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Automatic pH and Humidity Control System for Hydroponics Using Fuzzy

Logic

Conference Paper · October 2019

DOI: 10.1109/IC3INA48034.2019.8949590

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 2019 International Conference on Computer, Control, Informatics and its Applications

Automatic pH and Humidity Control System for

Hydroponics Using Fuzzy Logic
Hanif Fakhrurroja
Technical Implementation Unit for
Instrumentation Development
Indonesian Institute of Sciences
Bandung, Indonesia
hani002@lipi.go.id
Syahidul Akbar Mardhotillah Oka Mahendra
School of Computing Technical Implementation Unit for
Telkom University Instrumentation Development
Bandung, Indonesia Indonesian Institute of Sciences
akbar.syahidul@gmail.com Bandung, Indonesia
oka.mahendra@lipi.go.id

Aris Munandar Muhammad Ilham Rizqyawan Rian Putra Pratama

Technical Implementation Unit for
Instrumentation Development
Indonesian Institute of Sciences
Bandung, Indonesia
aris001@lipi.go.id
Technical Implementation Unit for
Instrumentation Development
Indonesian Institute of Sciences
Bandung, Indonesia
muha176@lipi.go.id
Technical Implementation Unit for
Instrumentation Development
Indonesian Institute of Sciences
Bandung, Indonesia
rian018@lipi.go.id

Abstract— Hydroponics is a system of growing plants using
water as the media without involving other planting media such
as soil. Hydroponics becomes one of the options for people to
grow crops with minimal land. Hydroponics requires sufficient
care because the conditions needed by the plant cannot depend
on the elements found in the soil like conventional farming in
general but directly controlled by the system. The most
important conditions for hydroponics are pH and humidity. To
control the levels of these conditions, the proposed hydroponic
system is built using water pumps, an exhaust fan, and sensors
that can be monitored in real-time. In this research artificial
intelligence, the fuzzy logic has been added into the system,
hence it works automatically to provide pH and humidity
needed by hydroponic plants.
Keywords—hydroponic, fuzzy logic, pH, humidity, control
system
I. INTRODUCTION
Hydroponics has become one of the popular methods for
those who want to grow a plant in the narrow field, such as
urban areas. By 2030, the United Nations (UN) predicts 60%
of the human population will live in an urban area [1]. If this
happens, the reduction of agricultural land will become
unavoidable since most of it will be converted to a
metropolitan area. That is when the hydroponics become a
solution. Hydroponics is a system of growing plants using
water as the media without involving other planting media
such as soil. Like any other type of planting, nutrition is very
important in hydroponics. With the urban busy lifestyle,
automatic nutrition control becomes a challenge in developing
this type of system.
require a more complex control system. Therefore, fuzzy logic
is a suitable method for this problem because it deals with
fuzziness without adding complexity [4].
In this paper, we present a design of an automatic pH and
humidity control system for hydroponics using fuzzy logic.
Ipomoea aquatica forsk or as known as water spinach is used
as the crop subject. This plant is one of the most important
vegetables in South-East Asia, especially in Indonesia [5].
Fuzzy logic is used as artificial intelligence to control and
decide pH level in the solution. The process is performed in
the microcontroller which acts as the hardware to process the
data, control the actuator and to send the data to the webserver.
II. RELATED WORKS
Plant growth control systems are characterized by
complexity and fuzziness. Fuzzy logic can be used as a
method to represent, manipulate, and apply heuristic
knowledge to control the system [6]. They have high potential
to handle complex systems with high flexibility of control and
learning. Fuzzy logic and feedback control based on neural
networks can be applied to a pH control system of nutrient
solution in hydroponic culture [7]. An important factor in
hydroponics is controlling the pH value at the appropriate
level for overall planting time. The application of fuzzy logic
controls can be used to automatically control pH values [8].
Nutritional requirements can be met automatically using fuzzy
logic and can be monitored in real-time [9]. The system is built
using microcontroller so it can be applied on a large scale[10].
III. SYSTEM DESIGN

