An eye on hydroponics: The IoT initiative

Abstract

The need for the soil in agriculture is crucial and its role is prominent. But the process of urbanization takes away the land in larger areas. So continuous cropping on the rest of the land makes the soil to lose it’s fertility as all the nutrients are consumed. In quest of an alternative solution, we have gone through the Hydroponics. In this paper, we integrate IoT into our solution and also reduce power consumption by utilizing Solar Energy. Hydroponics is a special type of farming where the growth of plants takes place in a soil-free medium, provided with a blend of water along with nutrients. As an alternative for soil, we are here using Rockwool as support for plants to withstand. We provide the water with nutrients required by the plant, the plants do not have to call for root system on the lookout for water, nutrients, oxygen. In this process, the plant is permitted to spend its energy on its production. Hydroponics allows us to make farms in certain locations where conditions of soil are too poor to support farming, space is limited. The IoT system continuously monitors the farm and also displays the data with regards to the plant growth by which we can get the values of pH,water level, temperature, and humidity in the hydroponic reservoir. The role of pH sensor is main as we are using nutrient-enriched water. The initiation of IoT in Hydroponics assists farmers, by keeping an eye on the plant growth by delivering information regarding the aspects of the water, humidity, temperature. The respective statistics are achieved through cloud-connected sensors.