Arduino entry - Trees and plants protector from starving during summer

During the summer season plants get dried up due to lack of proper watering and food supply. The hot sun vaporises the water content, so watering the plants by various water management techniques like drip irrigation, sprinklers are very much required to protect plants and trees from starving. For this, we must consult the agriculturist with proper data like soil temperature, humidity, soil moisture, sunlight, winds and air temperature in order to get suggestions for improving the plant conditions from starvation.

The Arduino 101 is likely to be good IoT device to monitor and collect data from sensors like soil temperature, soil moisture, air temperature, humidity and solar radiation. With its on-board GPIO's and data transfer via Bluetooth to a nearby IoT gateway device, future analysis can be conducted.

With all the data from Arduino 101 interfaced sensors, we can get clarity on how and when to water, protect from sun and heat and condition of the soil. If plants and trees are sustained then birds and animals will not migrate, they will also have food and shelter. Once the trees and plants are sustained this leads to environmental protection from harmful pollutants like CO and Co2. Aurdino 101 will be a protector of the environment and can be also useful for farmers, telling them when to water and protect their fruit trees and flowering plants from starvation during the summer.

Figure 1: Plant starved due to less water during summer and birds migrated from the nest.

 

1) The list of components chosen to build the plant protector system is shown in figure 2. They were available online from various vendors. 

Figure 2: List of necessary components used to design plants protector system.

 

2) The schematic diagram shows the connection of components. For more details on circuit designing software on how to use and download visit the following URL http://fritzing.org/home/ .

Figure 3: Schematic diagram created in fritzing software tool.

 

3) Arduino board is programmed and is written in Arduino IDE, screenshot image and code is given in the below figure 4. The IDE can be downloaded from the following URL https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Arduino101

Figure 4: Screenshot image of the program written in Arduino IDE.

 

4) The programmed hardware is kept for testing the Dry soil, which is represented by the letter 'D', Humid soil as 'H' and wet soil as 'W'. The temperature of surrounding and soil moisture data are display on the RGB LCD screen via I2C protocol.

Figure 5: Hardware setup for the plants and trees protector system.

 

5) Here is the idea of using the device, In fig. 6 upper part of the yellow colour line indicates the soil is wet, between the yellow and red colour the soil is humid and below the red line the soil is completely dry. This portion is very important to the plant because all the roots are in this region, it is, therefore, important for this region to be wet. For this, we need to set up the sensor at this position so the water quantity available at root is easily identified so that the plants will be protected from starving.

Figure 6: Cross section of soil showing Dry, Humid and Wet portion.

 

6) The data can be viewed through mobile app BLYNK which can be downloaded from the google play store at the following URL http://www.blynk.cc/ There is a detailed step by step guide and examples available. This is my app which is used for the plant protector, it can be used directly by the interested person by QR code scanning.

Figure 7: Mobile Blynk app to monitor the status of soil

 

7) The video shows how the device is working and it can be helpful to protect plants from starving and controlling the birds from migration.

8) The birds are really enjoying when the drop by drop water is coming this also keeps the plants to absorb water more. This type of watering device will protect plants as well as birds and small animals during summer season mainly. I think this project can help in protecting earth too.

Conclusions:

Farmers, horticulturists, Gardners and agriculturists have a major problem to protect their plants and trees from starving. With the help of this project, they can have a faith to protect their plant from hot sun during summer. The device is designed in such a way to distribute the water to plants and trees depending on the environmental conditions. The water content is monitored using the soil moisture sensor and Arduino 101 board. The monitoring data can be visualized in the mobile Blynk App created especially for this purpose. When the plants and trees are protected they give feasible conditions for the birds and animals, also they give oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide, indirectly the environment is also protected. In my opinion, this device will be helpful to the farmers, horticulturists, nurseries, gardeners, agriculturists etc to protect their plants, trees and crops from starving.