Design and Implementation of Smart Solar Powered Drip Irrigation System

Brief introduction of the project:

The automation of manual tasks has brought tremendous benefits to society in the last several decades. The rapid advancement in intelligent electronic devices has created countless opportunities in the human world to adopt these technologies to custom environments. The creation of easy-to-program microcontrollers is one such technology and it the fuel that drives automation of any kind. In this project, a system that uses sensor networks for real time controlled drip irrigation solution, remote controlled water pumping techniques, and real time monitoring of the water content of soil that is entirely powered by solar energy will be designed and tested. The task of growing agricultural products in a ‘water deprived’ environments and horticultural activities can be inefficient when managed by a human entity. The drawback of such manual controlled activities ranges from unnecessary human attendee to wasteful usage of water resources and uncontrolled provisioning of inputs to the items cultivated.

As a solution, this project will develop a system that monitors the environmental conditions such as humidity and temperature using sensor networks that helps in decision making as to what and when to provide water to the soil that hosts plants. The sensors will communicate with a central base station, where data are analyzed and decisions are made, using wireless networks. The central station shall process that data and activate water pumps and outlet valves to release or withhold water. The system will deploy efficient energy management by using electrical power from solar panels. A prototype model shall be designed and build on selected ground plots. Thus, we can obtain energy efficient and controlled water supply irrigation system.

Hence, the ‘sun will be used against itself’.

Vision of the project:

To design and implement controlled irrigation system powered by the abundant solar energy available in rain deprived areas.

Important picture that represent your project

The drip irrigation project deploys electrical and computing technologies that are dominant in the industry. The communication between various components of the system is done wirelessly. Since one of the candidate areas for deployment are arid (sunny), the solar power is the only available source of energy that drives the water pumping system to store water for controlled usage. Microcontrollers, wireless sensors, relay valves and remoter switches are used in the project. The whole system is solar powered and self sufficient

Overall system layout

drip