FAKULTI TEKNOLOGI KEJURUTERAAN ELEKTRONIK (FTKEN)

EMT445/2 FINAL YEAR PROJECT I PROPOSAL

2020/2021

IOT-BASED WATER MONITORING SYSTEM FOR FRESHWATER PRAWN

NAME: KAM YIT PING

MATRIC NO.: 181031689

SUPERVISOR: DR. SHAIFUL NIZAM BIN MOHYAR

 ABSTRACT

Freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) has becoming one of the important

targeted species in Malaysia and around the globe as it has the potential to increase the economy
of the countries and to raise the profit income among farmers. Freshwater prawn farming also
increases career opportunities in Malaysia and overseas.

The implementation of the project is to monitor, measure and control the water quality for
the production of freshwater prawn in fisheries sector. The most common and manual way that has
been conducted for decades may be working, but it is undeniable non-ideal when it comes to
measure the water quality, collect data and take actions to solve an issue. By using paper and pen
to monitor the freshwater prawn’s pond parameter can be time-consuming, needs extra manpower,
yet inefficient. The traditional technique will have inaccurate data too due to the common human-
error.

This project is to establish an automated IoT-based water monitoring system that uses
technologies like Arduino, sensors and internet for aquaculture farming management. Parameters
like water pH, water quality and water temperature that will affect the production of the freshwater
prawns can be monitored with the aids of the proposed project. Furthermore, with IoT-based
aquaculture water monitoring system, the effectiveness to monitor the freshwater prawn farms will
be increased as the farmers could be monitoring the farms anywhere at any time, in real-time
situation. This will definitely increase the productivity management in prawn farming too.

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 CONTENT

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………….... i

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.0 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………. 1 – 2

1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT………………………………………………….. 2

1.2 OBJECTIVES……………………………………………………………….. 3

1.3 PROJECT SCOPES…………………………………………………………. 3

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….. 4

2.1 PROJECT ELEMENTS...…………………………………………………… 5

2.1.1 MICROCONTROLLER………………………………………………. 4 – 5

2.1.2 PARAMETERS……………………………………………………….. 5

2.1.3 SENSORS……………………………………………………………... 6

2.1.4 WORKING PRINCIPLES……………………………………………. 7

2.2 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………….. 8

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

3.0 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………. 9

3.1 LIST OF COMPONENTS……………………………………………… 10

3.2 FLOWCHART AND SYSTEM CONCEPT……………………………… 10 – 11

GANTT CHART………………………………………………………………….. 12

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………… 13 – 14
 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.0 Introduction

Like many other countries, freshwater prawns (Macrobrachium rosenbergii)

farming is one of the crucial activities for the country’s economic growth. As one of the
vastly rising industries in Malaysia nowadays, aquaculture in rural freshwater prawn
farming may be potentially revolutionized by generating a significant amount of profits for
the farmers. Approximately in 1960, farming of freshwater prawns was initially started in
Malaysia. However, in this day and age, only 400 metric tons of freshwater prawns are
produced annually in Malaysia, while Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia and
Vietnam have a larger prawn harvest compare to Malaysia, almost 40,000 tons to 400,000
tons yearly [1]. Figure 1 shows the unstable production of freshwater prawn in Malaysia
from year 2001 to 2013 [10].

Figure 1 Freshwater prawn production in Malaysia

In order to guarantee a growth production of freshwater prawns and farm profit,

water quality control and monitor must be conducted and practiced. It is an essential action
to monitor and control the maintenance of a healthy reservoir since the survivability and
growth of freshwater prawns are corresponding to the physicochemical and biochemical
parameters of the river water. It is necessary to carry out a periodic monitoring system of
the water quality parameters for achieving the objectives [2].

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 Until this day, Malaysia is still using the manual and traditional method to collect
data of the water quality monitoring in freshwater prawns. The data and measurements of
the water quality are jot down with pen and paper for the posterior analysis. As the world
is now entering into a high-technology era, an alternative and time-saving method can be
implemented in the concept of smart farming with the use of Internet of Things (IoT),
relevant sensors and wireless sensor networks (WSN) to obtain real-time monitoring
capabilities [3]. This alternative method creates a new vision for the direction in which
agriculture or aquaculture farming will be taking place in the future. With the help of IoT
and WSN, farmers will be able to perform better and information-based decisions when
problems like water quality is bad or water pH value is too high or too low occur. IoT-
based farming also helps in increasing freshwater prawns farming productivity and
farmer’s ability to control and monitor the farm’s operation effectively in real-time.