Electric conductivity, pH, and water temperature are the
parameters that need to be controlled in the hydroponic
nutrient solution. By keeping the pH at the optimum level, the
crops will be easier to absorb the nutrient from the solution
[2]. However, controlling the pH value in the nutrient solution
is not easy, as the pH usually changes easily due to ion
absorption by the crop roots [3]. Because of this, the control
becomes complex and fuzzy.
There are several ways to overcome this challenge. We
could use traditional control with threshold to give a command
to the actuator, but it will be difficult to obtain an exact value
the system needs accurately as it could not deal with the
fuzziness. We could use a proportional–integral–derivative
controller (PID controller) to address the fuzziness, but it will
A. System Model
Fig. 1 shows the model of a hydroponic system with fuzzy
logic intelligence using microcontroller. The system has been
built using DHT22 and pH sensors to obtain values from
room humidity and pH values in water, respectively. The
microcontroller used in this system is the Arduino Nano and
Raspberry Pi 3 model B.
Fig. 2 shows a block diagram of the system. Humidity and
pH sensors work to obtain the values of air humidity and water
pH, respectively, to be read by the Arduino Nano.
Furthermore, Raspberry Pi retrieves the data using serial
communication with the Arduino Nano.

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

c
978-1-7281-5540-1/19/$31.00 2019 IEEE 156
 Fig. 1. System design of the pH and humidity control system using fuzzy logic

Fig. 2. Block diagram of the system

The proposed system is made as simple as possible but
enough to maintenance the good condition for the plant.
Instead of using four solutions as in [8], we only use single
weak acid (nitric) to decrease the pH. We do not use the
solution to increase the pH because healthy and feeding plants
should naturally raise the pH. To maintenance humidity, only
an exhaust fan is used instead of intake and exhaust fans.
We collected the pH and humidity data from the sensor.
The obtained data is then uploaded to the Ubidots web server
and processed by Raspberry pi by using fuzzy logic with
predetermined rules. The data can be viewed using browser in
personal computer (PC) or cellular phone.

157
B. Fuzzy Rule
Table 1 and Table 2 show the fuzzy rules applied to the
hydroponic system as the duration controller of the actuator
for the nutrients needed by the plant. Value of 0.2 min, 0.4
min, and 0.6 min for short, medium, and long respectively.
The defuzzification method used is the weighted average
method. This method takes the average value by using a
weighted degree of membership defined as follows:
Fig. 4. Membership function trapezoid for pH
∗ (1)

where y is crisp value and µ(y) is a membership degree of crisp

value y.

TABLE 1. FUZZY RULES FOR WEAK ACID ACTUATOR

pH Fig. 5. Membership function trapezoid for humidity

Acidic Normal Alkaline/base
Duration Short Medium Long As can be seen in Fig. 4, the membership functions of pH
are:
TABLE 2. FUZZY RULES FOR EXHAUST FAN ACTUATOR
• pH is acid when the value of pH ≤ 5.5;
• pH is normal when the value of 5 ≤ pH ≤ 7;
Humidity Dry Normal Wet • pH is base when the value of pH ≥ 6.5.
Duration Short Medium Long The membership function of humidity as shown in Fig. 5
are:

C. Membership Function • Humidity is dry when the RH (Relative Humidity)

The membership function used in this research is the
trapezoid membership function. This function has several
values of x having a membership degree equal to 1 [11]. Fig.
3 shows Trapezoidal membership function graph.
Fig. 3. Trapezoidal membership function graph
Mathematical notation of trapezoidal function:
value is ≤70;
• Humidity is moist when the RH value is 60 ≤ RH ≤
90;
• Humidity is wet when the RH value is ≥80.
The values of normal pH and humidity are based on the
normal value for Water spinach as stated in [13].
In this case, the fuzzy rule used is the Sugeno model [12].
Sugeno membership function is Singleton, which is a
membership function which has membership degree 1 on a
single crisp value and 0 on all other crisp values.
Fig.6 shows membership function singleton for actuator
duration. The actuator duration will be turned on during the
Weighted Average Method defuzzification calculation with a
value of 0.2 min, 0.4 min, and 0.6 min for short, medium, and
long respectively. This actuator is used to control the exhaust
fan and the weak acid pump. The on-duration of these
actuators are need to be tuned in experiment, because they
depend on the room, plant area, and nutrition dose.

