The 18th International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies (ISCIT 2018)
IoT-based Versatile Platform for
Precision Farming
Theerayod Wiangtong
Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering
King Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand
Emial: theerayod.wi@kmitl.ac.th
Abstract—This paper presents the use of IoT (Internet of
Things) in agriculture such as smart or precision farming. The
versatile controller is developed to monitor and control
temperature and relative humidity in different ways to serve
different types of use. Control methods including timer,
hysteresis control, condition control, can be arranged in
different sequences and periods of time. Eight multifunction
output ports are available for actuators or loads. Results from
real implementation are shown. Temperature and humidity in a
greenhouse can be controlled in predefined ranges to suit with
planting processes. Data on the cloud can be monitored in real-
time on PC or mobile application.
Keywords—IoT, Precision Farming, Embedded System, Cloud
Services
I. INTRODUCTION
Internet of Things (IoT) is an ecosystem consists of the
‘things’ connected to a cloud server through the internet. As
seen in Fig.1 hardware and sensors collect and transfer data
over a network to IoT cloud services without manual
assistance or intervention from human. Users or clients can
access to the cloud to monitor and control remotely.
Embedded technology plays an important role in IoT as a
hardware platform. Today’s technology can reduce the size
also power consumption that extends lifetime of the sensor
nodes. High performance embedded controller can make
decision based on storing or incoming data to efficiently
control its actuators.
Fig. 1. General IoT Architecture
Gartner, the world's leading research and advisory
company, predicts that in 2020 there will be 20 billion IoT
devices deployed and used. Massive data will be collected and
analyzed intelligently using AI (Artificial Intelligent). Lots of
decisions in terms of business, political activity, agriculture
plan and many more will base on data analytic
information.
978-1-5386-8458-0/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Phaophak Sirisuk
International College
King Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand
Emial: phaophak@gmail.com
Advance communication technologies such as NB-IoT,
LoRaWan, or incoming 5G help us to capture data from IoT
devices efficiently. Issues on safety and IoT security are being
addressed and improved continuously.
Many applications based on IoT are carried out such as
smart city, smart grid that increase living quality of mankind.
One of application areas focused on this paper is using IoT in
agriculture that brings technology into crop fields and get
more productive results using less effort. People can sit and
watch their plants growing in a greenhouse all year round.
Temperature, humidity and lights are controlled appropriately
for many types of plants.
This paper presents an IoT control platform for precision
farming. The system is designed for versatile uses such as
temperature and humidity control for greenhouses, food
drying cabinets, hatchery incubators or weather monitoring
stations. The different control methods include timer,
hysteresis control, condition control, can be arranged in
different sequences and periods of time also used with
different types of loads to suit with the plant process. For
example, the wood drying process requires different setpoints
in each drying stage to prevent timber from bending.
II. PREVIOUS WORK
Since the word Internet of Things has been coined. There
are many research works carried out. IoT is a combination of
electronic and information technologies. For agriculture, [1]
provides an overview of Internet of Things (IoT) and data
analytics. Benefits and challenges are addressed. Applications
of using IoT for monitoring in smart farming are shown in [2].
System models of IoT are proposed in [3] for monitoring soil
properties such as temperature, moisture and pH. This
information is used to support advisory models for Pest &
Disease forewarning.
Temperature and humidity are two important parameters
to be controlled in a green house. Many control topologies are
observed and implemented. In [4], the PI (Proportion and
Integral) control is proposed to control a greenhouse using
evaporative cooling system. The system is modelled in
MATLAB/Simulink to simulate and obtain proper gain and
coefficient values in the process. A fuzzy logic controller is
developed in [5] to control a greenhouse. The process of
designing a temperature controller working in discrete time is
described in [6].
This work proposes multiple control methods including
timer, hysteresis control, and conditional control. They can be
combined in run sequentially for any time intervals. This
provides varieties of uses to control many load types used in a
greenhouse. The next section explains a system designed in
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 The 18th International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies (ISCIT 2018)
this work. Section IV demonstrates real implementation
results before conclusions are made in the last section.
III. SYSTEM DESIGN
