Abstract:
The increasing demand for quality crop production has significantly risen in
utilization of high quality greenhouses. Specific environmental conditions are
required to cultivate crops in greenhouses. Monitoring environment parameters
such as humidity, soil moisture, and light play a significant role in research that
attempt in optimizing efficiency in greenhouse crop production. Automated
monitoring of above parameters plays a vital role in researches which are carried
out under the greenhouse conditions in Sri Lanka. Currently researchers visit
greenhouse and use complex instruments to monitor these conditions. In this study,
it is expected to enhance the system automated way with creating an advance
dynamic network of Internet of Things (IoT). This study is designed and developed
a sensor based android mobile application that facilitates transition data to IoT web
server over Wi Fi connection while enabling view information efficiently through
the mobile application. Main users of this application (e.g. researchers) can collect
real time data that monitor greenhouse conditions, receive notifications, input plant
performance detail s, study and control parameters using graphs. Proposed
approach focuses on development and integration of four main modules: Wi Fi
sensor device, IoT Server, Firebase database and mobile application. The device is
designed by integrating DHT11 (Humidity an d Temperature sensor), LDR (Light
intensity sensor) and Arduino Soil moisture sensor. Collected data can be analyzed
with respect to controlled factors and the time. It provides three graphs in order to
show basic measures of plant growth performance inclu ding shoot length, shoot
diameter and number of leaves. Therefore, on the basis of these graphs, researchers
are able to analyze plant growth during the specified time period. Further, this
analysis can be used for future predictions and decision making fo r large collection
of data. Developed Android application was tested on the selected mobile
platforms using questionnaires. We received feedback from participants to the
system and their outcomes were: the accuracy of measured values for tested
parameters and ability to maintain plant log for treatment were high; the usability
and readability of the system was in an acceptable level.
