2018 15th International Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology

IoT based hydroponic system with supplementary

LED light for smart home farming of lettuce
T. Namgyel1, S. Siyang1, C. Khunarak1, T. Pobkrut2, J. Norbu1, T. Chaiyasit1 and T. Kerdcharoen 1, 2, 3*
1
Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand
2
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand
3
NANOTEC Center of Excellence, Mahidol University, National Nanotechnology Center, Bangkok, Thailand
*Corresponding author: teerakiat@yahoo.com

Abstract— Current agriculture advancement is being As agriculture is undergoing industrialization,

challenged like never before with sustainable food production and contemporary farming architype demands advanced automated
security in a demographically obese world. Climate change is system enabled by internet for communication. Current farmers
another major challenge that contemporary farming practice tries in the field requires to be equipped with relevant knowledge on
to overcome. Conventional soil dependent farming practices make environment, crop information and monitoring to execute
farmers vulnerable to various manifestations of climate change.
Different technologies were employed to enable farming practices
informed and timely decisions for maximum yield. Integration
to adapt and build resilience against irregular microclimate shifts. of IoT in such domain would help farmers to gather, store and
It is imperative that modern farmers need to be equipped with share the data in real-time. Quires of farmers will be addressed
precise management and monitoring of the crop system with intelligently through various devices with high accessibility
access to the scientific data about the field environment to execute [5].
intelligent and informed decisions in time. Alternate farming
technology like hydroponic culture technique and integration of With the infusion of smart technologies in agriculture,
smart artificial light and IoT system are deemed promising alternate urban farming technique like hydroponics have
solutions to the aforementioned problems. In this study, we have evolved. Hydroponic culture method is an environmentally
developed a smart hydroponic system with LED lighting friendly technique of growing crops using essential nutrient
technology enabled by IoT system. Plants were hydroponically elements without soil. Recently, cultivation of crops
cultured under various treatments and morphological parameters hydroponically has become successful and is perceived capable
were measured and characterized. The plants treated with blue to feed the rapid growing population around the world. The
supplementary LED light resulted in greater accumulation of advent of the artificial LED lightning technology into the urban
biomass, leaf density, leaf area and pigment content. IoT devices
and software applications were incorporated to transmit and farming further boosted the yield and production. LED
display of system information online. The system was successful in technology provides advanced advantages such as low
archiving data real time for end user access. radiating temperature, extended durability, long operative
lifespan, small volume, zero toxic radiation, highly efficient in
energy conversion and specific wavelength [6] which lacks in
conventional farming. Although controlled indoor environment
Keywords— hydroponics; internet of things (IoT); LED; urban
system with artificial light to cultivate plants has been
farming.
developed, the infusion of IoT that empowers control and
monitoring is yet to mature in urban farming.
I. INTRODUCTION
The present work of ours is the modulation of the
The Internet of Things is a system of network consisting conventional hydroponic culture with the supplementary LED
automatic and intelligent devices and machines implanted with lightening technology enabled by internet of things (IoT).
sensors and software for data processing and sharing through
internet [1]. Internet of Things has infinite benefits and its
influence are rooting in our day to day life opening new
avenues for innovation, creativity and connected society. IoT
has found its grounds of applications in numerous fields such
as healthcare supervision, industries, property management [2]:
robotics, administering security, sport gadgets, electronic nose,
smart shoes, wearable electronic nose [3], wireless sensor
network and precision agriculture [4]. Advancement of
technology evolution in urban farming over the years has
culminated in the insertion of Internet of Things (IoT) in the
perspective of innovation to improve agricultural yields and
adapt resilience against the challenges such as climate change,
environmental friendliness and food security. Farming which is
based on IoT is deemed innovative shift of paradigm from the Fig.1. IoT based hydroponic system in the field.
conventional farming method to smart agriculture.