0, ,
,
trapezoid , , , (2)
1,
,
Where x is:
• 0 when x ≤ a and x ≥ d Duration (Minutes)
• (x - a) / (b - a) when a <x <b Fig. 6. Membership function singleton for actuator duration
• 1 when b ≤ x ≤ c
• -(x - d) / (d - c) when c <x ≤ d The flowchart in Fig. 7 shows the complete flow of the
fuzzy processes.

158
 IV. RESULT AND EVALUATION
Fig. 8, 9, 10, and 11 below are the result graphs of testing
conditions on pH and room humidity. The testing was
conducted for several days on the hydroponic system with
fuzzy logic embedded in it. The growth condition of Water
Spinach is shown in Table 3. Its physical appearance can be
seen in Fig. 12 and 13.

TABLE 3. GROWTH RATE RESULT

Avg. Avg.
pH
Day Height Num of Notes
Value
(cm) Leaves
2 5.72 - - Sprouts began to break
Roots, stems, and leaves
4 5.63 1 - begin to grow, but some are
still covered in seeds
Already has all its parts and
10 6.22 6 3
release the seed shell
Grows in good condition
but leads more towards the
16 5.96 13 8
window (natural light
source)
The stem of the water
spinach is increasingly
23 5.76 20 8
winding toward the light
source
The stem of the water
spinach is increasingly
27 6.1 25 8
winding toward the light
source
The water spinach is long
and ready to be harvested
Fig. 7. Flowchart of the fuzzy logic process 30 5.94 28 8
but the growth of stems is
not straight

Fig. 8. Result testing of pH value in 3 days

Fig. 9. Result testing of pH value in 1 day

159
 Fig. 10. Result testing of pH value in 7 minutes

Fig. 11. Result testing of humidity value in 3 days

Based on the obtained results, a hydroponic system using

fuzzy logic is excellent in controlling water pH. As can be
seen in Fig. 8, 9, and 10 the pH condition is quite stable in the
range of 5.5–6.5. The responsive fuzzy control is visible in fig.
8 and 9. When the pH is at a point outside of the optimal state,
the algorithm directly performs its duty as a decision-maker
for the actuator to return the condition back to its optimum
state. The obtained data sent to Ubidots webserver as shown
in Fig. 14.

Fig. 12. Growth of Water Spinach in 10 days Fig. 13. Growth of Water Spinach in 23 days

160
 Fig. 14. Ubidots web server as visualization of pH and humidity data
The nutritional needs are well-met, as marked by the good
growth of the water spinach shown in Table 3. Despite the
good growth of the plants, there is a thing needs to be noted.
The growth of the stem turns in the direction of sunlight, even
though there are ultraviolet (UV) lamps placed on top of the
plant. The experiment conducted in the indoor space, with the
UV lamps as the main light source. But apparently, the light
from the UV lamps is not sufficient for the plants as its search
for the natural lights seeps from the windows as shown in Fig.
12 and 13.
V. CONCLUSION
Although nutrients for plants are always sufficient, pH and
humidity affect the rate of crops that cause the plant conditions
are not growing properly. The proposed hydroponic system
controls using fuzzy logic is excellent to ensure the water pH
condition and room humidity remains in the optimum state.
Hydroponic research should be conducted outside the room or
inside the greenhouse so that other determinants of growth rate
are also fulfilled.
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