INTRODUCTION
We are living in a technology based society where we have lots of innovative ideas day by day. These new innovations in IoT communications-based projects, strive constantly to share and gather insight on the latest trends in the industrial IoT landscape.
Here we focus on the IoT-based smart agricultural system that can perform and even monitor a host of farming tasks.
Agriculture is an age-old economic activity that plays a vital role in the growth of our country. Over these years, cultivation methods have changed significantly depending on the characteristics of the physical environment, technological know-how, and socio-cultural practices.
SMART FARMING
Smart Farming utilizes the modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in agriculture, referred to as the Third Green Revolution. As we all know that the growth in the agriculture sector has been stagnant over the past few years, so it is necessary to introduce new technologies in this sector to improve food production. This project proposes a smart farming method in a limited area by using sensor nodes like temperature & humidity sensors and soil moisture sensors. This system provides us with a cost minimized agriculture technology and provides a simple platform to monitor the parameters for the growth of crops through the internet over IoT
This smart agriculture system replaces the irrigation technique through manual control in which the farmers irrigate the land at regular intervals by turning the water pump ON/OFF when required. To optimize the farming process, IoT devices installed on a farm should collect and process data in a repetitive cycle that enables farmers to react quickly to emerging issues and changes in ambient conditions.
The following analysis is performed in the smart agriculture system
• IoT View
• Temperature analysis
• Soil Moisture level analysis
• Humidity level analysis
• Light Intensity level analysis
PROCESS
ADVANTAGES
- Reducing the risk of electric shocks, and deaths due to poisonous creatures in the fields.
- Visual display using LCD display unit.
- Watering depends on the moisture level present in the field.
- All the farm parameters can view through online in graphical notation.
- Efficient and low-cost design.
- Fast response.
- User friendly.
- Better control of the overall internal process
- High Productivity
Tools/ Technologies
- Dedicated software platforms are used to monitor the different factors of farming.
- For instance, weather monitoring software like SmartElement, and Pycno gives granular details like humidity, precipitation, and the temperature of the crop field.
- Also, data analytics software like Power BI, and Tableau helps to provide an end-end farm management system
Real-Time Applications Of IoT In Agriculture
- Livestock monitoring
IoT applications help farmers to collect data regarding the location, well-being, and health of their cattle. This information helps them in identifying the condition of their livestock. Such as, finding animals that are sick so, that they can separate from the herd, preventing the spread of the disease to the entire cattle.
- Monitoring climate conditions
 Weather stations equipped with smart sensors can collect weather data and send useful information to a farmer. Moreover, the information is analyzed by special software and the farmer gets a ready-made analysis that helps him have a detailed forecast and avoid crop losses.
- Crop monitoring
crop monitoring collects all information like crop health, humidity, precipitation, temperature, and other parameters. If there are any variations, farmers may identify them beforehand and take appropriate actions. Also, sensors help farmers determine when the best moment to plant crops and harvest them.
- Drones
Drones offer a wide range of uses from soil and crop field analysis to planting and pesticide spraying. Drones can be used with different imaging technologies like hyperspectral, multispectral, thermal, etc. that can provide the farmers with time and site-specific information regarding crop health, fungal infections, growth bottlenecks, etc.
Drones also identify drier regions in a field and measures can then be taken to irrigate such regions with better techniques.
Summary:
Measuring soil moisture plays a crucial role in agriculture to support farmers to manage their irrigation systems more efficiently. This technique also allows for increasing yields and the quality of the crop by better management of soil moisture during critical plant growth stages. An Embedded system for automatic irrigation of an agriculture field offers a potential solution to support site-specific irrigation management that allows producers to maximize their productivity while saving the water.
Moreover, this project technique enables the system to avoid over irrigation, under irrigation, and topsoil erosion and reduce the wastage of water. Meanwhile, the system performance can be changed according to the situation of crops, weather conditions, soil, etc. This technology can also be implemented in a cheaper and more efficient way for the irrigation of agricultural, horticultural lands, parks, gardens, and golf courses. In large-scale applications, high sensitivity sensors are used for large areas of agricultural lands.
Future Scope:
This IoT-based smart agriculture system schedules the system to irrigate a piece of land automatically. And also the use of pesticides and fertilizer reduces while overall efficiency will rise. IoT technologies enable better food quality leading to increased food safety. It will also be beneficial for the environment through more efficient use of water, or optimization of treatments and inputs. This advanced system can handle the routine agricultural tasks, thereby allowing farmers and cultivators to focus on more manual-intensive agricultural tasks.
The Internet of Things (IoT) enables remote monitoring of the agriculture fields in a non-intrusive and effective fashion, promising significant improvements in farming methods. In short, this smart farming offers a real potential to deliver a more productive and sustainable form of agricultural production, based on a more precise and resource-efficient approach. This New farms will feed our population, which may explode to 9.6 billion by 2050.