Water Related

The smart irrigation system that reduces water use in agricultural areas

EM020

Arda Özdemir (MEF University)

Apr 04, 2022 2658 views

The smart irrigation system that reduces water use in agricultural areas

Introduction

Since only 3% of the world's water is usable by humans and other living things, it is necessary to be more sensitive in this regard. According to the article published by Worldbank in 2017, it was mentioned that approximately 40% of the world's population lives in water-restricted areas, and it is estimated that approximately 1.8 billion people will live in areas without water by 2025 [1]. Therefore, we should use water resources more efficiently. Abundant use of water in agriculture will create major drought problems in the future. According to the Worldbank, a 60% increase in agriculture is required to feed 9 billion people by 2050, which will increase water use by 15% [1]. According to the CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), it is mentioned that in order to prevent excessive water use in agriculture, farmers should monitor the weather conditions regularly, while at the same time, the moisture level on the soil and plant should be measured continuously. It is stated that a system to be created by monitoring these values will save water usage [2].

Project Design

In our project, we are planning to develop a system that will reduce water use in an agricultural area. While this system will constantly measure the moisture content in the soil, it will also have a structure that will stop the irrigation system from working in case of rain. We will use the CN-0398 coded soil moisture measurement system to measure the humidity level. In addition, we will check whether it is raining with the HL-83 rain sensor. We plan to reduce unnecessary water use by combining these two systems. After analyzing whether the soil needs water or not, we plan to control the irrigation level by sending the necessary data to the cloud system with the ESP8266 Wi-Fi module in order to analyze the last year’s data. We aim to make a measurement every 10 seconds by the system and to send information about the analysis made according to these measurements to the cloud system in less than 5 seconds. Analyzes will be made with the DE10-Nano Kit.

Expected sustainability results and projected resource savings:

The threat of extinction of the world's waters is a very important problem for sustainability. We think that this project will make significant contributions to sustainability. According to a report published in Nature World News, 30% to 50% water savings were made with the smart irrigation system [3]. We plan to save at least 20% of water in irrigation in agriculture. We believe that thousands of tons of water can be saved if the system is started to be used actively in agricultural areas.

References:

[1] “Water resources management,” World Bank. [Online]. Available: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/waterresourcesmanagement. [Accessed: 19-Sep-2021].

[2] “10 ways farmers are saving water,” CUESA, 30-Jun-2021. [Online]. Available: https://cuesa.org/article/10-ways-farmers-are-saving-water. [Accessed: 22-Sep-2021].

[3] M. Brown, “Smart irrigation System 'listens' to Plants cries to reduce water use up to 50%,” Nature World News, 03-Sep-2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/47332/20210903/responsive-drip-irrigation-irrigation-system.htm. [Accessed: 23-Sep-2021].

Demo Video

[URL: https://youtu.be/rf7pt7cWaV0]

Project Proposal


1. High-level project introduction and performance expectation

There are limited natural resources in the world we live in. The most important of these resources is water. Water is a basic need for people to live. However, in recent years, it is seen that water resources have started to run out. This poses a great danger to both humans and animals living in nature. While there are millions of people who cannot find water on the African continent even now, the same situation may occur all over the world in the coming years. In addition, only 3% of the world's water is usable by humans and other living things, it is necessary to be more sensitive in this regard. According to the article published by Worldbank in 2017, it was mentioned that approximately 40% of the world's population lives in water-restricted areas, and it is estimated that approximately 1.8 billion people will live in areas without water by 2025 [1]. Therefore, we should use water resources more efficiently. Abundant use of water in agriculture will create major drought problems in the future. According to the Worldbank, a 60% increase in agriculture is required to feed 9 billion people by 2050, which will increase water use by 15% [1]. According to the CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), it is mentioned that in order to prevent excessive water use in agriculture, farmers should monitor the weather conditions regularly, while at the same time, the moisture level on the soil and plant should be measured continuously. It is stated that a system to be created by monitoring these values will save water usage [2].

With the design we will make, we will analyze the water need of the soil by measuring with sensors and we will control how much water should be used accordingly. At the same time, we will be able to obtain detailed data about the last 1 year by sending this information to the cloud platform. We want our project to do these all tasks in less than 15 seconds. Thanks to this design, we plan to prevent the unnecessary use of water in agricultural areas. This project we have made will be suitable for use in all agricultural areas in the world. Our target audience will be farmers from all over the world.

 

References:

 

[1] “Water resources management,” World Bank. [Online]. Available: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/waterresourcesmanagement. 


[2] “10 ways farmers are saving water,” CUESA, 30-Jun-2021. [Online]. Available: https://cuesa.org/article/10-ways-farmers-are-saving-water.

