DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN IOT-BASED SOIL MOISTURE MONITORING SYSTEM

Traditional irrigation practices in agriculture often rely on manual observation and fixed scheduling, which do not accurately reflect the real-time moisture needs of the soil. This approach can result in either over-irrigation, leading to waterlogging and root damage, or under-irrigation, causing plant stress and reduced crop yields. Thus, this project aims to design and implement an IoT-based soil moisture monitoring system. The system design of the IoT-based automatic soil moisture monitoring system integrates both hardware and software modules to achieve automated irrigation based on real-time data. The implementation process involved planning the architecture, selecting and configuring components, writing firmware, and deploying the system in a simulated agricultural environment. The core idea was to ensure soil moisture is maintained at optimal levels without human intervention while keeping the data accessible through a cloud-based dashboard. When the system is powered, the regulated 5V supplies power to the arduino board, pump machine, and water sensor. The code embedded program executes, and the system is initialized and run embedded, data retrieve from water sensor for decision making. When reading data from water sensor is within 16 or 15 then it indicate that soil is dry but when the reading is within 14,13,12,11 or 10 then it indicate soil is wet. Farmer mobile app retrieve data from real-time database using a Firebase private key address to view information about the condition of the soil. IOTs soil moisture system was experimentally proved to work satisfactorily. The system was successfully tested on a multitude of different area, thus proving its portability and wide compatibility. However, it is strongly recommend that the school should see this project as a priceless system and endeavour to provide financial assistance.