Design of an IoT Based Soil Monitoring System

T. Swathi* Rasiga T D** S. Sudha*

*Electrical and Electronics Engineering **Department of Instrumentation Engineering
National Institute of Technology, Madras Institute of Technology,
Tiruchirappalli, India Anna University, Chennai, India
swathithangavelu1995@gmail.com rasigatd@gmail.com
sudha@nitt.edu

Abstract -- Agriculture plays an indispensable role in India’s surroundings is also the most important requirement before
2023 International Conference on IoT, Communication and Automation Technology (ICICAT) | 979-8-3503-0282-0/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICICAT57735.2023.10263767

development and prosperity as it employs a large portion of a and after sowing seeds, for improved yield [2]. Since
country's occupation. Agricultural development is crucial for temperature and humidity are the most important factor for
overall economic growth. As a result, smart farming is essential
the growth of plants, they should be maintained in an optimal
with modern technologies to enhance agricultural development.
range. [3]. So, it is essential to monitor the atmospheric
Here, a Wireless Sensor Network is designed and developed to
collect and send the temperature, humidity level, and moisture
parameters and take appropriate actions to maintain them for
content of the soil to the cloud developed using sensors such as effective crop yield. About 51.09% of the land in India is used
DHT11 and soil moisture sensor, Microcontroller, Xbee, and for agriculture, 21.8 for forestry, 3.9% for grazing, and
Thing speak platform for storing and retrieving the data. From 12.34% of the land is uncultivated which also includes
this farmer can easily monitor the soil moisture, temperature, dessert areas and hills, and some of it is covered by buildings,
and humidity. Consequently, they can keep track of their soil factories, etc. [4].
condition easily from home and take necessary actions, such as The goal of this paper is to propose an IoT based
watering the soil when the levels are low. This will enable better
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to monitor, collect and
growth of plants.
store the data of the soil in the cloud for further analysis. The
Keywords –Temperature, Humidity, Soil moisture, Wireless sensor
Network, Cloud, Monitor.
WSN consists of sensors to sense the soil moisture,
temperature, humidity level, and microcontroller. These data
I. INTRODUCTION are sent to the cloud using Xbee modules. The stored data can
Technology today is extremely important in all sectors. be retrieved and analyzed for taking corrective measures. In
Like other sectors agriculture should use technology, which case of uncultivated land, the use of such system will help the
is crucial to produce large yields, as agriculture always farmers to maintain the required level of moisture in the soil
remains a significant factor in India for economic growth. and help them to decide on a suitable crop with respect to the
The world's population is rising gradually, which is vastly nutrient level of the soil, thereby to meet out the demands of
driving up global food demand. Since food is a basic need for food due to overpopulation.
everyone in the globe, it is important to create the highest
population density possible on the minimal amount of II. RELATED WORK
available land. IoT can affect farmers in a wide variety of Several research works based on soil monitoring
ways, including encouraging them to use their resourceful developed. Four sensor nodes together forming a WSN are
land more wisely and influencing them to take precipitous developed and placed at a specific area of the mango growing
action when they are encouraged by a system to act. field in Malaysia, which measures the soil moisture content,
In the past, government officials have taken over the temperature, and humidity and transmits the data to the Base
charge of overseeing agriculture. One of the most important Station (BS). The acquired data are used for monitoring the
building blocks of agriculture is soil [1]. Farmers must get in environmental conditions which result in irrigating the field
touch with government officials to learn about the condition [5]. A smart monitoring system with a smartphone for
of the soil, like moisture content, temperature, and humidity analyzing and controlling temperature, humidity, and
levels. Government officials arrive and inspect the soil and moisture in a greenhouse through sensors, the Internet of
agricultural fields taking more work and time as the data is Things (IoT), and an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is
manually done and collected. Because of the manual developed which helps farmers in operating motors, cooling
calculation, errors can occur. It may take several days for the fan, hot air, etc. from their smartphone when they are required
farmers to receive the soil data. So, soil monitoring becomes in the greenhouse [6].
more important in agriculture. Monitoring soil moisture A soil moisture sensor, DHT11, and a liquid level sensor
conditions provides essential data for crop growth, and are used in this paper to establish an automated irrigation
protection and is useful for the understanding of soil water system. When the moisture content of a cultivated crop drops
resources. Having fertile soil with adequate moisture content below the minimum threshold for irrigation, the pipeline is
and the required temperature and humidity of their wirelessly enabled to open and identify the land that needs

