers pump,” in International Conference on Sustainable
5 5 47 Energy and Intelligent Systems (SEISCON 2011), 2011, vol. 2011,
no. 583 CP, pp. 163–166.
6 6 55
[7] K. Prema, N. S. Kumar, S. S. Dash, and S. Chowdary, “Online
7 7 57 control of remote operated agricultural robot using fuzzy controller
and virtual instrumentation,” in IEEE-International Conference On
8 8 58 Advances In Engineering, Science And Management (ICAESM -
9 9 58 2012), 2012, pp. 196–201.
[8] M. L. G. Polpitiya, G. R. Raban, W. K. S. S. Prasanna, D. T. S.
10 10 62 Perera, D. P. Chandima, and U. K. D. L. Udawatta, “Wireless
agricultural sensor network,” in TENCON 2012 IEEE Region 10
Conference, 2012, pp. 1–6.
b. Driver relay and Solenoid valve test [9] I. Idris and Muhammad Ikhsan Sani, “Monitoring and control of
aeroponic growing system for potato production,” in 2012 IEEE
The solenoid valve is a pipe component that can open and Conference on Control, Systems & Industrial Informatics, 2012, pp.
close automatically with the working principle of electric 120–125.
magnets. If the electricity gets an electric current, the
[10] B. Martin, V. Juliet, P. E. Sankaranarayanan, A. Gopal, and I.
solenoid will open and vice-versa. It gets electric current from Rajkumar, “Wireless implementation of mems accelerometer to
a relay connected to the relay driver circuit. The relay will get detect red palm weevil on palms,” in 2013 International Conference
high logic to activate the solenoid valve. Meanwhile, if it gets on Advanced Electronic Systems (ICAES), 2013, pp. 248–252.
low logic, the valve will not be active. The result is shown in [11] N. R. Patel, R. B. Lanjewar, S. S. Mathurkar, and A. A. Bhandekar,
Table 2. “Microcontroller based drip irrigation system using smart sensor,”
in 2013 Annual IEEE India Conference (INDICON), 2013, pp. 1–5.
TABLE II. TEST RESULT FOR DRIVER RELAY AND VALVE [12] K. Sathish kannan and G. Thilagavathi, “Online farming based on
embedded systems and wireless sensor networks,” in 2013
Logic Driver relay input Solenoid valve International Conference on Computation of Power, Energy,
voltage (Volt) voltage (Volt) Information and Communication (ICCPEIC), 2013, pp. 71–74.
1 4.8 218
[13] M. Rosinski, “An unattended flower watering system,” Electron.
0 0 0 Educ., vol. 1996, no. 2, pp. 26–28, 1996.

Ipin Prasojo, Design of Automatic Watering System Based on Arduino

Journal of Robotics and Control (JRC) ISSN: 2715-5072 58

[14] P. Tapak and M. Csiba, “LoT Plant Watering,” in 2018 16th [23] C. M. Devika, K. Bose, and S. Vijayalekshmy, “Automatic plant
International Conference on Emerging eLearning Technologies and irrigation system using Arduino,” in 2017 IEEE International
Applications (ICETA), 2018, pp. 563–568. Conference on Circuits and Systems (ICCS), 2017, vol. 2018-Janua,
no. 1, pp. 384–387.
[15] A. Selmani et al., “Multithreading design for an embedded irrigation
system running on solar power,” in 2018 4th International [24] H. N. Saha et al., “Smart Irrigation System Using Arduino and GSM
Conference on Optimization and Applications (ICOA), 2018, pp. 1– Module,” in 2018 IEEE 9th Annual Information Technology,
5. Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference (IEMCON),
2018, pp. 532–538.
[16] D. Divani, P. Patil, and S. K. Punjabi, “Automated plant Watering
system,” in 2016 International Conference on Computation of [25] A. Al-Omary, H. M. AlSabbagh, and H. Al-Rizzo, “Cloud based IoT
Power, Energy Information and Commuincation (ICCPEIC), 2016, for Smart Garden Watering System using Arduino Uno,” in Smart
pp. 180–182. Cities Symposium 2018, 2018, vol. 2018, no. CP747, pp. 33 (6 pp.)-
33 (6 pp.).
[17] M. F. M. Azam et al., “Hybrid water pump system for hilly
agricultural site,” in 2016 7th IEEE Control and System Graduate [26] P. Jariyayothin, K. Jeravong-aram, N. Ratanachaijaroen, T.
Research Colloquium (ICSGRC), 2016, no. August, pp. 109–114. Tantidham, and P. Intakot, “IoT Backyard: Smart Watering Control
System,” in 2018 Seventh ICT International Student Project
[18] P. Padalalu, S. Mahajan, K. Dabir, S. Mitkar, and D. Javale, “Smart Conference (ICT-ISPC), 2018, pp. 1–6.
water dripping system for agriculture/farming,” in 2017 2nd
International Conference for Convergence in Technology (I2CT), [27] K. N. Siva, R. Kumar G., A. Bagubali, and K. V. Krishnan, “Smart
2017, vol. 2017-Janua, pp. 659–662. watering of plants,” in 2019 International Conference on Vision
Towards Emerging Trends in Communication and Networking
[19] D. P, S. Sonkiya, P. Das, M. V. V., and M. V. Ramesh, “CAWIS: (ViTECoN), 2019, pp. 1–4.
Context aware wireless irrigation system,” in 2014 International
Conference on Computer, Communications, and Control [28] H. S. Alar and D. C. Sabado, “Utilizing a Greenhouse Activities
Technology (I4CT), 2014, no. I4ct, pp. 310–315. Streamlining System Towards Accurate VPD Monitoring for
Tropical Plants,” in 2017 International Conference on Vision, Image
[20] P. H. Tarange, R. G. Mevekari, and P. A. Shinde, “Web based and Signal Processing (ICVISP), 2017, vol. 2017-Novem, pp. 94–
automatic irrigation system using wireless sensor network and 97.
embedded Linux board,” in 2015 International Conference on
Circuits, Power and Computing Technologies [ICCPCT-2015], [29] S. Aygun, E. O. Gunes, M. A. Subasi, and S. Alkan, “Sensor Fusion
2015, pp. 1–5. for IoT-based Intelligent Agriculture System,” in 2019 8th
International Conference on Agro-Geoinformatics (Agro-
[21] N. S. Ishak, A. H. Awang, N. N. S. Bahri, and A. M. M. Zaimi, Geoinformatics), 2019, pp. 1–5.
“GSM activated watering system prototype,” in 2015 IEEE
International RF and Microwave Conference (RFM), 2015, no. Rfm, [30] W. Wongthai, S. Chanmee, and S. Lohawet, “An Enhancement of
pp. 252–256. an Automatic Plant Watering System,” in 2018 22nd International
Computer Science and Engineering Conference (ICSEC), 2018, pp.
[22] T. K. Toai and V. M. Huan, “Implementing the Markov Decision 1–4.
Process for Efficient Water Utilization with Arduino Board in
Agriculture,” in 2019 International Conference on System Science
and Engineering (ICSSE), 2019, pp. 335–340.

Ipin Prasojo, Design of Automatic Watering System Based on Arduino