IoT Driven Smart Irrigation: Automating Agriculture, One Step at a Time

Farm automation is a variety of tech innovations in traditional farming to optimize the food production process and improve quality. IoT-driven Smart Irrigation is one such technology.

All of us are aware of the scarcity of clean water resources around the globe and the need for its optimum utilization. Agriculture sector, particularly irrigation consumes a major portion of the freshwater. Due to lack of Cost-Effective intelligent irrigation systems, developing countries are consuming more water in contrast to the developing countries. Hence there is a dire need to come up with advanced technologies based on smart strategies & systems for effective utilization of freshwater resources.

In such a scenario, Smart Irrigation will play an important role in making processes effective and efficient. And it helps farmers to prevent water wastage during irrigation.

IoT Powered Smart Irrigation System

Let us first understand what exactly is IoT Powered Smart Irrigation? Well, it is a system capable of automating the irrigation process by analyzing the moisture of soil and the climate condition (such as rain). In this system, the farmer will only have to start the motor, he can do so with just a click on his smartphone.

How does it work?

The crucial part of a smart irrigation system design is a microcontroller, which is nothing but an information gateway. Various sensors are used under this technique to transmit the real time data like temperature sensors, soil dampness sensors, etc. Threshold limits are set for moisture as well as temperature and whenever the sensor value crosses the threshold range, then the water pump is switched on by microcontrollers.

If weather condition is such that it started raining, then the micro-controller will shut down the motor pump till raining. And after that it checks whether the soil moisture sensor has reached the threshold value or not. If it crosses the threshold value then motor pump will remain shut down otherwise it will start again automatically.

Also in case, when power supply gets cut off and the motor gets switched off. It will restart again automatically when there will be availability power supply, the user will have not to worry about restarting the motor pump manually.

In this way, you will not only save the water resource but a ton of money on electricity.