An IoT-Based Soil Nutrients Monitoring System
Jake D. La Madrid
School of Graduate Studies
School of EECE, Mapua University
Abstract— Farming without the adequate measurement and
provisioning of the soil nutrient may endanger the sustainability
of the soil cultivated. Soil nutrient measurement is greatly
required for proper plant growth and effective fertilization. A key
in soil testing for formulated fertilization is to determine the
amount of soil nutrients, followed by recommendation of the
nutrient needs. Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium are the
three important nutrients required for the plant growth. In the
present work electrochemical sensor has been developed to
determine the N, P, K and other types of nutrients present in the
soil. The electrochemical sensor is based on the principle of
absorption of ions from the aqueous solution of soil.
Nutrient contents monitoring in soils is essential to proper use
of fertilizers in order to minimize the environmental impact of
wrong pattern fertilization practice. New develop technology of
digital sensors are smart enough to upgrade the conventional
method of soil testing (chemical lab) at minimum efforts and with
almost précised results [1]. With the help of portable remote data
acquisition system coupled together with sensor could let the
researcher collect results from wide locations and with different
farmers. The proposed system tends develop and implement a
portable handheld device for soil nutrients monitoring and result
uploading over IoT and available for viewing by the farmers to
make proper decision-making to help analyze certain condition.
System will be a microcontroller based device connected to
electrochemical (EC) sensor. Reading from sensors will be
transmitted using GSM communication to the dedicated server.
Finally, the upload data over server will undergo further analysis
and comparison.
Key Words— electrochemical, IoT, GSM, fertilization
I. INTRODUCTION
In computing, the Internet of Things refers to a network of
objects, such as a network of household appliances. It is often
a self-configuring wireless network[2]. For farmers and
growers, the Internet of Things has opened up extremely
productive ways to cultivate soil and raise livestock with the
use of cheap, easy-to-install sensors and an abundance of
insightful data they offer. Prospering on this prolific build-up
of the Internet of Things in agriculture, smart farming
applications are gaining ground with the promise to deliver
24/7 visibility into soil and crop health, machinery in use,
storage conditions, animal behavior, and energy consumption
level.
Production of crop depends on the interaction between soil
and plant properties. Maximization of production of crops is
reflected by biological, physical, chemical condition of the
soil. Root absorbs required amount of nutrients and water
from the soil where biochemical reactions takes place. Plant
rate of nutrient absorption depends on the minerals available
in the soil. Production of crops degrades with the insufficient
rate of supply of any necessary nutrients. Although the
requirement of particular nutrient is determined by the plant in
the soil, some of the nutrients are necessary for all the plants
in great amount known as Macro moles or Macronutrients.
Root environment of the plant can be changed by supplying
the nutrient from outside the soil is known as fertilization[3].
Excess fertilizer usage not only makes the plants dependent on
the artificial fertilizers but also erodes the land quality,
polluted ground water and in case of surface runoff, pollutes
the nearby water bodies. The excessive evaporation cause salts
to accumulate on the fields making them lose their fertility
quickly [4].
In recently years, precise control of the growth conditions
for plants has become an active area of research for ensuring
food safety, increasing food production, and decreasing the
labor load on agricultural workers[5].
In the Philippines, a lot of farmers rely on using the traditional
fertilization system based on their experience in cultivation
and weather condition. This type of manual fertilization
without proper justification of soil condition is error prone.
Nutrient contents monitoring in soils is essential to proper use
of fertilizers in order to minimize the environmental impact of
wrong pattern fertilization practice.
Soil analysis is a valuable tool for farmers; it determines the
inputs required for efficient and economical production. A
proper soil test will help to ensure the application of enough
fertilizer to meet the requirements of the crop while taking
advantage of the nutrients already present in the soil. It will
also allow you to determine lime requirements and can be
used to diagnose problem areas[6]. Remote sensing of soil
nutrients can potentially improve on these methods in several
ways[7]. Rapid, accurate, and objective methods to
quantify residue cover in individual fields are needed for
management decisions[8].
