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DEVELOPMENT OF MONITORING SYSTEM OF

AUTOMATIC PLANT IRRIGATOR

Patricia Anak Pati

Bachelor Of Electrical Engineering

June 2013

“ I hereby declare that I have read through this report entitle “Development of monitoring

system of Automatic palnt irrigator” and found that it has comply the partial fulfillment for

awarding the degree of Bachelor of Electrical Engineering( Control, Instrumentation &

Automation”

Signature : .......................................................

Supervisor’s Name : .......................................................

Date : .......................................................

DEVELOPEMT OF MONITORING SYSTEM OF AUTOMATIC PLANT

IRRIGATOR

PATRICIA ANAK PATI

A report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (Control, Instrumentation & Automation)

Faculty of Electrical Engineering

UNIVERSITI TEKNIKAL MALAYSIA MELAKA

YEAR 2013

I declare that this report entitle “Development of monitoring system of automatic plant

irrigator” is the result of my own research except as cited in the references. The report has

not been accepted for any degree and is not concurrently submitted in candidature of any

other degree.

Signature : ...........................................................

Name : ...........................................................

Date : ...........................................................

To my beloved mother and father

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The special thanks to my helpful supervisor, Mr ,ohd Riduwan B Md Nawawi for

his cooperation and patients in guiding me to accomplish the Final Year Project (FYP).

Without his continued support and interest, this project would not have been same as

presented here.

To my parents and my friend, your moral supports are highly appreciated. Thank

you for all of your supports and prayers that helped me a lot to go through this project.

Thanks for their encouragement, love and emotional supports that they had given to me.

Last but not least, I would like to express my thanks towards all the Faculty of

Electrical Engineering (FKE) Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) lecturers and

staffs for their efforts in conducting the FYP 2 successfully. Thank You.

ABSTRACT

Irrigation is of the method to watering the plant and to improve the quality of crops.

Automatic irrigation is a modern method that used for watering vegetables, fruits and farm

crops. This project paper will describe “automatic plant irrigator” designed by using

microcontroller. The main purpose of this project is to design an automatic watering

device by sensing the soil conditions. In addition, the project also aims to design a soil

moisture sensor that can be easily integrated with a microcontroller. To achieve this

objective, some research and studies has been done in some previous similar project.

Based on the review, the methodology that used in this project are divide into two, which is

hardware and software parts. Both development are involving design, experimentation,

simulation and construction to get an expected result which meets the project objective.

Data analysis for this project will proceed after the completion of the hardware and the

software procedure. This is for the purpose to ensure the project can achieve the objective

and also to ensure the reliability of the system.

.

ABSTRAK

Pengairan merupakan satu kaedah yang digunakan untuk menyiram tumbuhan dan untuk

meningkatkan kualiti tanaman. Pengairan secara automatic adalah merupakan kaedah

moden yang digunakan untuk menyiram sayur-sayuran, buah-buahan dan tanaman ladang.

Kertas projek ini menerangkan “pengairan tanaman secara automatik” yang direka dengan

menggunakan mikropengawal. Tujuan utama projek ini adalah untuk mereka bentuk

peranti air secara automatik dengan mengesan keadaan tanah. Di samping itu, projek ini

juga bertujuan untuk mereka bentuk pengesan kelembapan tanah yang boleh dengan

mudah di-integrasikan dengan mikropengawal. Untuk mencapai matlamat ini, beberapa

penyelidikan dan kajian telah dilakukan dalam beberapa projek yang sama sebelumnya.

Berdasarkan kajian, kaedah yang digunakan dalam projek ini adalah terbahagi kepada dua

bahagian, iaitu perkakasan dan bahagian-bahagian perisian. Kedua-dua pembangunan

yang melibatkan reka bentuk, eksperimen, simulasi dan pembinaan untuk mendapatkan

hasil yang diharapkan bagi memenuhi objektif projek. Analisis data untuk projek ini akan

diteruskan selepas perkakasan dan prosedur perisian lengkap. Ini adalah bagi tujuan untuk

memastikan projek ini boleh mencapai matlamat dan juga untuk memastikan

kebolehpercayaan sistem.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER TITLE PAGE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES x

