Arduino based automatic water planting system using soil moisture
sensor
Hriday Chawla1, Praveen Kumar2
Amity University Uttar Pradesh , Noida1,2
Hridaychawla44@gmail.com1, pkumar3@amity.edu2
A R T I C LE I N F O
AB STR ACT
Article history:
This research is about the automatic water planting system using a moisture
sensor which senses the humidity level of the soil. Depending on the moisture
or humidity level of the soil, water pump is being set on or off. This research is
being done using Arduino on Arduino ide. This research has increasing
demands in agriculture sector. Using this system farmer can easily monitor
usage of water according to crops they use. By using this method, they can
cultivate crops more easily and it reduces the labour. It also helps to maintain
the health of the crops and also increase the production by farmers. In this
research, we also tested this system on soil for 15 days and noted its effective
results.
Received 00 December 00
Received in revised form 00 January 00
Accepted 00 February 00
Keywords:
Arduino
Automatic water planting system
Soil moisture sensor
Water pump
© 2019Uttaranchal University, Dehradun. Hosting by Elsevier SSRN (ISN)All rights reserved.
Peer review under responsibility of Uttaranchal University, Dehradun.
1.
Introduction
Since this is the period of smart technology and everyone want things to get automated so that there works load is reduced, so
automatic water planting system using Arduino is also one of that smart development which make human labour reduced. It
created a huge help specifically in agriculture sector where farmers do not have to keep on look after watering their crop.
Automatic irrigation for effective irrigation is being used by farmers of developed countries. In this system water is being
supplied near to the plant root drop by drop, thus large amount of water is being saved in this process and plants are being
effectively watered. In India farmers usually irrigate their respective farm area manually by themselves. This process
consumes more water and sometimes crop does not get water at right place, which decreases the productivity of crop.
Deficiency of Water can be risky to plants and can dry up or loose freshness. This problem can be resolved if we have an
automatic water planting system in which the watering will happen only when the plants will have requirement of water [1].
This research is developed on Arduino platform using Arduino ide. It consists of a soil moisture sensor that sense the
humidity or moisture percentage in the soil. Moisture sensor shows reading from 0 (low humidity) to 1023 (high humidity).
So, with the help of this moisture sensor farmers will get to know how much moisture content is present in soil and how
much water is being required by the soil [3]. So, to make things work automatically, Arduino system reads the moisture
content of the soil using moisture sensor inside soil and switches ON the motor when the moisture is below the set limit.
When the moisture level rises above the set limit, the system switches OFF the pump [2].
2.




Why Arduino?
They are inexpensive.
They are cross platform and works on many operating systems like windows, Macintosh etc.
It is very simple to use and programming can be done very easily on it.
The Arduino software is being published as an open source software, so it can be easily accessed by the programmers
[4].
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3.
What is the need of using automatic water planting system?
Plants are very important for humans and play a vital role in day to day life. Plants provide us with oxygen. For some these plants
acts as a source of food. People love to grow plants but due to their busy life they are not able to care them properly. Plants are
grown by right amount of water and sunlight provided. In busy life, people use to forget watering their plants, due to which they
eventually die [5] [18]. In addition to this there is shortage of water resources all over the world. It is important to util ize it in
valuable way and effective [6]. Thus, a system is needed, to perform all of these tasks in an automatic way. Automated plant
watering system measures the plant moisture percentage and then desired amount of water is being provided to plant as per
requirement. It reduces wastage of water and it enhances life of the plants [7] [10].
4.
Pros and Cons of using automatic water planting system
Pros
It reduces man labour and cost of labour.

It ensures more timely irrigation of plants

It helps farmers to manage higher flow rates.

It reduces runoff of water and nutrients [8].

