Development of a Model and Sensor Based Smart Irrigation System

Water availability is a critical variable for virtually every economic activity, including agriculture and industry, the energy sector and public use. Specifically, Farmers could waste thousands of cubic meters of water daily through Irrigation. This project developed a smart irrigation system capable of making autonomous decision of irrigating the soil with an appropriate amount of water required through monitoring of soil irrigation factors. The soil moisture level and the rainfall status were the soil irrigation factors considered. The threshold values of the irrigation factors required for soil to be irrigated were established. Subsequently, a system was developed to sense the soil irrigation factors and monitor when the threshold values are reached so that necessary information is communicated to switch on or off a water pump designed for irrigation purpose. The system is implemented with a PIC16f876A microcontroller. The results of performance evaluation conducted on the system revealed that the system is able to monitor and estimate the soil irrigation factors with good accuracy. Also, the system is able to start the water pump to irrigate soil and stop it as appropriate depending on whether the soil irrigation factors value indicates need for irrigation or not. Keywords: Irrigation; Autonomous; System; Microcontroller; Threshold.