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xi

LIST OF APPENDICES xii

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Motivation 1

1.2 Problem statement 2

1.3 Project objectives 3

1.4 Project scope 4

2 LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Introduction 5

2.2 Soil Moisture Sensor 6

2.3 PIC Microcontroller 7

2.4 irrigation system 7

2.5 Soil moisture monitoring software 8

2.6 Soil water percentage experiment 9

CHAPTER TITLE PAGE

3 METHODOLOGY 10

3.1 Introduction 10

3.2 Project flow 13

3.3 hardware development 14

3.3.1 Sensing unit 15

3.3.2 Controller unit 20

3.3.3 Action unit 22

3.4 Software development 25

3.4.1 Programming the Arduino Uno 26

3.4.2 Build the LCD display 31

3.5 Experiment percentage soil water 33

3.5.1 Experiment of equipment and precautions 34

3.5.2 Procedure for experiment 35

3.5.3 Procedure to make the probe material selection 36

CHAPTER TITLE PAGE

4 RESULT AND ANALYSIS 38

4.0 Introduction 38

4.1 The sensor circuit and scaling 39

4.1.1 The Testing and Construction of the Sensing Circuit

with Processing unit 39

4.1.2 Sensor scaling 42

4.1.3 Exploiting the graph 49

4.2 Experiment to test the probe for whole day 51

4.3 Discussion 64

4.3.1 Result from graph 64

4.3.2 Copper versus Stainless steel 64

4.3 Hardware 65

5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 69

5.1 Conclusions 68

5.2 Recommendations 70

REFERENCES 70

APPENDICES

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE TITLE PAGE

3.1 LCD Display Pin Description 32

3.2 Table for experimental results of soil water content 35

4.1 Comparison of Voltage Measured between sensor by cytron,

copper probe and stainless steel probe (Voltage divider circuit) 41


copper probe and stainless steel probe (Operational Amplifier) 41


copper probe and stainless steel probe (Bridge circuit) 42

4.4 Result from soil water percentage experiment (sensor by cytron) 43

4.5 Result from soil water percentage experiment using

voltage divider (Copper probe) 43

4.6 Result from soil water percentage experiment using voltage

divider (stainless steel probe) 44

4.7 Result from soil water percentage experiment (sensor by cytron) 45


operational amplifier (Copper probe) 45


operational amplfier (stainless steel probe) 46

4.10 Result from soil water percentage experiment (sensor by Cytron) 47


bridge circuit ( Copper probe) 47


bridge circuit ( Stainless Steel probe) 48

4.13 Result from soil water percentage experiment ( sensor by Cytron) 51


operational amplifier circuits ( Copper probe) 52


operational amplifier circuit ( Stainless steel probe) 52



divider circuit ( Copper probe) 54


voltage divider circuit ( Stainless steel probe) 54


4.20 Result from soil water percentage experiment



bridge circuit ( Stainless steel probe) 56



operational amplifier circuit( Copper probe) 58


operational amplifier circuit ( Stainless steel probe) 58



divider circuit ( Copper probe) 60


divider circuit ( Stainless steel probe) 60





bridge circuit( Stainless steel probe) 62

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE TITLE PAGE

3.1 Project chart 12

3.2 Hardware Block diagram 14

3.3 Voltage Divider circuit (Mike McRoberts ,

Arduino Starter Kit Manuals, Earth Shine Design, 2009) 15

3.4 Operational Amplifier circuit

(The Emitter follower or The Common Collector Amplifier) 16

3.5 Bridge circuit 17

3.6 Sensor Circuit Simulation using Multisim Software 18

3.7 Sensor Bridge Circuit Simulation using Multisim Software 18

3.8 Sensor probe made from copper 19

3.9 Sensor probe made from stainless steel 20

3.10 Arduino Uno (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoradUno) 21

3.11 LCD display (www.cytron.com.my) 21

3.12 Automatic Plant Irrigator Display 22

3.13 Water pump control circuit 23

3.14 240V Water Pump 24

3.15 Dripping system (www.hydroponics-simplified.com) 25

3.16 Software Flowchart 26

3.17 Arduino 1.0.4 IDE-27

3.18 Flowchart for Arduino program 28

3.19 Basic coding to display analog reading 29

3.20 The Arduino program to handle water pump

3.21 Picture of LCD Display 31

3.2 LCD Display Schematic Diagram 33

4.1 The System Schematics 40

4.2 Value in bit measure by Arduino 41

4.3 Graph of measured voltage versus water percentage for

voltage divider circuit 44

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoradUno

http://www.cytron.com.my/

4.4 Graph of measured voltage versus water percentage

for operational amplifier circuit 46

FIGURE TITLE PAGE

4.5 Graph of measured voltage versus water percentage for bridge circuit 48

4.6 Linear trend line for voltage divider circuit 50

4.7 Linear trend line for operational amplifier circuit 50

4.8 linear trend line for bridge circuit 51











4.15 Control unit 66

4.16 Overall view of the circuit 66

4.17 Soil moisture sensor 67

4.18 Overall view of the project 67

1

Introduction

1.1 Background

Irrigation is a very important process when it involves agricultural activities. Irrigation

system is an essential important element for plant growth. It is also one of the major impacts

in the cultivation of crops because it will affect the growth of crops. Irrigation in agriculture

term is defined as an artificial application of watering of the arable land or soil.

