Automated irrigation system with the

integration of internet of things for

agricultural applications
Cite as: AIP Conference Proceedings 2045, 020049 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5080862
Published Online: 06 December 2018

M. V. C. Caya, A. H. Ballado, K. C. Arrogante, et al.

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AIP Conference Proceedings 2045, 020049 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5080862 2045, 020049

© 2018 Author(s).
 Automated Irrigation System with the Integration of
Internet of Things for Agricultural Applications
M V C Caya1,a), A H Ballado Jr.1, K C Arrogante1, R A J Biagtan1, P G S. Cueto1
and B G R Sarmiento1
1
School of Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Engineering, Mapua University, Manila,Philippines
a)
Corresponding author: mvccaya@mapua.edu.ph

Abstract.This paper presents an irrigation system that controls the water distribution and determines the amount of
water to be provided for a given area in the farm. The computed amount of water was based on the data gathered
from the environmental sensors and actuators installed in the farm. Brassica Rapa, or commonly known as Chinese
cabbage were the crop being cultivated when the study was conducted. The system was composed of a
microcontroller with the integration of environmental sensor node and actuator node; the actuator node composed of
rain gauge and flow meter and the sensor node which was composed of temperature and humidity sensor. Each node
serves as an IoT device. A web application presents the environmental parameters being monitored and the controls
of each node and configuration settings for irrigation. It shows the maximum, minimum, current and the average
readings for the temperature and humidity sensor. For the computation of the amount of water for irrigation, it was
based on the Hargreaves –Samani empirical formula for the computation of the daily Reference Evapotranspiration,
ETo.

INTRODUCTION
The Philippines water allotment in agriculture sector for its irrigation is one of the highest, next to the industrial
and domestic uses. In a 2007 report[1], the agriculture sector consumed around 85.27% of the country’s water
supply. Also it was found that agriculture yielded wastewater about 29% of the total wastewater in the country. It
also predicts a water deficit will occur in 2025, that only 1,907 cubic meters of fresh water would be available for
each person per year.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is motivated by growth of the Internet through the addition of physical objects
combined with an ability to provide smarter services to the environment through the acquisition of data. The use of
IoT allows objects to be controlled remotely over a network, creating an opportunity for an interaction between the
physical world and computer-based systems which provides many economic benefits. According to a 2013 CISCO
publication [2], only 0.06% of things that could be connected are connected which means that only about 10 billion
things out of the 1.5 trillion are connected. By 2020, there will be an estimate of 31 billion-50 billion autonomous
internet-connected devices but the Internet of things lack technical standards. According to reports, 26% of the IT
opportunities associated with the Internet of things will be driven by the need to improve the customer’s experience,
and 21% will be driven by the need of more innovations.
The study is the applications of IoT in the field of agriculture particularly in the area of irrigation system. There
are already some studies [3-7] implement the concept of IoT in the fields of agriculture that realized the significance
of the technology. Thus, this work focuses on an irrigation system that controls the water distribution and determines
the amount of water to provide for a given area in the farm.

4th Electronic and Green Materials International Conference 2018 (EGM 2018)
AIP Conf. Proc. 2045, 020049-1–020049-5; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5080862
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1771-7/$30.00

020049-1
 METHODOLOGY
This work focuses on an irrigation system that controls the water distribution and determines the amount of
water to provide for a given area in the farm. The system comprises of sensor node module and actuator node
module. Thus the methodology of the system is presented in the following subsections.

Sensor Node Module

For temperature and humidity measurement we used the DHT22 sensor, which is a capacitive type of sensor that
uses a thermistor to get the temperature of the surroundings and outputs a digital signal that made it compatible with
the raspberry pi that accepts digital signal for processing. It utilizes exclusive digital-signal-collecting-technique and
humidity sensing technology, assuring its reliability and stability. Their sensing element is connected with 8-bit
single-chip computer. We also use a rain gauge to measure the amount of precipitation for a period of time.

Actuator Node Module

For the control of the flow of water, we used the solenoid valve. It has a ½” (Nominal non-taped National Pipe)
outlet and has a minimum pressure requirement of 0.02 Mpa (3 PSI). The valve is normally closed and when
12VDC is applied to the two terminals, the valve opens and water can push through. In controlling the amount of
water to deliver we used a flow meter. It uses a pinwheel sensor to measure how much liquid has moved through it.
By counting the pulses from the output of the sensor, you can easily track fluid movement: each pulse is
approximately 2.25 milliliters.
Figure 1, shows the system block diagram that depicts the overall functionality of the system. The raspberry pi
was used as the main controller of the system. The sensor node module monitors the temperature and humidity that
was used in the computation of the amount of water loss in a per day basis using the sensors daily average
measurement values.

