Design and Construction of a Solar-powered Automatic Irrigation System with IOT support

A solar-powered automatic irrigation system utilizes solar energy to charge a battery which powers the rest of the system. It uses soil moisture sensors to detect soil moisture content and automatically irrigate the soil to meet the optimal moisture requirements. Most contemporary irrigation systems make use of non-renewable energy sources which have high running costs and pose risks to the environment. Also, manual labour is conventionally used for irrigation which can be very stressful and inaccurate because man is naturally error-prone. The system was designed to notify the farmer on the pump state via a web server which is connected to a micro-controller through a Wi-Fi module and an application program interface to communicate with the web server from which the pump could be controlled. Also, a web page was hosted for a more interactive user interface. The results obtained graphically displays pump state, soil moisture content and water level in real time. It collects data from the pump, soil moisture sensor and ultrasonic sensor and then saves it as a csv file for record keeping. It also generates tabular data showing the entry creation time, entry ID, analogue soil moisture sensor readings, digital soil moisture readings, motor state and water level.