1.1 Problem Statement

The traditional and manual ways of monitoring and controlling the freshwater prawn
parameters may be one of the choices, but it is definitely time consuming and needs more
manpower. On the other hand, traditional way of monitoring may be inefficient. An extra labor
is needed to patrol, monitor and cover the whole freshwater prawn farm. On top of that, using
manpower to monitor and collect data, it is said to be time consuming because the worker needs
to patrol here and there, back and forth from area to area. Moreover, one of the disadvantages
of using the traditional way to collect data using manpower is human-error, and human-error
easily leads to inefficiency.

i. Time-consuming and ineffective method for farmers or workers to patrol from ponds
to ponds to collect data
ii. Manual data collection that uses pen and papers to keep track of the parameters
iii. Unstable production rate of freshwater prawn in Malaysia due to unexpected
occurrence like heavy rainfall or flood that affect the pond’s water without realization

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 1.2 Objectives

The aims of implementing this project are:

i. To build a monitor system for the freshwater prawn farming using technology

➢
IoT-based farming using relevant sensors like pH sensor, water
temperature sensor, water quality sensor (TDS), Arduino will be used to
collect, read and control the input and output data.
ii. To store parameters data in cloud
➢
The data read and collected from the sensors and Arduino will be sent
to the database (Firebase), and to be displayed in the web application
iii. To increase the production +5% of freshwater prawn in Malaysia

➢
Using the proper sensors for proper parameters to monitor freshwater
prawn, it is convenient for farmers to be aware of the water condition
for the freshwater prawn, whether the water is too acidic or alkaline,
temperature is too hot or cold or the water quality is too clear or dirty
for the growth or production of the freshwater prawn

1.3 Project Scopes

One of the scopes of the proposed project is to introduce a smart-monitoring system of

the freshwater prawn farming parameters using IoT-based.

Sensors like pH sensor, water quality sensor and water temperature sensor will be used
for monitoring the appropriate parameters like water quality of freshwater prawn pond. The
sensors will be used to measure the parameters and the data collected will be processed using
Arduino, updated and stored in the Firebase. Last but not least, the data obtained from the
sensors will be depicted in a web application in order to keep the freshwater prawn farmers and
workers in track with the real-time condition.

By using the proposed IoT-based monitoring system, it believes can decrease mortality
rate of the freshwater prawn and therefore increase its production in Malaysia. Then, issues
like time consuming, inefficiency and human-error in data collection and analysis also could
be reduced or overcame.

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 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Introduction

This chapter summarizes about the process of obtaining and gathering related and equivalent
information from existing sources like research papers, journals and articles. The main objective
of this literature review is to study and review of the existing related projects to gain information
and findings in terms of theoretical gaps, methodology and concept.

2.1 Project Element

There are a few elements to be reviewed based on the existing projects in order to
successfully carry off the objectives and to fulfil the purpose of the project. The key elements
for the IoT-based water monitoring system project are microcontroller, parameters, sensors and
working principle. Information have been reviewed and compared from several journals and
articles for this project. Below are the subtopics of the detailed explanation for the reviewed
elements. (Rephrase become shorter)

2.1.1 Microcontroller

One of the best things about Internet of Things (IoT) is that it connects human and the
technology in this hyperlinked world. Microcontrollers are mainly used in the IoT system due
to its tiny size and a smart implementation of a self-contained computer that is hosted on a chip.
Moreover, microcontrollers guarantee the connectivity and control of everything that is
possible to be connected to the internet.

Several existing projects used Arduino to be the main controlling board of their projects,
some used with Raspberry Pi.

Mohammad Salah Uddin proposed the IoT farm monitoring system using Arduino Yun as
its main controller board for the physical layer [4]. Arduino Yun board is set as a middleware
between the cloud layer and sensors because it is used to gather the data collected or detected from
the sensors, process the data and send the current statuses data to the cloud layer [4]. The main
components used in IoT-based automated shrimp farm are Arduino UNO and Raspberry Pi [6].
Atmega328 microcontroller chip is used the Arduino UNO board. Atmega328 is a simple, low
power and low cost with a high-performance microcontroller that uses 8-bit of AVR and RISC
architecture that is widely used in autonomous systems [6].

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The third generation of B model Raspberry Pi is chosen to implement the project for its
powerful processor and additional wireless LAN and Bluetooth connectivity. Next, the author
used NodeMCU ESP12E Controller for the IoT-based aquaculture monitoring system [9].
NodeMCU controller is an open-source for IoT platform with its internal inbuilt Wi-Fi. The
primary features of choosing NodeMCU Arduino is the easy Wi-Fi access point and the
microcontroller [9].

2.1.2 Parameters

Parameters is described as a measurement that defines the conditions of a system

operations. Water is the main source in aquaculture or fisheries sector. Therefore, it is essential
for farmers to have an optimal water quality in fish or shrimp farms. The most commonly
monitored water quality parameters in aquaculture sectors are water temperature, pH, salinity,
dissolved oxygen (DO) and turbidity.

