IOT Based Smart Greenhouse

Project: Other project

Project Details

Description

A greenhouse is a structure used to grow plants in a controlled manner to optimize production in challenging weather conditions. The smart greenhouse has become a helpful tool in helping farmers and greenhouse owners monitor and control the greenhouse environment. It helps replace the direct human intervention to GH in real-time. Nowadays, as land availability is shrinking and weather conditions worsen due to climate change, a need to develop smart greenhouses (GH) becomes very important to move toward smart agricultural practices and precision agriculture. With technological advancement controlling and monitoring greenhouses using IoT from a central location wirelessly become a tool for everybody. This project aims to develop a smart greenhouse system that addresses the current limitation in the present monitoring system. The project will also provide an approach that can be applied to many other automation applications.

Layman's description

A greenhouse is a structure used to grow plants in a controlled manner to optimize production in challenging weather conditions. The smart greenhouse has become a helpful tool in helping farmers and greenhouse owners monitor and control the greenhouse environment. It helps replace the direct human intervention to GH in real-time. Nowadays, as land availability is shrinking and weather conditions worsen due to climate change, a need to develop smart greenhouses (GH) becomes very important to move toward smart agricultural practices and precision agriculture. With technological advancement controlling and monitoring greenhouses using IoT from a central location wirelessly become a tool for everybody. This project aims to develop a smart greenhouse system that addresses the current limitation in the present monitoring system. The project will also provide an approach that can be applied to many other automation applications.

Key findings

In arid countries, agricultural sustainability is challenging due to harsh environmental conditions such as high temperatures and water scarcity (Kloss et al., 2012). Worldwide, 70% of water use is related to agricultural practices (Fereres and Soriano, 2007) and the water used for agricultural practices reaches up to 90% in arid countries (Douani et al., 2011). This goes above 85% in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and is about 94% in Oman (Paton and Davies, 2006). As the MENA is projected to have a severe water shortage in the future due to the increase in water demand by 50%, and a shortage in water by 22 % is projected in relation to climate change consequences and the increased urbanization (Droogers et al. 2012). The scarcity of water is the main factor for agricultural sustainability, and the increase in population and the urban area complicates the situation further. Therefore, the need to optimize greenhouse irrigation and the system is critical. As the population is in continuous increase and the economy is struggling, the need for self-sustain food production becomes a necessity worldwide. Due to that, various countries worldwide had adopted the usage of greenhouses (GH) to produce various crops year-round or to control certain crop diseases, etc. (Jarvis and Jarvis, 1992). At that time, the adaptation of GH technologies was a huge achievement, but as the technologies are evolving every day, the need to adapt and to integrate smart technologies with our food production system becomes a must in order to be able to sustain feeding the population growth worldwide. Integrating technologies such as IoT is one way to upgrade the functionality and efficiency of the GH as it helps provide ease and comfort while using and managing the GH even in hot countries as the GCC. Since the introduction of greenhouse technology during the last two decades in Oman, various agricultural crops were cultivated, such as tomatoes, sweet pepper, cucumber, and other vegetables. In addition, fruits, such as strawberries, also used GH as media to grow them in Oman. Most of the GH in Oman used a single layer of polyethylene material to ensure airtight for the GH and to be able to use the pad-and-fan evaporative cooling systems to cool the temperature of the GH inner environment (Al-Ismaili 2009). For example, Al Batinah coastal area has used greenhouses to produce various horticultural crops as the demand has increased (Esechie and Ibitayo 2011). The purpose of constructing greenhouses in Al Batinah coastal was to overcome the harsh environmental conditions and to provide a controlled microclimate to enhance the cultivation of certain crops (Al-Ismaili and Jayasuriya 2016). Qatar is another country within the GCC in which water consumption will increase by 12% annually as a result of industry, and population growth, and the increase in irrigation for agriculture (Meltzer et al. 2014). That been said, even though GH maybe succeeded in providing microclimate for crop production, but GH still lacked in providing comfort and real-time control and monitoring for the GH system. The disturbance of the GH system could results in loss of production if a problem within the system took place as in the case of the vaulted roof multi-span greenhouse that collapsed due to the heavy snow and wind (Briassoulis et al. 2016). For instance, in the Northern European region Greenhouse, they focus on producing crops with low energy through using computerized climate controllers to control the climate of the greenhouse, and the irrigation to optimize their crop production (K?rner and Hansen 2012). Nowadays, technology is progressing rapidly, as a result of their integration to ease our everyday life become the trend. The development of wireless sensor networks (WSN) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are among the most significant technologies in the 21st century that helped in distributing, collecting, and monitoring data in various environments to enhance research in getting higher resolution information and data. The loT is defined as a network that connects objects embedded with sensors to connect with everyday objects (Xia et al. 2012). The idea behind the loT is through the ability to enable humans to virtually connect to every physical thing and use it as a computer to connect through the internet to enable us to carry more accurate analysis and data collection (Wortmann and Fl?chter 2015). The application of IoT is wide and could be used anywhere and everywhere. It has appeared that the IoT solutions are extended to be used in all areas of every day (Li et al. 2011). The limitation of the traditional greenhouse it has no ability to provide local control for light, heat, and humidity which if needed will require adding more measures that could contribute to an increase in the cost of GH. In addition, the added measure is not flexible (Ahonen et al. 2008). Due to that integrating IoT will provide a localized solution, real-time monitoring at low cost. Furthermore, moving toward technology-driven in agricultural operations become important as labor shortages, and labor cost is increasing. Moreover, technology integration in agriculture is changing and progressing per day. Greenhouses are among one the candidates that can benefit from WSN and IoT as controlling the GH local climate is important to have a successful GH production to be able to automate the GH operation system. To ensure having good quality and good productivity in a GH, optimizing temperature, humidity, and light for plant growth is critical. According to Ahonen et al. (2008) monitoring the environmental variables within the GH provided helpful information to the farmers to better understand and visualize the contribution of each factor in the growth of the plant that assisted in optimizing the productivity of the crops. For example, a study conducted by Mancuso and Bustaffa (2006) used wireless sensors in a tomato greenhouse in Southern Italy to monitor the climatic variable of the GH to optimize the quality of the tomato production and to control disease development through using the R-group to monitor the GH micro-climates. Another study conducted by Beckwith et al. (2004) used a network of 65 sensors on a vineyard to characterize the temperature variation across the vineyard surface and its impacts on production. Furthermore, Akka? and Sokullu (2017) used MicaZ wireless platform to monitor the environment of GH through continuous data streaming of precise positions in real-time and to transmit the information from the greenhouse to the interested farmer to make an informed decision. In addition, this study showed the advantage of integrating IoT in agriculture at a low cost.
Short titleAdvances in technology have revolutionized every aspect of human life. Technology has become seamlessly integrated into our daily life, resulting in increased comfort and improved quality of life. This advancement and integration have resulted in many con
AcronymTTotP
StatusNot started

Keywords

  • IoT
  • Smart Greenhouse
  • GH Automation
  • GH real-time monitoring

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