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irrigation. As soon as the moisture level rises above the parameters including moisture, temperature, humidity, and
maximum value, the irrigation pipeline is deactivated, rainfall are monitored using hardware and software from a
stopping irrigation on agricultural land [7]. To increase remote location, assisting in the autonomous control of soil
agricultural activity productivity, temperature, humidity, soil moisture content and the water conservation process [17].
moisture content, and fires are tracked by connecting sensors The soil conditions are tested through the Wi-Fi router
to Raspberry Pi. Farmers can monitor the field condition from using temperature, pH, and humidity sensors, the field
home through Android mobiles using three relays for manager receives the sensor values, and the mobile
irrigation, fertilization, and pest control [8]. In this paper, a application suggests a crop. An appropriate crop is cultivated
real-time IoT-based water supply monitoring methodology is in accordance with the outcome. When the soil temperature
proposed that ensures sufficient water supply for every end is high, the irrigation system is turned ON automatically. A
user. In addition to monitoring its water supply network, it crop image is taken, and the field manager is given access to
detects maintenance needs, calculates total consumption, it, to enable the recommendation of pesticides [18].
measures supply pressure and flow and takes the necessary Recommendation of fertilizer, timely irrigation, selection of
actions [9]. crops and detection of pests are analyzed by taking soil
Passive Infra-Red (PIR) sensors are placed around the moisture, temperature, PH, soil fertility and image of pest
farm to detect the movement of unauthorized entries. When data from the field using sensors. Intelligent methods are
a sensor reads any unwanted entry, the Arduino sends a signal developed using a mobile application for monitoring the crop
to a buzzer. This information is also sent to farmers using in each field and doing the needful to increase crop yield [19].
GSM. From this immediate action is taken [10]. Rain, An IoT technology is created that continuously monitors the
temperature, and humidity of the soil are predicted and field’s soil condition, including moisture, temperature, and
measured from the surrounding fields using an Application humidity with the help of a microcontroller. All these are
Programming Interface (API). The motor is activated to water done by monitoring everything and with a specially designed
the field when it is low moisture and no sign of rain [11]. software application using energy-efficient equipment to
Using LoRa an IoT is developed with sensors for lower energy costs [20]. IoT technology in agriculture is
monitoring the surrounding field parameters by two different developed with the help of Node MCU to measure the
sensor nodes to transmit data. A fog receives this data temperature, humidity, and motion of animals. The Blynk app
connected with the gateway, which is then transferred to the receives a notification if there is movement in an agricultural
cloud. Using e-monitoring, the developed system aids in the field and if temperatures and humidity are below a threshold.
prevention of wine disease [12]. A tree health monitoring This allows farmers to take the necessary step in accordance
system is proposed using IoT, which can be used to monitor with the outcome [21].
them remotely from anywhere using a smartphone. It is
designed as a dual-powered system with low power to run on III. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
solar power for operating continuously without a power The proposed methodology is to design a WSN with
outage. WSN is developed to provide high-quality security connectivity to the cloud to sense and monitor temperature,
features [13]. An IoT based system is developed which humidity and soil moisture and transmit the data to the cloud.
contains three soil moisture sensors, placed in three different The system architecture of the proposed model is shown in
locations in the water pipeline to detect the leak. Trials are Fig. 1.
taken to find out the leak and the data such as the time and
location of a leak is sent to the control PC by a gateway
through sensor nodes and measures are taken [14].
An irrigation system is developed for remotely
monitoring and managing the agricultural field
characteristics by converting a conventional system to an Fig. 1. The system model of IoT
electronically controllable irrigation system using a machine
with differential GPS for monitoring the navigation of Sensor nodes (S1 & S2) are placed at different locations to
irrigation. The automated system uses Bluetooth wireless sense the soil moisture, temperature, and humidity and send
radio connection to link the sensor and control devices. the information through the Xbee transceiver to the
Software with a graphic user interface (GUI) is also coordinator (C). Then this information is communicated to
investigated to achieve reliable remote access [15]. The the cloud through Node MCU (Esp8266).
author examined the soil moisture content to automate the Each sensor node consists of a microcontroller, 2
watering of crops. To fully automate the system, this sensors, Xbee and a power supply. The microcontroller used
technology senses temperature and humidity to determine for both the sensor nodes are Arduino UNO and the sensors
any impediments in the concerned region. For monitoring and are DHT11 and soil moisture. The proposed model block
accessing the region, the system consists of a microcontroller, diagram is depicted in Fig. 2. The coordinator gathers the
sensors, a camera, and a motor driver [16]. Important soil information from these sensor nodes and transmits it to the