978-1-5386-3555-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 221

2018 15th International Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology
A hydroponic system in an open greenhouse was designed
to simulate an urban setting with different treatments of
supplementary LED light arrays controlled and regulated by
the micro controller unit. Air temperature, relative humidity,
nutrient solution temperature and solar energy are monitored
real-time with camera capable of real-time pictorial
transmission for physiological monitoring of plant. The system
controller unit is embedded with Wi-Fi module to transmit data
to the cloud database. The system consisted of automated
micro controller unit programmed to collect data, synchronize
and upload to website for easy access to farmers for executing
intelligent decisions and monitoring [7]. Butterhead lettuce was
cultured in the hydroponic system and its physiological
parameters and pigment contents are characterized.
II. METHODOLOGY
A. Framework of IoT prototype
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is composed of different
processors with the sensor nodes, sensitive probes and
indicators for evaluating the environment with very low power
consumption. Communication in WSNs doesn’t come at the
cost of harming environment. Since it is wireless its convenient
and inexpensive to materialize the system for environment
application [8]. WSNs embraces three modes of transmission:
Zigbee, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi [4]. This work employed Wi-Fi
module as the mode of data transmission and monitoring
considering the network coverage proximity range. Fig. 2
illustrates the fundamental framework of IoT system
integration. The framework configuration assimilates cloud
database service, various machines and software as cardinal
components of a prototype system. The upper part of the figure
depicts various devices employed in the systems including
actuators. The mid sections represents the cloud service for
data storage. Data from different sensors are read and
registered for storage in the cloud database. The end section of
the figure demonstrates the data analysis, graphical
visualization and online archive of the data from the system.
Wi-Fi module is the gate way for data transmission form the
system to server, enabling synchronized communication over
the different IoT units and transfiguration of data organization
for easy user accessibility through different channels of
multimedia.
Fig. 2. IoT system framework.
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Fig. 3. Schematic of IoT architecture in hydroponic system.
B. System controller unit
System controller unit consists of IoT devices such as
Arduino Mega 2560, sensors, RTC, NodeMCU, actuators and
camera. Arduino Mega is programmed to regulate the
supplementary LED lighting photoperiod by operating in
conjunction with RTC and HL-52S 2 channel relay module.
Relay is activated with 5 V of input sourced from the
microcontroller. Air temperature and relative humidity is
measured using SHT15 sensor housed inside stack of circular
louver adjacent to controller box (see Fig .3). A water proof
temperature sensor is affixed in the nutrient solution tank to
measure and monitor the nutrient temperature. Four ML8511
sensors was mounted at the top of each growing segment for
measuring the solar energy. Surveillance camera with the
capability of online real-time pictorial transmission was
mounted on the system controller stand to keep track of the
physiological growth of the plants.
Weather board was embedded in the system controller unit
to read and receive data from different sensors and transmit to
NodeMCU embedded with ESP8266 Wi-Fi microprocessor.
Data flow from sensors were uploaded to server through local
Wi-Fi network to register the data storage in the database for
evaluation and easy accessibility for the end users. The
schematic of the IoT architecture is illustrated in Fig. 3.
C. Online data transmitter and software application
The principal advantage of the smart system architecture
lies in its ability to monitor and make data accessible to the
users in real time. The system integrated with weather board
and Arduino Mega 2560 which delivers 16 analog pins and
each pin with the capacity to provide 10 bits resolution.
Weather board was regulated at 5V from Arduino connected to
various sensing platforms such as nutrient solution sensor,
temperature and humidity sensor and UV sensors. Data
transmitter used NodeMCU which operated at 3.3V logic to
channel data to the database. RX pin of NodeMCU connected
to TX pin in weather board transmits the analog data at the
baud rate of 9600. Every minute, NodeMCU with 10 bit ADC
transmit the data to the control center through local Wi-Fi
network and then upload to the MySQL cloud database.
Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), JavaScript are embedded in
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to visualize the
accumulated data into line plot for the window display in the
website. Fig. 4 shows the flow chart of the data transmitter
node.
2018 15th International Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology
Fig. 4. Flow chart of transmitter node.
III. EXPERIMENT DETAILS
A. Conditions and materials for plant culture
Coated seeds of Butterhead lettuce (Lactuca Sativa L.) were
germinated before the experiment. Seedlings were transferred
to hydroponic system 7 days after sowing (DAS). Nutrient
solution was disseminated in the system through pump with a
continuous flow rate of 0.058L/s. Electrical conductivity and
pH of the nutrient solution was monitored and maintained
within the range of 1150-1250 μScm-1 and 5.5-6.0,
respectively. Daily average solar irradiance plants received was
70.7 W/m2. The average air temperature, relative humidity and
the temperature level of the nutrient solution was maintained
and recorded at 32.4/29.8 °C (day/night), 76.6 %, 30.7/29.5
°C (day/night) respectively.
B. Supplemental artificial lightning module
The architecture of the hydroponic system was
compartmentalized into four growing segments (see Fig. 3).