Hysteresis control also known as a bang–bang control (2
step or on–off control). It is a feedback controller that switches
abruptly between two states, and often used to control a plant
that accepts a binary input and produce two states of outputs
e.g. on and off. For example, a sprinkler pump is either
completely on or completely off trying to keep the inside
humidity between 80%-90% as shown in Fig.2.
Fig. 2. Hysteresis control
‫ ݒ‬ൌ ൅ͳ݂݅‫ ݑ‬൐ ߙሺ‫ݐ݊݅݋݌ݐ݁ݏ݄݄݄݃݅݁ݐ‬ሻ
‫ ݒ‬ൌ െͳ݂݅‫ ݑ‬൏ ߚሺ‫ݐ݊݅݋݌ݐ݁ݏݓ݋݈݄݁ݐ‬ሻ
‫ ߚ݂݄݅݀݁݃݊ܽܿ݊ݑݏ݊݅ܽ݉݁ݎݒ‬൏ ‫ ݑ‬൏ ߙ
Here ‫ ݒ‬is a control signal for actuator, ‫ ݑ‬is a control
parameter such as temperature or humidity. ߚǡ ߙ are two
defined setpoints. Desired control range is between ߚ ൏ ‫ ݑ‬൏
ߙ. For example, to control temperature (‫ ݑ‬ൌ ܶ݁݉‫ )݌‬in a green
house using an air conditioner (cooling action), the
compressor will be turned on ( ‫ ݒ‬ൌ ൅ͳሻ if ܶ݁݉‫ ݌‬൐ ߙ and
turned off (‫ ݒ‬ൌ െͳሻwhen ܶ݁݉‫ ݌‬൏ ߚǤ In case of using a
heater as an actuator (heating action), the system will work in
the other way around. The heater will be turned off (‫ ݒ‬ൌ
൅ͳሻif ܶ݁݉‫ ݌‬൐ ߙ and turned on (‫ ݒ‬ൌ െͳሻwhen ܶ݁݉‫ ݌‬൏ ߚǤ
Naturally, the temperature in atmosphere is changing
slowly and agriculture doesnot require fast control. Hence, the
hysteresis controller can be employed. The temperature or
humidity is regulated and kept between two setpoints, high
and low setpoints. Comparing to a system that uses a single
setpoint, the hysteresis control method can prevent
introducing on and off states very often.
As seen previously in Fig.1, the IoT system consists of a)
hardware and sensors b) cloud services and c) clients. In this
work, they are described in the following.
A. Hardware and sensors
Arduino Mega2560 is used as a hardware platform for
rapid developing with many hardware shields and libraries
supported. It can handle two I2C sensors from Sensirion,
SHT21with ±0.3C and ±2%RH accuracy, for measuring
temperature and relative humidity. Data can be sent to cloud
using ESP2866, a cheap WiFi chip with full TCP/IP stack.
The program, written in C, is developed based on real
requirements from farmers. Apart from temperature and
humidity control, a plant might need a light during the night
or air flow from ventilation fans from time to time to get rid
of CO2. Hybrid control methods proposed in this work are
implemented including 1) loop time control 2) specific time
control 3) temperature hysteresis control 4) humidity
hysteresis control and 5) conditional control.
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• Loop time control: an actuator can be turned on for
some period of time repeatedly. For example, a fan is
turned on for 10 minutes every half an hour.
• Specific time control: an actuator can be controlled at
predefined time intervals. For example, a light bulb is
on at 18:00-22:00 and 01:00-05:00.
• Temperature hysteresis control: it can be both heating
and cooling action. The temperature will be regulated
between two setpoints, e.g. 30-35 degrees.
• Humidity hysteresis control: the relative humidity will
be regulated between two setpoints, e.g. 80%-90%.
An actuator can be humidifier or exhausting fans to
increase and decrease humidity respectively.
• Conditional control: this mode uses the current values
of temperature and humidity compared with setpoints
to define output control states. In this work, there are
9 conditions include XHYH, XHYO, XHYL, XOYH,
XOYO, XOYL, XLYH, XLYO, XLYL. Where parameters
X and Y could be either temperature or humidity.
Subscription H means the current value is higher than
the high setpoint (ߙሻ, O means the current value is in
between the high and the low setpoints (ߚሻ, L means
the current value is lower than the low setpoint. Users
can define on/off state as an output for each condition.
The conditional control mode can be set as hysteresis
control, also can be applied to many scenarios. For example,
instead of using air conditioners, inlet fans can take the
cooling air from outside into a greenhouse if outside
temperature is less than 20oC and inside temperature is greater
than 30oC ሺܶ௢௨௧ ൏ ʹͲܽ݊݀ܶ௜௡ ൐ ͵ͲሻǤ Supposed that X and
Y are defined as outside and inside temperature respectively.
The high setpoints (ߙ) of X and Y are set to 30 oC while the
low setpoints (ߚሻ of X and Y are set to 20 oC. From the 9
conditions, the one that will be set to “1” is XHYL to turn on
the inlet fans. The rest will be “0”.
A TFT 3.5” with the resolution of 480x320 is used for
GUI. Users can see information of each function graphically.
For example, in hysteresis control mode, a graph with high
and low setpoint lines is displayed, and the value of
temperature or humidity is plotted in real-time. In the loop
timer control mode, a circle contains a red sector that indicates
the proportion of time during the on state (see Fig. 3).
Users can command and set parameters via a remote
control. There are 8 output ports connected to Triacs or
mechanical relays to control electrical loads as shown in Fig.4.
Fig. 3. Controller GUI that shows (from left to right, top to buttom)
temperature histeresis control, condition control, loop time control and
specific time control
 The 18th International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies (ISCIT 2018)

