1

Mohini Kesare*1, Shital Domle*2, Sumit Rajegore*3, Prof.V.B.Deokamble*4

*
Department of E&Tc, Marathwada Mitra Mandal’s College of Engineering, Pune
mohinikesare.etc@mmcoe.edu.in,vasantdeokamble@mmcoe.edu.in
Sprinkler Automation for Accurate Pest Control
on Crops
 accuracy levels that cannot be achieved with manual operations. This
Abstract
Sprayers are used to control excessive use of pest and system consists of IR sensors, up down mechanism, DC pump for
diseases and it is done by spraying of pesticides. By conventional pesticide sprinkler. First IR sensor is used to detect plant and second
method of spraying it is difficult to spray the pesticide uniformly IR sensor is used to detect plant height along with up down
and effectively over the crops. Spraying is done in farm by mechanism so that sprinkler will move accordingly. Up down
traditional technique. There are different types of sprayers, but mechanism is for sprinkler up down according to the plant height.
mainly used sprayer is backpack type sprayer, which is used by Microcontroller is a control unit which controls the whole working.
farmers. It has advantages like it is cost efficient, easily available
and easy to use. With the help of this sprayer, farmers spray 2. BLOCK DIAGRAM
pesticides in their farm, but it has high operational cost and also
requires lot of time. Farmer who is spraying pesticides is affected
by it, as it is harmful to health. They are also affected by shoulder
disorder and lumbar pain due to weight of machine and weight of
tank on person`s shoulder. Because of this pesticide many
diseases are faced by farmers and this is one of the serious
problem.Though traditional method gives good pest control, it
consumes large volume of liquid per plant, large amount of time
and labours are required.
To overcome these problems sprinkler automation
technique which reduces human efforts and also distribute the
pesticide uniformly through the crops is used. This system is used
to spray the pesticide to different crops in an efficient manner to
different crops. It gives good pest control and also consumes less
volume of liquid per plant. This paper contains the efficient
automation technique which overcomes all the problem faced by
traditional technique.

Keywords
ATMEGA328 Microcontroller, Battery, IR sensors, Up-
down mechanism, Relay, Motor drivers, DC Motors, Pest
control, Agricultural architecture.
Fig 1. System Block Diagram
1. INTRODUCTION
Crop yield is decreased due to attack of pests, diseases and 3. WORKING PRINCIPLE
weed. Chemical control is the popular method adopted for controlling
most insects, weed and diseases. Chemicals are applied either by This system consists of IR sensors, up down mechanism with limit
spraying, sprinkling on the crop with help of pump or dusting. switches, DC pump for pesticide sprinkler. First IR sensor is used
Spraying is one of the most effective and efficient techniques for to detect plant and second IR sensor is used to detect plant height
applying small volume of spray liquid to protect crops. In traditional along with up down mechanism so that sprinkler will move
method, manually operated low and high volume hydraulic sprayer accordingly.
and power operated hydraulic sprayer with long boom, long lances or
spray gun are used to carry out fluid at different targets. In this Up down mechanism is for sprinkler up down according to the
method, time and labour required is more. It is difficult to spray the plant height. Microcontroller is a control unit which controls the
pesticide uniformly and effectively throughout the tree by whole working.
conventional method of spraying. Therefore in proposed system the
efforts are made to design and implement automatic technique for Below picture shows the overall view of our proposed system
accurate pest control on crops. Owing to concern towards protecting
environment from pollution by excessive use of pesticide and to
economies the spraying method suitable alternative should be
identified. In India, diverse farm mechanization scenario in country
due to varied size of the farm holdings and socio-economic
disparities. For precise output and accuracy of industrial process IR
sensors with up down mechanism is used. Our proposed works aims
towards protecting crops by excessive use of pesticide by an
automated way instead of using manual way. It is aimed to reduce
human effort and at the same time increase the productivity &