First three segments were irradiated with deep red LEDs (640-
660 nm), deep royal blue LEDs (440-450 nm) and combination
of deep red LEDs (640-660 nm) and deep royal blue LEDs
(440-450 nm) with the ratio of (1:1) respectively. Solar
radiation was the sole light source in fourth growing segment.
3 W high power LED chip beads with about 5 years lifespan
were embedded on 20 mm star based aluminum heat sink PCB
for heat dissipation. Constant electric current LED driver of
600 mA were connected to LEDs. The photoperiod of
supplementary lighting treatments was 16-h a day: the
treatment initiated from 4 a.m. till 8 p.m. LED arrays were
stationed 25 cm above the culture PVC pipes.
C. Measurement of plant physiology and chlorophyll (chl)
Measurements included fresh weight (FW), leaf area (LA),
leaf density, dry weight (DW). DW was obtained after drying
lettuce in an electric at 60°C for 3 days. Chl was eluted from
0.1g of FW sample with 20 ml of 80 % acetone solution and
kept in the dark area until the leaves turned white [9]. Optical
density was measured using Spectrophotometer at 663 nm and
645 nm for chl a and chl b respectively [10] from the following
equation [11].
Chl a (mg/l) = 12.7 D663 + 2.69 D645 (1)
Chl b (mg/l) = 22.9 D645 + 0.02 D663
223
D663 = Absorbance of sample at 663 nm
D645 = Absorbance of sample at 645 nm
IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
A. plant growth and morphology
Plants grown under the treatment of blue supplementary
light had the maximum leaf density/plant that was 43.2 % more
than plants under sunlight (see table.1). Likewise, leaf density
of plants treated with red+blue and red supplementary light
were respectively 42.4 % and 23.7 % more compared to plants
grown under the natural light. Leaf density exhibited
quantitative variance from 13 DAS although average leaf count
at 10 DAS was equal. With reference to table.1, the plants
treated with blue supplementary light possessed highest
average LA. Average LA of plants treated with blue, red+blue
and red were, respectively, 62.8%, 57.5% and 56.4 % more
compared to plants cultivated under natural sunlit. Such
demonstration of leaf expansion in response to the irradiance of
blue light during growth validates the interpretation that blue
light stimulates leaf enlargement. Proliferation in leaf density
and enlargement of leaf development occurs largely as the
result of increase in palisade parenchyma [12] and penetration
of light is enhanced by the palisade tissues [13].
TABLE 1. Comparison of growth parameters irradiated under
different light treatments: red LED (R), blue LED (B), red+blue LED
(R+B) and sunlight (S).
Parameters Treatments
R B R+B S
Leaf density 36.5 42.25 42 29.5
LA (cm2) 1855.37 1931.27 1868.21 1186.29
Fig. 5 shows the average FW measurement of plants under
different treatments of lights. Plants treated with blue
supplementary light accumulated greater FW in comparison to
other light source. FW of plants grown under blue, red+blue
and red were respectively 71.5 %, 69.1 % and 64.9 % greater
than plants under sunlight. Supplementary LED light also
affected the accumulation of DW. Fig. 6 shows the result of
shoot DW of plants under different light treatments. Average
DW accumulation of plants treated with blue light was 139.2 %
higher than plants grown under sunlight. Similarly, average
DW of plants treated with red+blue and red supplementary
were respectively, 112.2 % and 51.5 % higher than plants
grown under sunlight. Plants with larger LA had greater
exposure of leaf to photon interception enabling better
accumulation of biomass [10]. Blue light prevents the loss of
energy through the process of photorespiration and stimulates
photosynthesis with the regulation of stomatal opening for
maximum CO2 intake [14].
Fig. 5. Average fresh weight of plants under different treatments.
2018 15th International Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology
Fig. 6. Average dry weight of plants under different treatments.
B. Chlorophyll content
Chlorophyll is a green pigment responsible for captivation
of light for photosynthesis. All plants regardless of the
treatments, had higher chl a content then chl b (see Fig.7). Chl
a plays a vital role in the process of photosynthesis by
conducting excited electrons to sugar manufacturing molecules
[15]. Plants cultured under blue supplementary light contented
highest Chl a and Chl b that were respectively 38.5 % and 46.3
% greater than plants under sunlight. Plants treated with red
supplementary light had lowest chl a and chl b level that were
about 44 % lesser than plants under sunlight. Results show that
chl content of lettuce grown under blue light were significantly
higher than compared to lettuce under other lights. Lettuce
bearing greater accumulation of chl a and chl b would exhibit
better growth because these pigments eradicate reactive oxygen
molecules induced by light, therefore, enabling superior
absorption of light for photosynthesis [15].
V.
Fig. 7. Absorption spectra of chlorophyll a and b under different
treatments.
VI. CONCLUSION
In smart urban farming, crop monitoring and yield are of
paramount importance. In this study, hydroponic culture was
modulated with supplementary LED light and sensor networks
enabled by IoT system for plant monitoring and optimized
production. The system allowed us to do comparative study
and our result indicated that blue supplementary LED light
fostered positive effects on lettuce growth, morphology and
pigment content. Real time system data display and access
enabled by IoT system was successful. This technology proved
suitable and beneficial in urban setting for year round crop
production with precise plant management.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This project was supported by Mahidol University,
National Nanotechnology Center (NANOTEC) and Thailand
International Cooperation Agency (TICA). The authors
gratefully thank the members of Center of Intelligent Materials
and Systems (CIMS) at Mahidol University for their time and
valuable contributions.
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