Democratizing IoT for Smart Irrigation: A Cost-Effective DIY Solution Proposal Evaluated in an Actinidia Orchard

Proper management of water resources in agriculture is of utmost importance for sustainable productivity, especially under the current context of climate change. However, many smart agriculture systems, including for managing irrigation, involve costly, complex tools for most farmers, especially small/medium-scale producers, despite the availability of user-friendly and community-accessible tools supported by well-established providers (e.g., Google). Hence, this paper proposes an irrigation management system integrating low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) sensors with community-accessible cloud-based data management tools. Specifically, it resorts to sensors managed by an ESP32 development board to monitor several agroclimatic parameters and employs Google Sheets for data handling, visualization, and decision support, assisting operators in carrying out proper irrigation procedures. To ensure reproducibility for both digital experts but mainly non-technical professionals, a comprehensive set of guidelines is provided for the assembly and configuration of the proposed irrigation management system, aiming to promote a democratized dissemination of key technical knowledge within a do-it-yourself (DIY) paradigm. As part of this contribution, a market survey identified numerous e-commerce platforms that offer the required components at competitive prices, enabling the system to be affordably replicated. Furthermore, an irrigation management prototype was tested in a real production environment, consisting of a 2.4-hectare yellow kiwi orchard managed by an association of producers from July to September 2021. Significant resource reductions were achieved by using low-cost IoT devices for data acquisition and the capabilities of accessible online tools like Google Sheets. Specifically, for this study, irrigation periods were reduced by 62.50% without causing water deficits detrimental to the crops’ development.