Fig 2. Overall proposed system
4. HARDWARE IMPLIMENTATION
This system consists of 7 hardware components namely
ATmega327 microcontroller,IR Sensor, Motor Drivers,
Relays, DC Motors, Limit Switch, Battery.
4.1 MICROCONTROLLER:
In this system we are going to use ATMEGA 328 microcontroller for
controlling the up down mechanism. The ATmega328 is a single-chip
microcontroller created by Atmel in the mega AVR family (later
Microchip Technology acquired Atmel in 2016). It has a modified
Harvard architecture 8-bit RISC processor core.
4.2 IR SENSOR:
An infrared sensor is an electronic device, that emits in order to sense
some aspects of the surroundings. An IR sensor can measure the heat
of an object as well as detects the motion. These types of sensors
measures only infrared radiation, rather than emitting it that is called
as a passive IR sensor. We use two IR sensors, one for detecting the
plant and second is for detecting the height of the plant. These
sensors are good for detection between 100cm to 500cm (1-5 meters).
2
4.3 MOTOR DRIVERS:
Motor Driver circuits are current amplifiers. They act as a bridge
between the controller and the motor in a motor drive. Motor drivers
are made from discrete components which are integrated inside an
IC. The input to the motor driver IC or motor driver circuit is a low
current signal.
4.4 RELAYS:
Relays are switches that open and close circuits electromechanically
or electronically. Relays control one electrical circuit by opening and
closing contacts in another circuit. As relay diagrams show, when a
relay contact is normally open (NO), there is an open contact when
the relay is not energized.
4.5 LIMIT SWITCH:
Limit switch is a switch operated by the motion of a machine part or
presence of an object. They are used for controlling machinery as part
of a control system, as a safety interlocks, or to count objects passing
a point.
4.6 DC MOTOR:
A DC motor is any of a class of rotary electrical machines that
converts direct current electrical energy into mechanical energy.
There are various types of motors are available among them we use
shunt DC motor.
4.7 BATTERY:
An electric battery is a device consisting of one or more
electrochemical cells with external connections provided to power
electrical devices such as flashlights, smart phones and electric cars.
We have used sealed lead acid batteries. This is rechargeable battery
with voltage 12.
5. FLOWCHART
 3

[3] Evaluation of spray uniformity distribution by environment

friendly University boom sprayer test bench. Pak. J. Agri. Sci.,
43 (2) : 93-96.
[4] Padmanathan, P.K. and Kathirvel, K. (2007). Performance
evaluation of power tiller-operated rear mounted boom sprayer
for cotton crop. Res. J. Agric. & Biol. Sci., 3(4):224-227.
[5] Sahay, Jagdishwar (2008). Text book of elements of
agricultural Engineering. pp. 233-235.
[6] A research paper on "Fabrication of Portable Foot
Agricultural Fertilizers and Pesticides Pump" by S R Kulkarni,
R V Nyamagoud, Hareesh Naik, Mohan Futane
[7] A research paper on "Design, development and fabrication
of agricultural sprayer with weeder" by Laukik P. Raut, Smit
B. Jaiswal, Nitin Y. Mohite
[8] A research paper on "Review of Solar Powered Pesticide
Sprayer" by Sarvesh Kulkarni, Kara Hasurkar, Ramdas
Kumbhar, Amol Gonde, Raut A.S.:

Fig 3. Flowchart

6. ALGORITHM

Step 1: Start the process.

Step 2: Check whether the first IR sensor is detected or not.
Step 3: If Sensor is detected then main machine stops and up down
mechanism gets started.
Step 4: Check whether the second IR sensor is detected or not.
Step 5: If second sensor is detected then up down mechanism stops
and pump gets on for some delay.

7. CONCLUSION
According to the design and algorithms proposed in the paper
we come to a conclusion that, this type of system is very
helpful for agricultural purpose where, we need to spray the
pesticides on different crops. Currently we use a system that
increases the human efforts and also it is not comfortable. This
system provides a method to decrease the wastage of pesticides
and also the human efforts. It is more effective than traditional
system.

8. FUTURE SCOPE
In future we can implement this system that can give indication
after completion of pesticide. We can also make use of GSM
model to send message when pesticide is finished.

9. REFERENCES
[1] Mathew, V.J., Desh, S.K., Das, D.K. and Pradhan, S.C.
(1992).Development and testing of a power tiller-operated
boom sprayer.AMA, 23(4):25-27.
[2] Muhammad Iqbal, Hussain Altaf and Munir Anjum (2006).