Alternatives of IoT Irrigation Systems for the Gardens of Arequipa

Due to the problem of drinking water scarcity in different cities around the world, there are innovative proposals to automate garden irrigation in homes, to reduce drinking water consumption. For this research, a sample of 68 inhabitants of the Region of Arequipa - Peru has been surveyed to know the common habits in the irrigation of the gardens. From this data, two systems have been implemented in two average gardens using the Arduino UNO board (integrating with the Ethernet Shield) and the NodeMCU, each proposal integrates soil moisture sensors, water flow sensor, and actuators, such as the solenoid valve and the relay, besides centralizing the information through an IoT System (Home Assistant or Adafruit IO). This has managed to establish a comparison of both, generating a discussion according to the advantages and disadvantages addressed by each proposal and obtaining a saving of potable water in the irrigation of plants.

A smart Agriculture Irrigation System using sensor array based IOT

The role of Agriculture is important to build a nation, since more than 58% of the population in our country is dependent on agriculture that means half of the population is investing in agriculture. However, many farmers are unfamiliar with intelligent irrigation systems designed to improve the water used for their crops. The proposed system is to precisely monitor the distribution of the water to crops. This IOT based system has a distributed wireless network of soil moisture sensors to monitor soil moisture. Other sensors such as temperature, humidity, rain, IR, LDR, foot. The gateway device also processes the detector’s information and transmits the data to the farmer. An algorithm was developed using threshold values for soil moisture and nutrients, and these values were programmed into a node com-based gateway to control water for irrigation. Complete sensor data is sent to the free cloud using NODEMCU and displayed on websites and apps. This proposed work presents extensive research on irrigation systems in smart agriculture.

A Wireless Sensor Network Deployment for Soil Moisture Monitoring in Precision Agriculture

The use of precision agriculture is becoming more and more necessary to provide food for the world’s growing population, as well as to reduce environmental impact and enhance the usage of limited natural resources. One of the main drawbacks that hinder the use of precision agriculture is the cost of technological immersion in the sector. For farmers, it is necessary to provide low-cost and robust systems as well as reliability. Toward this end, this paper presents a wireless sensor network of low-cost sensor nodes for soil moisture that can help farmers optimize the irrigation processes in precision agriculture. Each wireless node is composed of four soil moisture sensors that are able to measure the moisture at different depths. Each sensor is composed of two coils wound onto a plastic pipe. The sensor operation is based on mutual induction between coils that allow monitoring the percentage of water content in the soil. Several prototypes with different features have been tested. The prototype that has offered better results has a winding ratio of 1:2 with 15 and 30 spires working at 93 kHz. We also have developed a specific communication protocol to improve the performance of the whole system. Finally, the wireless network was tested, in a real, cultivated plot of citrus trees, in terms of coverage and received signal strength indicator (RSSI) to check losses due to vegetation.

Monitoring of Expansive Clays over Drought-Rewetting Cycles Using Satellite Remote Sensing

New capabilities for measuring and monitoring are needed to prevent the shrink-swell risk caused by drought-rewetting cycles. A clayey soil in the Loire Valley at Chaingy (France) has been instrumented with two extensometers and several soil moisture sensors. Here we show by direct comparison between remote and in situ data that the vertical ground displacements due to clay expansion are well-captured by the Multi-Temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (MT-InSAR) technique. In addition to the one-year period, two sub-annual periods that reflect both average ground shrinking and swelling timeframes are unraveled by a wavelet-based analysis. Moreover, the relative phase difference between the vertical displacement and surface soil moisture show local variations that are interpreted in terms of depth and thickness of the clay layer, as visualized by an electrical resistivity tomography. With regard to future works, a similar treatment relying fully on remote sensing observations may be scaled up to map larger areas in order to better assess the shrink-swell risk.