It ensures more accurate cut off of water.
ConsThey are very costly, high maintenance and very costly to install. Equipment that are involved in this system is very costly. In
addition, there is extra cost required to maintain channels. Channels has to be fenced to protect the system units from any damage.
therefore, a lot more costs to maintain perfect growing conditions [9].
5.
Material and Software used-
There are many equipment’s that are available in market, but following are some of the material which can make system in few
hours, which includes:

Software- Arduino ide

Arduino Uno r3

Soil moisture sensor

Bread board

Jumper wires

Resistor 56e

Transistor npn(bc547)

Diode

Relay (HL JQC-3FC(T73) DC06V)

Water pump
6.
Working principle used -
The main working principle is to connect the moisture sensor with the system that is being inserted to plant, to the Arduino system,
which is also connected to other electronic requirements listed above as shown in above figure. Measurement of moisture content in
soil is being measured through the sensor and then this information from the sensor is being passed to the system according to which
water pump connected is being controlled [10]. When the level of soil moisture is below the set limit, then instruction is being
passed to the relay module which acts a switch and turns on the water pump. Once moisture level goes above or equal to set limit
then pump is set off. Power supply is needed to power the system and voltage lies between 7 to 12 volts [11] [12] [13].
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Fig1. block chart of working of system
Above block chart depicts the working principal of system.
7.
Circuit diagram-
Fig2. connection of automatic water planting system
Figure above is the circuit diagram of automatic water planting system using Arduino which includes all the material mentioned
above. All material should be connected in this way only to obtain the required system.
8.
Methodology-
For the system to run in the desired manner, code is being written according to which different functions of system will be
performed. In this code, variable humidity is being declared of type integer in which values from moisture sensor is being stored
[14]. In the setup function, the “Serial.begin (9600)” command will help to communicate between the Arduino system and serial
monitor where output will be visible. Then, “Reading from the Sensor ...” is being printed on the serial monitor. In loop function,
values from sensor analogpin is being read and will store the values in the “humidity” variable[20][21]. Then map function is being
used to convert the values coming from sensor into percentage value and these values are stored in variable “humidity1” of integer
type [15] [19]. Then condition says that if value stored in variable humidity from sensor is below 70% then the water pump will be
on and as soon as it goes above 70% then the water pump is off [16].
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9.
Result
Series of outputs are generated respectively-
Fig3. output when pump is on
In above output, it can be seen that when the system is in working state, moisture sensor starts sending data to the system, in
current state it can be seen that in output that the moisture level in plant or soil is around 46% to 47% which is less than
required set limit. So according to the required condition water pump is set on.
Fig4. output when pump is off
In above output it can be seen that moisture level is above or equal to the set limit due to which water pump is set off. So, this
cycle keeps on repeating itself in a loop till the time system is provided with power.
Fig5. testing of automatic water planting system
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Figure above tells about after effects of the examination as the general portrayal of our tried automatic plant watering syst em in
view of Arduino microcontroller and moisture sensor. As it can be finished up from the photo above, the framework has been
composed and tried effectively in a fruitful way.
10. Conclusion and Future PossibilitiesLikewise, usefulness of the framework, and also the general conduct of the plant or soil, has been seen in the following 15 days and
the outcomes were extraordinary not surprisingly and wanted. As consequence of perception it can be seen that plant kept up its
growth as wanted, general and wellbeing way with no inadequacies watched. At whatever point a requirement for water was
received by the sensor. Signal is being sent from Arduino to the pump to begin watering till the time it reaches the set limit. Good
and unexpected results was being obtained during execution and testing. Plant grew properly without getting dried and water was
being provided by the system at the time requirement occurred.
There are many future possibilities regarding this research which includes- solar power supply can be used for giving power to the
system. Timer can be set to check for water supply which means that at a particular set time we will check whether the plant need
water or not through this method power consumption will be reduced. System can be updated by adding temperature sensor and
others sensors that can tell us about the soil texture, mineral content and etc. through this update farmers can maintain their farm soil
and can also decide which crop or plant can be grown according to the soil components. In future this can be very helpful to the
people who are agriculturist, botanist, and even the people who love to grow plants at their home [10] [17].
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