Design and Development of IoT-Based Crop Growth Monitoring and Maintenance System for Hydroponic Indoor Vertical Farm

The development of a country’s economy is greatly influenced by the agricultural sector. UN Food and Agriculture Organization claims that the world population is projected to rise by 70% by 2050. As the population is growing continuously as India is now the most populated country in the world, food demand is growing simultaneously and cultivable land is becoming expensive and scarce. Looking for a solution to this vertical farm is an approach to increase crop yield per unit area. The paper aims to design and build an automated crop monitoring system for vertical farms using a hydroponic technique for indoor environments that could maintain crop growth conditions and automatically balance the pH and TDS fluctuations. The main controlling unit is an Arduino mega microcontroller which communicates information with various sensors for controlling system parameters and exchanging the information with ThingSpeak IoT open platform. It is useful for maintaining and controlling the units through remote access. The camera is used to measure plant growth and the presence of any pests or bugs. The designed system can maintain healthy plant growth with minimal user interference. Comparison is made with a conventional soil-based system in terms of plant growth parameters. The developed system is able to achieve a 12% improvement in terms of the weight of the aerial part.