FIGURE 1. System block diagram

The actuator node modules controls the amount of water to be delivered in the crop Brassica Rapa cultivated in
the farm through the drip irrigation setup, wherein the amount of water was based on the Reference
Evapotranspiration (ETo) using the Hargreaves-Samani equation which is an empirical formula in computing the
water loss in the crops. Equation 1 shows the Hargreaves – Samani equation

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 ETo = 0.0135(KT)(Ra)(TD)1/2(TC + 17.8) (1)
Where KT = Empirical Coefficient, TC = Average Daily Temperature, TD = TMAX – TMIN, Ra = Extraterrestrial
Radiation in MJ m-2day-1

Also, this study implements a web-based monitoring system that shows the aggregated value of the
environmental parameters. It is also capable of configuring the system for a scheduled irrigation, wherein a
particular time of the day the irrigation starts. The amount of water is computed based on the amount of water loss
on a daily basis. Also, the system is capable of manual irrigation by remotely turning On/Off the actuator
corresponding to the timestamps.
In the system implementation, this study conducted a comparison of water consumption of traditional irrigation
and the system implementation of the irrigation system with IoT integration. The study has two different set-up -
one for the conventional ways of planting Chinese Cabbage, and the other is the drip irrigation. Two plots of
Chinese Cabbage are planted with an area of 0.5m2. For each plot, it consists of 3 plastic pots.The study was
conducted for more than a month from January 7, 2016 to February 14, 2016. The daily averages of the temperature
and humidity are used to compute for the evapotranspiration and the computed ETo are then become the basis for the
amount of water that will be delivered in the farm with a drip irrigation system setup.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Comparison of the Volume Irrigated of Traditional and System Based was done and result showed that in
average, the traditional system utilized 3 liters of water. As for the system based irrigation, the average amount of
water utilized was 1.39643 liters. Thus , the average amount of water saved was 1.60357 liters, equivalent to
53.4523% volume of water with respect to the measurement used in traditional way.
Growth parameters determines the changes in characteristic of the Chinese Cabbage in which the number of
leaves are both considered for comparison on conventional and system based irrigation. Figure 2 shows the weekly
count of the leaves on the Chinese Cabbage on both the system based and traditional. It started with the same
amount of leaves and also it grows with an almost equal amount of leaves.

FIGURE 2. Number of leaves comparison

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 Figure 3 shows the growth of the plant and as observed the results were almost equal in height on both systems
based and traditional method.

FIGURE 3. Height comparison

The authors used a sample of n=3 for both the systems based and the traditional based irrigation in determining
that if the traditional based irrigation will yield the same results as compared to the systems based. The output shows
that the average leaves of the system based was as compared to the traditional which was 10.33 as shown in Figure
4. With a standard deviation of 1 and a confidence interval of -2.1843 to 1.51763 and a test statistic of -0.5 and
degrees of freedom of 3. Using the t distribution table, based on the values attained, the number of leaves acceptable
since the test statistics fall between the critical values of -3.182 to +3.182.

FIGURE 4. T-Test for Number of Leaves

As for the plants height, based on Figure 5 results showed that the average height on the system based is 200.333
compared to the traditional which is 198. With a standard deviation of 5.68624 and a confidence interval of -7.329
to 11.9956 and a test statistics of 0.67048 and degrees of freedom of 4. Using the student’s t distribution table, based

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on the values gotten, the height acceptable since the test statistics of 0.6705 fall between the critical values of -2.776
to +2.776.

FIGURE 5. T-Test for Height of Plants

CONCLUSION

The implementation of the Irrigation System with the integration of Internet of Things and Reference
Evapotranspiration (ETo) using Hargreaves-Samani empirical equations shows a 53.45% water savings in cultivating
Brassica Rapa with respect to the traditional way of irrigation. In addition, the number of leaves and plant height for
the system based irrigation showed comparable results with the traditional irrigation. The web-based application
gives an alternative way monitoring environmental parameters in the farm and the controlling actuator networks
remotely.

REFERENCES

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Philipp., (2007).
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