IoT for Smart Monitoring and Automated Irrigation in Agriculture

Farming is the practise of cultivating lands for growing plants and for raising animals to produce foods, medicines, fibers and other goods that help to maintain and improve human life. In India, agriculture and related industries are the major source of income. Conventional irrigation methods are imprecise and ineffective, which leads to either an excessive or inadequate amount of watering. Farmers also find it difficult to predict the appropriate amounts at the appropriate times. The purpose of this research is to build an intelligent monitoring and automated irrigation system that can ensure optimal water use based on certain parameters and provide real-time environmental monitoring. Furthermore, by employing this strategy, plant damage is prevented and the possibility of plant theft is decreased. This system uses a NodeMCU ESP8266 microcontroller to collect temperature, humidity and soil moisture from respective sensors. The NodeMCU is equipped with a passive infrared sensor (PIR) to identify agricultural intruders near the crop field and a relay module to irrigate plants. This study also focuses on developing mobile applications that use a range of sensors to detect intruders and notify users when they are identified. This makes farming easier and lowers the possibility of crop theft.