Improper use of fertilizers in turn results into poor quality in
fruits, vegetable lagging in size, taste, quality, quantity. Soil
fertility changes with every harvest and changing weather
condition and also affects the nutrient content of soil. Also
fertility of soil varies at different part of field and it requires to
be monitored for healthy crop production. Continuous soil
nutrients monitoring is vital on farmer’s part to fulfill the
increasing demand of growing population. Therefore, design
and development of technology to help farmers to lessen their
burden in farming is needed. The researcher design and
develop a system that monitors the status of soil conditions
using low-cost sensors with high accuracy to ensure that the
data gathered will provide relevant information for proper
monitoring of agriculture. These low-cost sensors can be
incorporated into a continuous automated system for
monitoring growing plants[9]. And due to climate change, the
researcher include a database that continuously records the
status of the soil nutrients in order to analyze the possible
changes occur during the cropping period. This will
minimized efforts, save money and provide a long term
solution towards achieving sustainable agriculture.
II. METHODOLOGY
This type of research focuses on the design, development
and testing of the prototype.
The main objective of the study was to design and develop
An IoT-based soil nutrients monitoring system to help the
farmers determine soil nutrients content with database that
stores previous records in order to visualize the changes of soil
nutrients and requirements per cropping period for decision-
making. The system will update the farm owner by sending
average soil nutrients and moisture through SMS triggering
from a farm owner or view through smartphones.
A. Hardware Design
The Fig. 1 is the block diagram of the entire system. The an
IoT-based soil nutrients monitoring system consists of
electrochemical sensor, moisture sensor, arduino
microcontroller, cable connector, regulated power supply, soil
sample and GSM module that send the detected nutrients to
the database for proper analysis and comparison.
Fig. 1 Block Diagram
B. Software Design
Fig. 2 is the program of an IoT-based soil nutrients
monitoring system. The software was designed and developed
using VB.Net scripts and MySQL database.VB.Net is an
Object-Oriented version of the simple BASIC language.
MySQL Server is an enterprise database that can handle bulky
data like binary data for fingerprint and passports of staffs and
students.
Fig. 2 Systems database
The data is gathered remotely using electrochemical and
moisture sensors and send via GSM communication module to
the database server. The farmer continuously monitors the soil
fertility in his land. Result of all the tests will be process and
can be access by the farm owner using smartphones connected
to an internet. The farm owner can also receive an average soil
nutrients and soil moisture content by sending an SMS to the
remote device as triggering. The farmer physically enters the
displayed value in his mobile phone to get a digitally
generated soil fertility report for decision-making. A digital
report generated on the basis of all the tests, which will
include the averaged result of all the tests on a daily basis in
which the sensor sense every 1 hour.
III. Test and Evaluation
After assembling all the system components and checking it
if it properly works, several testing were performed. This
section provides the actual structure and developmental stage
of the study.
Hardware Circuit Design and Testing. The materials were
assembled manually, coding or programming of
microcontroller along with the functional verification testing
of the device were done accordingly together. The entire
device was carefully tested for possible errors in one of the
agricultural land chosen by the researcher. Database was able
to store data from frontlinesms software and process the
collected.
Physical Setup Implementation. The whole system is
composed of a system database for storing and a portable
device deployed in the farm land consists of a sensors and a
GSM module with microcontroller for wireless transmission
and processing. The base station consists of the main
controller which decides and controls other components and
GSM for sending of text messages.
The main testing subject is the farm soil. The soil test will
be performed in three (3) farm land. The moment when the
device set-up and turned-on, testing will start. The monitoring
device will send data to database every 1 hour. The soil
nutrients and moisture will be measured and analyzed for
Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium and soil moisture. The
result will be available for farm owner once sending SMS
triggering code or view through smartphone by accessing its
database.
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