Mohammad Salah Uddin proposed the monitor the parameters of the water pH value,
water salinity, water turbidity, temperature and the DO in shrimp farming. This is mainly
because Bangladesh faces natural calamities like sudden flood, hailstorm and heavy rainfall
every year [4]. These natural disasters bring nothing but harm to the shrimp and other aquatic
animals. For instance, in order to produce healthy shrimps, the water salinity of the shrimp
ponds have to be at its optimal, precise level. But with the unavoidable natural disaster like
excess rainfall or flood, the salinity of the shrimp water pond will be affected to a severe level
of salinity.
[6] proposed a shrimp automated IoT-based monitoring and controlling system with
the parameters of DO, temperature, turbidity and pH of the water as these parameters are the
critical factors that must be taken care of when it comes to aquaculture farming. In [9], N.
Rosaline proposed IoT system is focusing on the parameters of water temperature, ammonia
level, DO, salinity and water level to be monitored in shrimp farming.

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 2.1.3 Sensors

In order to monitor the water quality parameters of the shrimp farming using technology,
sensors are one of the important devices to be used for implementing the project. Sensor is a
device is mainly used to detect or measure physical properties.

Based on 2.1.2, the sensors used to measure the parameters of [4] are pH sensor, salinity
sensor, turbidity sensor, water temperature sensor and DO sensor. Meanwhile, sensors like DO
sensor, turbidity sensor, temperature sensor and pH sensor are used in [6] for the proposed IoT-
based shrimp monitoring project. As for project in [9], the sensors used to measure the parameters
are temperature sensor, ammonia sensor, water level sensor, DO sensor and salinity sensor.

Figure 2 Water quality parameter classification for freshwater prawn [4]

A pH sensor is used to measure the pH range between 0 (most acidic) to 14 (most alkaline)
of the shrimp ponds. The optimal pH range for the freshwater prawn is between 6-8, where the
water is considered as neutral. Water temperature sensor helps to measure the accurate temperature
of the shrimp ponds by dipping the sensor into the water. The optimal water temperature in raring
freshwater prawn is between 25°C - 31°C. A DO sensor is mainly used for monitoring the
respiration of the freshwater prawn in the ponds. The optimal range of DO in water for freshwater
prawn is between 4ppm – 7ppm. As for salinity sensor, salinity is a word used to describe the mass
of dissolved salts in the water. Salinity sensor is used to measure the level of salt in the freshwater
prawn ponds. The optimal salinity level of the ponds shall be 1ppt – 15ppt to guarantee the growth
and production of the freshwater prawn. The salinity of the water ponds is considered acceptable
as long as it is below 30ppt. Farmers need to change the water of the ponds if the salinity exceeds
30ppt of salinity level.

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 2.1.4 Working Principles

According to [4], it is important for have a continuous water quality monitoring system
in real-time in order to ensure the high production of healthy shrimps. The proposed system
consists of three layers, physical layer (hardware), cloud layer and application layer. The IoT-
based monitoring system uses physical device like sensors to perform data collection by
measuring the water quality parameters and Arduino Yun for data transmission operation to
cloud layer. The cloud layer receives and stores all the parameter measurement [4]. Cloud layer
performs real-time data analysis, and provides demand data visualization and notification
services too [4]. Lastly, the data in cloud layer is sent to web application to show the real-time
data in charts or gauges form.

The proposed system in [6] comprises of three main sections:

i. Microcontroller-based monitoring system (Arduino UNO),
ii. Single board computer-based data logging system (Raspberry Pi) and
iii. User alerts (Telegram).

In the first section, the Arduino UNO as the microcontroller collects all the parameters
information from the farm using sensors. Arduino UNO is connected to the Raspberry Pi in
serial connection, and Raspberry Pi is connected to the actuators and internet [6]. The data
collected from the farms are stored in the SD card. Lastly for the interface section, author
proposed to display the data through a mobile application called Telegram. Farmers or users
will receive notification alerts for the abnormality of the cultivation farm through Telegram.

The implementation of the IoT-based monitoring and control system proposed in [9]
setup the sensors in the ponds for farming system observation purpose. The parameters
measurements are detected instantly and send into the cloud through NodeMCU ESP12E. The
cloud receives and stores the information and uses to check the parameters’ range. If the
readings are below or above than the optimal range, an alert message will be sent to the user
through mobile app or web app interface. The measurements from the sensors are taken every
5 seconds [9]. In the proposed system, users may request to check on any parameter they want
to know and the requested parameter will be displayed through the desired interface.

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 2.2 Conclusion

Table 1 shows the comparison between references of [4], [6] and [9] in terms of microcontroller used, parameter measurements, sensors used and the
complexity of the system concept.