2. Block Diagram

Figure 1. Block diagram of the system

3. Expected sustainability results, projected resource savings

The threat of extinction of the world's waters is a very important problem for sustainability. We think that this project will make significant contributions to sustainability. According to a report published in Nature World News, 30% to 50% of water savings were made with the smart irrigation system [1]. We plan to save at least 20% of water in irrigation in agriculture. We believe that thousands of tons of water can be saved if the system is started to be used actively in agricultural areas. We are aiming to get the current status of the farming field every 10 seconds in order to control water usage efficiently. Knowing the water needs of the field, the farmers will reduce the water use by irrigating in the most appropriate way.

 

References:

[1] M. Brown, “Smart irrigation System 'listens' to Plants cries to reduce water use up to 50%,” Nature World News, 03-Sep-2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/47332/20210903/responsive-drip-irrigation-irrigation-system.htm.

4. Design Introduction

The system we created sends the moisture level in the soil to the Azure IoT Hub with the soil moisture sensor connected to the DE10 Nano and tells the user whether the soil needs water or not. At the same time, values such as lux value, temperature and humidity in the air are sent to the cloud via the RFS Module. The farmer using the system will be able to see whether the plants need water from his/her computer or phone. Thanks to this system, which can be easily placed on any agricultural land, unnecessary water use will be greatly reduced and yields will increase in agricultural lands.

Intel FPGA devices are very suitable for use in our project due to the many advantages they offer. Thanks to the high performance it offers, calculations can be made in a short time, which is very important for real-time transactions. It is also suitable for use in large-scale applications as it is suitable for parallel tasks.

5. Functional description and implementation

During the design process of the system, additions were made to the reference system created by Terasic. As seen in Figure 1, it consists of 3 main components. The light intensity, temperature and humidity level in the air are measured with the RFS sensor, and the moisture level in the soil is measured with the soil moisture sensor connected to the ADC input. Top_qsys on the DE10 Nano includes nios.qsys and soc_system.qsys. soc_system is the HPS system where IoT operations are performed. On the Nios, there is a shared memory that can be accessed through both HPS and Nios. Nios system reads the values ​​from the sensors. We also added an ADC module to Nios system in order to read the values from the soil moisture sensor. After reading the values from sensor, Nios writes them to the shared memory. HPS can read these values ​​over shared memory.

On the other part of the project, the sof file created from Quartus is converted to rbf and added to the reference design. New additions about the soil moisture sensor are added to the python program. Azure IoT Hub and Edge applications are installed and their configurations are done. With the help of Azure IoT Hub and Docker, the final version of the system developed on python is sent to the card and run. Telemetry values ​​can be viewed on the web every 10 seconds. In addition, these values ​​can also be seen on the card. Also, with the threshold detection, farmers can be informed if there are unusual values coming from the sensors.

The system we designed measures values such as temperature, humidity, light intensity and soil moisture level every 10 seconds and sends this to the cloud system. At the same time, whether the soil needs water or not is seen in the system. In this way, farmers can monitor their agricultural lands continuously and increase productivity by giving water when needed, and by not giving water when it is not needed, they both help to protect water resources and save money.

6. Performance metrics, performance to expectation

After finding the suitable soil, there are three main parameters to consider for the plant to grow: climatic conditions (temperature), soil moisture and light. We used Nios-II processor for FPGAs to transfer these parameters read by sensors to the cloud system.


While all these data can be seen in the cloud every 10 second the system is running, the system can be easily interpreted for different plant varieties. With the Intel FPGA Device being affordable, reprogrammable, the system is adaptable to many different plant and soil types. Currently, the system presents the data we want to the user in the cloud system. We anticipate that a significant amount of savings will be made when it is developed in an established facility and supported by constantly updated graphics that include the amount of water spent, temperature and light values ​​(for photosynthesis of the plant). In this way, all our expectations will be met. Also, our soil moisture sensor is durable which is not affected by bad weather conditions, increasing the reliability of our system.

Thanks to Intel FGPA devices, it is possible to carry out these operations in a short time, and at the same time, we have the chance to perform many different tasks at the same time, thanks to the parallel working system it offers.

7. Sustainability results, resource savings achieved

As we mentioned before, this project has a great contribution to sustainability. The items listed below can be examined in this context.

- Since the system will be installed in agricultural areas and these areas are also sunny places, it will be possible to operate the whole system with solar energy.

- Plants will not be damaged due to insufficient irrigation.

- Excessive irrigation and waste of water will be prevented.

- The soil will be more fertile, which will allow plants to grow better.

- Thanks to low water usage, farmers will save money.

- The most optimal conditions will be provided thanks to various sensor data obtained from the environment of the plant.

- Plants that are highly sensitive to excess or lack of water will not be harmed as they are constantly controlled.

8. Conclusion

In conclusion, we developed a system that can be placed on agricultural lands and measures the humidity, temperature, light intensity and soil moisture in the environment. The system developed using DE10 Nano can be placed anywhere thanks to its small size. The system continuously checks and informs the farmer whether the soil needs water via the Azure IoT platform, thus saving water and money, and obtaining more efficient products. We think that with the widespread use of this system in agricultural areas, unnecessary water use will decrease considerably and make a significant contribution to sustainability.

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