Water is most important to our life and we cannot survive without it. Water also is

essential ingredient of plant. Most of gardener usually uses manual technique to watering

their plant. This technique system is inefficient. Sometime, the possibility to over watering is

high when use this technique.

In order to overcome this problem, Automatic plant irrigator is used. Automatic plant

irrigator or better known as an automatic plant watering system is a system that is introduced

not only provide a programmable watering system but also a continuous monitoring system.

The main goal of this project is to design an automatic plant irrigator where the system is

equipped with a reliable soil water level or moisture sensor. This system is applicable for

small or medium agricultural-industry. This system will be divided into three main units

which are sensing element, control element and final control element. Sensor such as soil

moisture detector are use to control the watering system

2

1.2 Problem statement

Gardening is an activity which is very suitable for all age. A good irrigation system is

very important element and most labor intensive task in the daily operation. The two

important aspect of irrigation is knowing when and how much to water. Even so, a proper or

scheduled watering may not always be performed due to one’s tight working hours or fitness.

Furthermore, the plant water consumption is not fixed. It depends on some factors which may

affect the plant growth.

Nowadays, automatic plant irrigator system is commonly applied in agriculture such as

domestic gardening. In this industry, automatic plant irrigator system usually used to supply

water to maintain soil moisture so plants can grow well.

Unfortunately, there are still gardeners or farmers who maintained use manually

watering technique because not all of them afford to buy the system. Over-watering possibility

would occur if this manual process is still practiced. It will caused the plants drown if supply

too much water for them. Sometime this manual technique also make the process water late

reaches or does not reach the roots of plants and this will cause the plant get dried. Lack of

water can be harmful to the plant or even can render it withered. The effect of this lack of

water can also slow down the process of plant growth and will also affect the light weight of

the plants. In the conventional system, farmers also need monitor the irrigation timetable, as

each plant has a different time in terms of watering time.

Furthermore, not all gardeners are familiar with the system specifications. Not all

farmers or gardeners have the skill or knowledge in the operation of the system. This will

make it difficult for them to operate the system properly. Most of the farmers also don’t have

any experience to deal with those in the irrigation system to get better ways to manage their

crops easily.

In this fast-paced world, people need everything to be automatic. Current lifestyle

demands everything becomes easy to control. In this advance electronic world, human life

3

should be simpler. Therefore, to make life easier and more convenient, we have to make

“automatic plant”.

An automatic plant irrigation monitoring system is the good solution to overcome this

problem. This irrigation system is not only provides a good hydration system for plant but

also provides the controller that allows the user to set their irrigation system operation. Users

also can set the level of moisture that is allowed according to the specification in the soil so

their crops will always have a maintained moisture level.

With an availability of a simple user-friendly monitoring display, this system provides

a display that can be easily understood by anyone who uses it. In additional, this type of

technology is very helpful in terms of better productivity and reducing the burden on farmers

and gardeners.

1.3 Project objective

1. To design reliable soil moisture sensor

2. To compare the sensitivity of two type of sensor probe that was made of stainless steel

and copper

3. To provide a system that can help monitor plant growth by reducing the manual

monitoring system.

4

1.4 Project Scope

This project focuses to the low cost automatic plant irrigator design. The project involves

the evolution of manually watering techniques to automatic watering techniques. The

controlling automatic watering system in an agricultural. Some scope and limitation have

been set to complete this project in a more systematic and organized.

Sensor used to control the watering system is soil moisture sensor. Soil moisture

sensor will be buried in the soil to a depth of about 3cm. The distance between the two rods in

the probe is 2cm. The soil will be tested in three condition which is dry condition, optimum

condition and

Dry condition

The sensor will be placed in dry soil conditions and embedded at a predetermined depth. In

dry soil conditions, the sensor will be in the high resistance value because there is no

conduction path between the two stainless steel/copper rods.

Optimum Condition

When water is added to the soil, it will spread across every layer of soil due to capillary force.

This can cause increases in soil moisture content. The resistance value of the sensor decrease

due to the conductive path is formed between the two rods.

There are several software will be used, the software is livewire that been used to simulated

the circuit. The second software that will be used in this project is Visual Basic 6 that will be

used to implement a graphical user interface for PIC as the system controller.

5

Chapter 2

Literature review

2.1 Introduction

Literature review is a section that being responsible for imparting requires information

on the project which entitled “development of automatic plant irrigator system”. There are a

lot of researches that have been done involving plant watering system. Each part of the

system has its own features. Some part of the system might be available on the market.

Some of the problems that often arise are most cost-watering quite expensive on the

market. Financial factors seem is one of problem or obstacle to many gardeners or farmer

who have small-scale plants to run the application of this technology in their mechanization.

