IoT based low cost and intelligent module for smart irrigation system

Agriculture contributes to a major share in the Indian economy and most of its people are dependent on it for their livelihood. This makes water an important resource that needs to be preserved using the latest available technologies. Apart from being fundamental in industry 4.0, IoT also extends its capability to smart farming. Work proposed here targets to develop a low cost intelligent system for smart irrigation. It uses IoT to make devices used in the system to talk and connect on their own, with capabilities like: admin mode for user interaction, one-time setup for irrigation schedule estimation, neural based decision making for intelligent support and remote data monitoring. A sample crop test-bed has been chosen to present results of the proposed system, that include irrigation schedule, neural net decision making and remote data viewing. Neural network provides required intelligence to the device that considers current sensor input and masks the irrigation schedule for efficient irrigation. The system uses MQTT and HTTP to keep the user informed about the current crop situation even from a distant location. The proposed system proves beneficial with its intelligence, low cost and portability, making it suitable for greenhouse, farms, etc.