Design of Solar-Powered Automatic Plant Watering Based on Internet of Things
Agus Supardi, Afnan Hajidah Fara Anisa

Department of Electrical Engineering, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

Abstract

Water is crucial to the growth of plants. Without enough water to meet their demands, plants cannot develop healthily. Therefore, watering the plants must be done regularly. The majority of farmers still hand-water their plants- thus, they require automated plant-watering equipment. This study aims to design a solar-powered automatic plant watering based on the Internet of Things. This equipment utilizes soil moisture sensors to water plants automatically. The soil moisture data read by the NodeMCU ESP8266 microcontroller will be used as a reference for automatically turning on and off the water pump. Solar panels are utilized to bridge the gap in sources of electricity on agricultural property. The INA21 sensor is used to read solar panel output data, such as voltage and current. All of the sensor^s data will be sent to Blynk via the WiFi module and shown on the LCD for monitoring purposes. Comparing soil tester and soil moisture sensor results yields an error of 3.1%. The equipment was tested in the morning by manually running the water pump for five minutes, or until the soil moisture reached 78%. When the soil humidity drops to 37% in the afternoon, the water pump turns on automatically. Plant watering stops automatically after 4 minutes and 13 seconds when the soil moisture has reached 71%. The solar panel supplies the water pump with a voltage of 12.08 V and a current of 1.08 A.

Keywords: Watering plants- Soil moisture- Solar panels- Internet of Things

Topic: Engineering