Fig. 4. System overview

Fig. 5. Example of function allocation

B. Cloud system As shown in Fig.5, the first stage runs the hysteresis
humidity control mode for 20 hours before changing to the
While the IoT hardware is up and running, there will be a
loop time control mode for 10 hours in the second stage. The
lot of data measured from sensors to be produced. It can be
third stage is set to be again the hysteresis humidity control
stored locally or sent to a cloud system through the internet.
mode for 150 hours. The conditional control and specific time
Data can be stored, processed and analyzed on the cloud.
control modes are in the forth and the fifth stages respectively.
IoT cloud systems called Xively and ThingSpeak are used
The hardware is programmed to read information from
in this work. The former is a platform owned by Google. The
sensors and make decision locally to control the system
latter is an open source IoT application which integrates with
actuator every defined time interval. The values of reading
MATLAB software allowing users can analyze and visualize
temperature and humidity are also sent to the cloud for
uploaded data. Normally cloud systems provide API
monitoring and analyzing in the future.
(Application Programming Interface) functions to store and
retrieve data from the things using the HTTP protocol. To
exploit the cloud services, users have to register to get Channel IV. TEST AND RESULTS
ID and API key for writing and reading data. The hardware This section presents results of running system. First
writes data to the cloud using the writing API key. demonstrate graph monitoring retrieve from the cloud, called
ThingSpeak. Users can login to the system via web browsers
C. Clients and display recorded values in time domain. Values can be
Clients can monitor data in real-time or display historical raw, median or average values, as shown in Fig. 6.
data records via PCs or mobile phones that will be shown in Additionally, it can be exported in Excel files also analyzed
the next section. using MATLAB. Fig. 7 shows applications for monitoring via
android mobiles.
The remote loads can be controlled by clients thru the
could service. However, there must be some feedback The system is implemented and run in a mushroom
information, i.e. from current sensors at loads or relays, to (Oyster Mushroom) greenhouse. Xively is exploited as a
make sure that a controlled load is actually turned on or off. cloud service. Actuators include sprinklers and exhaust fans
Since a command is delivered thru multiple routes in the for humidity and temperature controlling. The room size is
internet and might be lost, this can cause fault controls. This around 12 square meters and 1-day results of no control and
feature must be well designed and integrated in future. controlled plant are compared and shown in Fig. 8a) and Fig.
8b) respectively. As can be seen, temperature and humidity of
D. System control setup: The example no control plant is fluctuated during the day. Temperature is
rising high during the afternoon while humidity is decreasing.
The system hardware, sensors, internet gateway and the
cloud system are brought together to be the IoT-based control
platform for precision farming. Each output control port
connected to an actuator can be set in different types of control
modes. For any output port, it could be set to be one of the 5
function types including 1) the loop time control, 2) the
specific time control, 3) the hysteresis temperature control, 4)
the hysteresis humidity control, and 5) the conditional control.
It can run either for some periods of time or infinitely.
To be versatile or extend platform capability, each control
port can also change its function modes after working for a
while. It can be set to work in 5 consecutive stages. Each stage
can run maximally for 1000 hours. Hence the number of
possible control patterns from the system, that includes 5
control modes, 5 stages and 8 output ports, equals ͷ ൈ ͷ ൈ
ͷ ൈ ͷ ൈ ͷ ൈ ͺ ൌ ʹͷǡͲͲͲǤ
Fig. 6. Temperature and Humidity monitoring in ThingSpeak

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 The 18th International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies (ISCIT 2018)

a) Without control process (1 day)

Fig. 7. Monitoring in Mobile application

The plant with the control process, where the humidity

setpoints are 80% and 90%, and temperature setpoints are 26
and 30 degrees, can maintain the temperature and humidity in
the ranges. Hence the graph in Fig. 8b) is quite flatten. For a
closer look in Fig. 8c), it is similar to Fig.2. The system turns
on and off sprinkler to control humidity in hysteresis control
mode from time to time. To control the temperature, this b) With control process (1 day)
system uses fans or blowers. In fact, there is a mutual
relationship between values of temperature and humidity. We
cannot control one of them solely. For example, water can be
used to increase humidity and decrease temperature at the
same time as we can see a fluctuation of both values.
This control system can be applied for other types of
mushroom such as Cordyceps Militaries, Abalone. It can be
implemented in precision farming for poultry or bird net
which also required temperature and humidity controls.
Actuators might be air conditioners, evaporative cooling
systems, fan inlets and outlets, LED lightings, high pressure
sprinklers.
c) With control process (6 hours zoom-in)
V. CONCLUSIONS
Fig. 8. Temperature and Humidity Result Comparisons
This paper presents the versatile controller developed to
regulate temperature and relative humidity in precision
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