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base station. The information is stored in the cloud by the soil and connected to the analog pin-A0 reads the moisture
base station (BS) using the think speak platform. level in the soil. This Arduino UNO is interfaced with the
XbeeS2C Module for the transmission of sensed data to the
coordinator. This forms the sensor node S1. Similarly, the
sensor node S2 is also interfaced with XbeeS2C Module
through another Arduino with DHT11, and soil moisture
sensors are placed in different soil. The sensor nodes and the
coordinator are connected to form a Star topology. The
coordinator is connected to Node MCU. Node MCU acts as
a Base Station. The sensor nodes S1 and S2 are configured as
Fig. 2. Bloch diagram of the proposed model member nodes and Xbee S2C as coordinator using XCTU.
Two pots with different soil types namely, slightly
IV. HARDWARE COMPONENTS watery and dry soil collected from different locations are
The components used in this setup are: taken to carry out the experiment. The soil moisture sensors
1) DHT11 sensor: for measuring the environmental of S1 and S2 are placed in these pots in order. Then the water
temperature and humidity [22]. is added to the pot2 (having dry soil) slowly for observing
2) YL69 Soil Moisture Sensor: consists of two probes that changes in the moisture content. However, no water is added
read the moisture content in the soil by passing a current to pot1.
through the soil to read the resistance. The communication parameters set for the member nodes and
3) ARDUINO UNO: is a microcontroller based on the Coordinator are shown in Table 1.
ATmega328P with 20 Input/Output pins - six PWM pins, six
TABLE I. Tabulation of the Parameter setting.
analog pins, and eight digital I/O pins [22]. Arduino input
pins are connected to the sensors. Parameters Values
4) Node MCU: offers the same connectivity and specification 1. Baud Rate 9600
as the Arduino UNO board in a smaller form factor. It has an 2. Data Bits 8 bits
Integrated WiFi ESP8266 Module to transfer data to the 3. Parity None
4. Stop Bits 1 bit
cloud.
5. Flow control None
5) Xbee: is a 20-pin S2C RF module made for wireless data
transmission and communication. It uses IEEE 802.15.4 PHY
The Arduino of the nodes S1 and S2 and the Node MCU
as the foundation and Zigbee mesh communication protocols
are programmed to initiate the sensors and the coordinator
on top of it.
respectively. The command for the coordinator includes the
6) XCTU: is a multi-platform application for transmitting
channel number and their API Key, Channel SSID and
data from one node to another. The nodes are configured
Password of the Thing Speak cloud platform. A WRITE
either as a member/ Co-ordinator using XCTU. [22].
operation is performed to transfer the sensor data of S1 and
7) Arduino IDE: sensing devices are enabled by writing and
S2 to the coordinator. The temperature of S1 and S2, followed
uploading the suitable code to the Arduino boards. This
by the humidity of S1 and S2 and then followed by their soil
application is used in all kinds of operating systems supported
moisture can be visualized in sequence on opening the
by the programming languages C and C++ [22].
coordinator XCTU window.
8) Thing Speak: collects all sensed data and shows the
condition of the field in the graphical representation in its app
VI. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
enabling the farmers to easily monitor.
Fig. 4 shows the snapshot of the coordinators’ XCTU
window.
V. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
An experimental setup with 2 sensor nodes and a Base
Station as depicted in Fig 3 is developed in the Research Lab

Fig. 3. Experimental setup

In Arduino, the DHT11 sensor is placed on the soil,
connected to digital pin-2 which reads both the temperature
and humidity, while the soil moisture sensor is dipped in the

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 Fig. 6(a) and 6(b). The plot of Humidity Vs Time for S1and S2

7 (a) 7 (b)
Fig 4. Snapshot of the coordinator XCTU window Fig. 7(a) and 7(b). The plot of Moisture Vs Time for S1and S2
In Fig. 4 the values appended with the alphabets ‘a’, ‘b’ The temperature, humidity and soil moisture value of S1
and ‘c’ correspond to the temperature, humidity, and soil is found to vary from 31℃ to 32℃, 64% to 66% and 1023%
moisture of S1, while ‘d’, ‘e’ and ‘f’ correspond to S2 in respectively and the temperature, humidity and soil moisture
accordance. The coordinator transfers the received data to the value of S2 vary from 32℃ to 33℃, 59% to 61% and 950% to
Base Station which in turn communicates to the Cloud. The 1050% respectively as water is added slowly to check the
channels for the sensor data in the Thing Speak IoT platform variations in S2 compared with S1. It is noted that the above
are created before inserting the thing speak channel into the sensor value variations from the Thing speak correspond to
coordinator. the sensor values in the coordinator window. The stored
The graph corresponding to the sensors of the respective sensor values from the cloud are downloaded and a snapshot
channels is depicted in Fig. 5, 6 and 7 as visualized in the of the file is depicted in Fig. 8. The downloaded file is in CSV
field chart of the Thing Speak platform. The field charts are format which contains the information of entry ID, created
created while creating the new channel for storing the sensor date and time and the sensor in their respective fields.
data in the thing speak platform. Figs. 5(a), 6(a) and 7(a)
correspond to the Field charts 1, 2 and 3, i.e., the values of S1
and Figs. 5(b), 6(b) and 7(b) corresponds to the field chart 4,
5 and 6, i.e., the values of S2 for a duration of 30 minutes.

5 (a) 5(b)
Fig. 5(a) and 5(b). The plot of Temperature Vs Time for S1 and S2

Fig. 8. Snapshot of the CSV file from the cloud.

Through Machine Learning Algorithms, the data from

the CSV file can be used to analyze the soil nature for better
crop growth.

VII. CONCLUSION
With the recent advancements in technology, smart
agriculture is one that is driving attention. This is helpful to
6 (a) 6 (b) the farmers as it reduces human intervention and saves time.

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