Table 1 Comparison between reviewed references

Parameter
Ref Microcontroller Sensors Complexity Integration system Problem/Limitation Cost
measurements

pH sensor,
Water pH value,
Salinity sensor, Arduino YUN alone is
[4] salinity, turbidity, Normal $$
Turbidity sensor, expensive
temperature & DO
DO sensor
Arduino YUN

Communication range is
DO sensor,
Water DO, limited.
Temperature sensor,
[6] temperature, Normal Actuator worldwide $$$
turbidity & pH Turbidity sensor,
control from the farmers
Arduino UNO + pH sensor is not provided.
Raspberry Pi
Water temperature
Water Communication range is
sensor,
temperature, limited.
Ammonia sensor,
[9] ammonia level, High Complexity of system $$
DO sensor,
NodeMCU DO, salinity & designation and
Salinity sensor,
ESP12E water level integration.
Water level sensor

These three references share almost similar concept of the IoT-based monitoring system for shrimp or aquaculture farming system. Based on the
Table 1, I decided to make implementation on my proposed project based on Ref [4] as the system matches almost the same concept to my IoT-based
monitoring system for freshwater prawn. The other reasons for choosing Ref [4] is because the complexity of the system integration is simpler than [6]
and [9].
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 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY
3.0 Introduction

Generally, IoT-based monitoring system for freshwater prawn is an Arduino-based project

that uses Arduino hardware and software products on account of Arduino’s efficient and
reliable products. This proposed project will be implemented using NodeMCU ESP32 as its
primary operating system as it has a built-in Wi-Fi module integration and NodeMCU ESP32
is capable for data interchange between input and output operation. Wi-Fi module is crucial for
IoT-based project because it is a system that links the hardware devices to the internet and
allows data to be transferred through cloud network. Furthermore, this project focuses more on
the water quality of the freshwater prawn ponds. In order to have healthy production of
freshwater prawn, the water quality of the ponds must always be maintained under an optimal
condition. To guarantee the optimum water quality, this project is implemented to read and
monitor three main water parameters, which are pH value of the water, the temperature of the
water pond and the total dissolved solids (TDS) in the water for the production of healthy
freshwater prawn.

Figure 3 Illustration concept of IoT-based monitoring system for freshwater prawn

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3.1 List of Components

Table 2 List and price of the components

Price per unit Total Price
N Component Quantity (MYR) (MYR)
1 NodeMCU ESP32 1 unit 29.00 29.00
2 pH Sensor 1 unit 205.00 205.00
3 Water Temperature Sensor 1 unit 45.00 45.00
4 Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Sensor 1 unit 25.00 25.00
5 Jumper wires Male-to-Female 1 set 2.50 2.50
6 Jumper wires Female-to-Female 1 set 2.50 2.50
7 Jumper wires Male-to-Male 1 set 2.50 2.50
311.50

3.2 Flowchart and System Concept

Figure 4 IoT-based monitoring system flowchart

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 Figure 4 shows the working principle flowchart of IoT-based water monitoring system
for freshwater prawn.

The flowchart of the proposed project starts with setting up pH sensor, TDS sensor and
water temperature sensor into the water of the freshwater prawn pond. The water quality is
being measured and read by the three sensors, and the measurements obtained will be sent to
the Firebase via the Wi-Fi module built in the NodeMCU ESP32 microcontroller. Users may
surf into the web application that is purposely designed for displaying the readings that are
stored in Firebase.

The designed web application will display the water quality of the freshwater prawn
ponds in real-time in terms of the water pH value, temperature and total dissolved solids in the
water. It is important for the water quality to be maintained at its optimal conditions for a high
healthy production of freshwater prawn. In this water monitoring system, the web application will
be displaying three readings: pH, TDS and temperature of the water. The data values will be
displayed in RED if the sensors measurements fall under these conditions:
Specification:
1. pH value is less than 6 or more than 8.
2. TDS value is below 200ppm or above 217ppm.
3. Water temperature in lower than 25°C or higher than 31°C.

If any on the conditions occurred in the web application displays, farmers will be first
to know and will have the advantages of taking the proper actions to solve the problems such
as changing the water of the ponds. Otherwise, when the water quality is measured and all the
data are in the suitable range, the data display in web application will be depicted in GREEN
indicating the freshwater prawns are living under the perfect water conditions.

This water monitoring system for freshwater prawn will be a huge help for farmers to
monitor and take proper actions to produce the healthiest freshwater prawns to the community.

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Gantt Chart

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References

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[2] A. A. H. Alazzani, (2020, August). IoT Based Automated Shrimp Farm Aquaculture
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 [9] N. Rosaline, Dr. S. Sathyalakshimi, “IoT Based Aquaculture Monitoring and
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