An Automatic Irrigation System Using Self-Made Soil

Moisture Sensors and Android App.

Shalu Sharma Shivani Seth, Tanya Gandhi
Department of Mathematics Department of Instrumentation
SRCASW, University of Delhi SRCASW, University of Delhi
Delhi India Delhi, India

Suruchi Chawla, Shakshi Bachhtey, Veni Gupta, Bhanvi Sheetal Varshney, Saloni Mehta, Ruchika Jha, Amita
Shukla, Monica Gupta, Pragya Kaushik, Shreshtha Pushkar Kapoor
Department of Computer Science Department of Electronics
SRCASW, University of Delhi SRCASW, University of Delhi,
Delhi, India. Delhi, India

Abstract—This paper presents the design of an automatic Indian farmers.

irrigation system using low cost soil moisture sensor and android
App. We develop an app based automatic irrigation system using
In this paper we present an app based automatic
self-made capacitive sensors. Then sensors are interfaced with
Raspberry Pi microcontroller. To detect the threshold levels of irrigation system using a self-made, low cost sensor and
moisture and control the inflow of water for optimal use of water Raspberry microcontroller. The system sets the irrigation
an algorithm is developed. We have developed an android app time based on the moisture reading from the sensors and
using Java to Interface Raspberry Pi microcontroller. Thus, we irrigates the field automatically, when unattended. We have
have an automatic irrigation system, which can be used to used a capacitive sensor to measure soil moisture, which
increase the productivity of crop by providing optimal amount of
is inserted at various positions near to the plants. The
water.
Raspberry microcontroller receives the sensor output. We
Keywords— automatic irrigation; self-made sensors; take the level of water sensed by sensors as input to decide
irrigation system; Microcontroller Android Application. the manual/automatic on or off of motor controlling the
supply of water to plants. This system is useful for people
I. INTRODUCTION
Drip irrigation for efficient irrigation is being used by who don’t have much time for watering their plants. For
developed countries farmers. In this system water is automatic irrigation we use an android app based on sensor
supplied near to the root zone of the plants drip by drip, input and microcontroller. The App retrieves the values from
thus ample amount of water is saved and plants get database which is stored in Raspberry Pi that contains data
adequate water simultaneously. In India, farmers manually sent from the sensors.
irrigate the fields at regular intervals. This process
consumes more water and sometimes crop does not get II. SELF-MADE SENSOR
water at right place, which can decrease the productivity of
crop. Deficiency of Water can be risky to plants before
noticeable wilting occurs. This problem can be resolved if
we have a drip irrigation system in which the irrigation will
happen only when the plants will have requirement of
water.
Due to the limited resources of water, there has been an
interest in the researchers for developing an automatic
irrigation system. Various irrigation system like use of
canopy temperature [1], array of wireless sensors [2] [7] [8]
[10], regulating soil water tension with on/off strategies
[3],[4] based on the feedback, android based [11] [12], (a) (b)
small embedded system device [9] , Raspberry pi based Fig. 1(a) Two probe sensor (b) Four probe sensor
system [13] and using controllable parameter such as
Temperature, soil moisture and air humidity [5] have been
proposed by the researchers. These systems are quiet In 1995 Gluck [5], proposed dielectric soil moisture
useful but are money extensive, and hence not suitable for sensors, he used the change in dielectric property of the
soil with water as a parameter. In our sensors we take when soil is completely dry, and VW is the voltage across
two/four galvanized aluminum rods (Fig 1). We buried these
the probes when soil is supplied with 100ml of water, then ∆
rods deep into the soil near the roots of the plant. The
V= VD − VW Fig 3 shows the plot between ∆ and distance
resistance between the rods get modified, when moisture
between the probes. It can be seen from the graph that
level of the soil changes.
between 2.5 cm-5 cm, the relationship is linear.
We used galvanized aluminum rods because they are inert
and they are easily available. AC source has been used in c
most soil sensor circuits as they measure the capacitive
properties of soil. For AC source we need a special circuit,
which makes it not convenient for use by local Indian
farmers. Thus, we use dc power source in our soil sensor.

DC Analysis of the sensor

Two rod sensor can be approximated as a RC circuit in

parallel. In DC Analysis, soil resistance dominates the
circuit and the capacitance comes into picture only in the
absence of moisture.
Fig. 3. Graph between V and distance between
probes

Then, we investigated how the voltage across probes

vary with the soil moisture content. we found that as the
moisture level increases, the voltage across the probe
decreases as accepted, also the voltage variation is
linear for 3.5 cm and 4 cm distances probes.
The output of the sensor is then fed to an differential
amplifier (LM393), at present we are using only
threshold detection, that is the amplifiers gives a high
voltage when soil is in dry condition (below certain
Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit for DC Analysis threshold moisture) and generates low signal once the
threshold moisture is reached. This digital signal is then
fed to a microcontroller (Raspberry Pi II), which then
Under DC biasing conditions, the drop across R1 (this controls the switching on and off of irrigation system.
corresponds to the resistance offered by soil) is given by
voltage divider. The resistivity of the soil depends on many
factors like its salinity, temperature, moisture level etc. It is
possible to choose the distance between the two aluminum
rods such that the resistance depends inversely on the
moisture content of soil, and voltage drop across rods is
given by:

V R1 = R V

+M
R
Our test results demonstrated that for such a linear
dependence on 1/M the distance between the probes Figure 4: Block diagram of android app and
should be kept between 2.5 cm-5 cm. its interfacing