Therefore, this chapter aims to gather all the information in the design of user friendly and low

cost in the automatic watering applications.

In this chapter, the matters to be discussed are the design procedure and the

construction of an automatic irrigation system. This discussion will be into several topics in

order to facilitate a better understanding of the criteria used for this system.

6

2.2.Soil moisture sensor

Sensor is a device which used to measure a physical quantity and convert this

information into a signal that can be read by the observer or a tool. [1]

The Sensor converts one form of energy into another form because the sensor is a

transducer. For this reason, the sensor is categorized according to the type of energy transfer

that they detected. Soil moisture measurement provides very useful information to agriculture,

such as agriculture farm, soil stability, soil moisture and construction activities. [2]

The probe selection for sensor is very important. This is because the material that used

in the probe. Sensor sensitivity is depending on the material that used to construct the probe.

Usually, soil moisture sensor refers to the resistance of the soil. Water is a good electric

conductance. Generally, if the soil is wet, the resistance between the probes is low and vice

versa [3].

Gypsum block is a product of the low cost soil moisture monitoring. Their low cost

and ease of interpretation make this block is particularly suitable for seasonal crops. There are

two electrodes embedded in the gypsum block. When gypsum wet, it will conduct electric

easily and when gypsum dry, it is a poor conductor. A pair of electrode within the block will

measure the change in the resistance. It is possible directly using a pair of electrode measure

the resistivity in the soil but the measurement will influence by changes in soil conductivity

brought about by salt and other ingredients. The ion gypsum provided a buffer against the

effects of salt and nutrients. It is very effective for prevention of salt ions from reaching the

electrode and to ensure the sensor is only responding to moisture level. [4]

7

2.3.PIC Microcontroller

Microcontroller is a computer on- a- chip. It is a type of intelligence processor that

can be programmed for collecting data from input. Microcontroller frequently uses in

automatically control devices such as remote control system, toys and hardware. [5]

PIC is act as the main brain system in a moisture monitoring system. Technically, PIC

is used to convert analog signals to digital signals that can be read by a computer that provides

a view of the monitoring system. In the measurement of soil moisture, the soil moisture

sensor is use to measure the difference (voltage) across the probe. Then transmit the measure

to the PIC. .[6]

PIC can impose for a particular sensor to the 5V output. By doing this, the sensor

probe will be able to collect charges to it. Then, perform the sensor will be done with the

circuit resistance to ground. The time is taken to implement correlation with the level of

moisture in the soil. [6]

In additional, the PIC also is a decision maker. The PIC is the main unit to be used as

a monitoring system in the overall system. As decision-makers, the PIC will be set to

determine every action of each part inside the system. For example, by control the irrigation

unit and determine the time for watering. [11]

2.4 Irrigation System

The main purpose of “Automatic irrigation management system” is proposed to offer

the following benefits: first, it is able to provide the amount of water needed by plants in the

8

field. Second, it can eliminate the time and scheduling system for watering plants. Third, it

also managed to contain the pressures caused by over-watering plants. In conclusion, this

system is to promote the save and production water. [7]

With the increasing needs for agriculture, human start to realize that agriculture

activity are needs water resources such as how they need water to survive. As time passes, the

increase in population and the area of settlement grows wider. So, human has created a device

that allows them to get water even they are far from the water source. The earliest system is

known as aqueducts. [8]

To ensure a consistent supply of water, construction and careful design aqueduct is

very important. The Romans have proven able to build and designing this system, which had

produced a great impact on the irrigation system nowadays.

Nowadays, the water distribution system has been developed from a simple watering

system to the sprinkler system. For agricultural activity, Irrigation system is very important to

supply sufficient quantity of water for the plant according to plant needs. In addition, there

are also many types of irrigation system for agriculture. [10]

2.5 Soil Moisture Monitoring Software

The software is designed to monitor system operation. This is to record the

measurement of soil moisture so that can be used as a reference for plant watering strategies to

produce better returns. The recorded data is very important because the difference patterns in

the irrigation schedule did not affect the growth of crops. [9]

The concept of monitoring system is provided many benefits to operators to help them

to monitor any abnormalities in the system during operation. Graphical display also provided

9

by the software. The display helps the operator to determine the level of soil moisture and

watering system conditions during operation. [10]

2.6 Soil water percentage experiment

One of the things that should be done before start the experiment, the method of

calculation should be determined in advance. For this project, water percentage will be

calculated by reference to the mass of dry soil.

Mdry soil = Mdry soil+container - Mcontainer…………………………………………Equation 1

Mwet soil = Mwet soil-container - Mcontainer…………………………………………...Equation 2

W = X 100%.........................................Equation 3

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