RESULTS
We first measured the variation in the change in voltage
due to the presence of moisture as a function of distance III Android App
between the probes. If VD is the voltage across probes We develop the Android app using Java to interface with
raspberry pie microcontroller. The app provides the user
interface to verify the user identity for automation of server to be run on the Pi ,PHP to create, modify and
irrigation system. To authenticate the identity of manage the databases and MySQL for the databases.
authenticated users, the user login information is stored in The database is created using server side php scripting. On
the database and is retrieved. After doing successful login client side java , json parser library is used for making the
the sensor data request can be sent to microcontroller and app and the server communication. JSON Parser library is
to identify the water level in plants the requested data can used for parsing the PHP code to Java and vice-versa, th
be retrieved from the sensor database. Thus upon us making app and the server, both, to comprehend the
receiving the sensor data on android app it is processed parameters correctly and the Http connection is
using threshold level of water in order to give on/off established. The Snap shot of json library and http
command to microcontroller. Hence the microcontroller connection with Raspberry is given below in Figure 6.
upon receiving the on/off command from user, the motor is
on/off accordingly for the supply of water to plants.
We use python script on microcontroller to process the
command received from android and store the sensor data
in database. The block diagram of the android app and its
interfacing is given above in Figure 4
.
The proposed system is given below in Figure 5. Wifi/3G
Network has been used to interface the android app with
the server. The interfacing of microcontroller with server
and sensor is done using USB to serial bridge.

Fig 6. SnapShot of JSON Parser and http c onnection with

Raspberry Pi.

Figure 5 : Layout of the Proposed System. The Android studio emulator is used for simulation of app
communication with raspberry pie for send/receiving data
based on post method. This is given in fig 7.

The following steps are involved in the working of the

system :
1) Start
(2) Database created on the Raspberry Pi’s a
pache server
3) Sensor readings are stored in database
4) App retrieves water level reading of soil
5) App commands the action to be performed
6) Server sends the signal to the system.
7) End
The experiment was conducted to test the automatic control
of irrigation using android based app, Raspberry Pi and
low cost capacitor sensors. The hardware and software
required for the experiment are an android phone/emulator
from android studio, Raspberry Pi (2B), Internet connection
with port 80 forwarded to the IP of Raspberry Pi. android Fig 7: SnapShot of emulator simulation of Client App and its GUI
studio, Raspbian OS for the Raspberry PI, Apache 2 for the interface.
 conference on Industrial Instrumentation and control
IV. CONCLUSION (ICIC),1501-1505, IEEE.
[11] Nisha, G., & Megala, J. (2014). Wireless sensor
An android-based automatic irrigation system is designed Network based automated irrigation and crop field
using a self-made capacitor sensor with galvanized monitoring system. In 2014 Sixth International Conference
aluminum rods and interfaced with Raspberry Pi on Advanced Computing (ICoAC) ,189-194,. IEEE.
microcontroller. The android app is encoded to retrieve the [12] Panth, S& Jivani,M(2013). Home automation
sensor data from Raspberry Pi microcontroller and enables system using android for mobile phone. International
the user to supply the water to field automatically. The Journal of Electronics and computer Science Engineering
design is low cost, low power, robust, small size and highly ISSN-2277-1956.
versatile. Thus, this system avoids over use of water in [13] .Dursun, M., & Ozden, S. (2011). A wireless
irrigation, under irrigation and reduces the wastage of application of drip irrigation automation supported by soil
water. The present work is an attempt to save the moisture sensors. Scientific Research and Essays, 6(7),
resources for human kind which are available naturally, 1573-1582.
and provide Indian farmers a low cost automatic system for [14] Chate, B. K., & Rana, J. G. (2016). SMART
irrigation. we can control the flow of water by constantly IRRIGATION SYSTEM USING RASPBERRY PI
observing the status of the soil moisture, and then reduce
the wastage of water. The main benefit is that the system
can be modified according to the situation (plants, weather
conditions, soil etc.).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are thankful to University of Delhi India for
financially supporting the project under “Innovation Project
Scheme”. Thanks are also due to our mentor, Prof Enakshi
K Sharma, Head, Department of Electronics, University of
Delhi South Campus for stimulating dialogues, constant
guidance and unconditional support

25. REFERENCES
[1] Evett, Steven R., et al. "Canopy temperature based
automatic irrigation control." Proc. Intl. Conf.
Evapotranspiration and Irrigation Scheduling. 1996
[2] .Arun, C., and K. Lakshmi Sudha. "Agricultural
Management using Wireless Sensor Networks-A Survey."
2nd International Conference on Environment Science and
Biotechnology (IPCBEE), Singapore. 2012.
[3] Luthra, S. K., et al. "Design and development of an auto
irrigation system." Agricultural Water Management 33.2
(1997): 169-181.
[4] Boutraa, Tahar, et al. "Evaluation of the effectiveness of an
automated irrigation system using wheat crops." Agriculture
and Biology Journal of North America 2.1 (2011): 80-88.
[5] Gluck, Israel, Anatoly Friedman, and Naftali Feniger. "Soil
moisture sensor” U.S. Patent No. 5,424,649. 13 Jun. 1995.
[6] 6. Al-Ali, A. R., Qasaimeh, M., Al-Mardini, M., Radder, S., &
Zualkernan, I. A. (2015). Zig Bee-based irrigation system
for home gardens. In International Conference on
Communications, Signal Processing, and their Applications
(ICCSPA), 1-5, IEEE.
[7] 7. Gutiérrez, J., Villa-Medina, J. F., Nieto-Garibay, A.,
[8] & Porta-Gándara, M.Á. (2014). Automated irrigation system
using a wireless sensor network and GPRS module. IEEE
transactions on instrumentation and measurement,63(1),
166-176.
[9] 8.Jadhav,S., & Hambarde, S.(2016). Android based
Automated Irrigation System using Raspberry Pi,
International Journal of Science and Research,
5(6),2345-51.
[10] 9. Malage, S & Bhole, K (2015). Low cost remotely
operated smart irrigation system, In International