Design and Implementation of Solar Power
Design and Implementation of Solar Power
Authors’ contributions
All the authors contributed to the whole project, but the author MHB gave the idea including literature
review section of the manuscript.
Article Information
DOI: 10.9734/JERR/2023/v24i2799
Received: 25/10/2022
Accepted: 29/12/2022
Method Article
Published: 27/01/2023
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Pisciculture means fish farming for commercial purposes in a pond or in an artificially
created fish tank. Proper care is needed for optimum fish yields.
Aims: The present research aims to design, simulate, implement, and test a low-cost pisciculture
monitoring system to get the environmental status of a fishing pond where aquatic plants and fishes
reside. The objective of this work is to produce high-quality and high yields of fish in the pond
keeping the standard or prescribed states of the pond water.
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Study Design: The factors that affect the pond environment are flow rate, p level, oxygen level,
temperature, humidity, etc. To get high yields of fish from a pond, these factors must be within a
specified level. If the values of these parameters go below or above the prescribed level then the
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water loses its quality and thereby fishes find it very difficult to survive in that pond because each
water quality factor affects the health conditions of fish. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor these
parameters.
Place and Duration of Study: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Southeast
University (SEU) between June 2021 and April 2022.
Methodology: In this work, we have designed an automated microcontroller, IoT, and solar power-
based water quality monitoring system for a fishpond. The automated system restores the values of
these factors automatically when any of these factors fail to maintain their level in the pond.
Results: After testing the prototype of the system, we found that the designed system is performing
very well and showing different parameter values in the LCD screen as outputs.
Conclusion: The system is in expensive and therefore, may be employed in practice.
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Keywords: Pisciculture; microcontroller; p sensor; solar power; turbidity and temperature sensor;
water level; internet of things.
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controller [21-25]. Besides, we used solar power measuring the water quality parameters that
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to make it more economical because the use of include p , level of the dissolved oxygen and
solar renewable energy will reduce its operating solids, temperature, water level, etc. They also
cost [26]. We used the IoT technology to make it used an IoT-based App to monitor the water
a smart system [25]. The system can determine parameters and regulate the actuators through
the condition of the pond for the specific fish. It the internet using smart-phone [31].
can also control the water quality parameters via
a smart-mobile application based on a cloud Another group of researchers presented a paper
database. The test results were found very on a WEMOS-D1 microcontroller-based water
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satisfactory. quality observing system, such as p , oil layer,
water level, temperature, etc. to have effective
2. LITERATURE REVIEW growth of fish in the pond. They also identified
the behavior of fish to determine the food
In 2012, at an international conference, the requirements of the fish [32].
authors presented a simple wireless sensor For wireless network data transmission, one of
network-based real-time water level and water the most important wireless system standards
quality monitoring system for the fishing pond. (such as, IEEE802.11b, IEEE802.11a, or
This device is mainly used with the RGB sensor. IEEE802.11g) should be adopted so that the
Their system uses mobile applications and highest possible data transfer rates (for example,
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sensors to determine the temperature, p , and from 11 Mbps to 54 Mbps) are possible achieve
water level of the pond water remotely using the for getting the error free data transfer [33].
internet [27].
Some species of fishes are found in the
In 2012, another research group developed an Recirculating Aquaculture System (RAS) to have
IoT-based system for pond monitoring to control a controlled interface between the fishpond
ponds at different locations under a centralized organisms and natural situation to have
common network. The system uninterruptedly enormously stylish waste controlling mechanisms
reads and controls various parameters that are in the fish farm. This is requires an IoT-based
important for the breeding and growth of the fish, solution for proper management [34-35].
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such as p , dissolved oxygen, temperature,
natural foods, etc. The system has a central Climate Information Services (CIS) are needed to
monitoring and control panel from where the inform fish farmers about the climate change and
values of various parameters are observed and its impact on fish yield. This service should be
based on that appropriate predictive decisions made available and accessible at an affordable
can be made intelligently [28]. cost to them [36]. This can be made possible
using IoT-based solution, too.
At present, researchers around the world are
using the IoT technology to monitor water levels, 3. PROBLEM STATEMENTS AND
detect leakage, and auto-refill tanks OBJECTIVES
automatically whenever there is a requirement
[29]. In this work, we designed a water quality
monitoring and control system. For this purpose,
In 2018, a research group developed and we will use various sensors to detect the status
implemented a water quality monitoring system of water quality automatically by using an
for aquaculture using Raspberry Pi, Arduino Arduino microcontroller. We will use a soil
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microcontroller, multiple sensors, cameras, and sensor, p sensor, turbidity sensor, ultrasonic
mobile Android Apps. The monitoring parameters sensor, feed sensor, temperature sensor, GSM
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of water were temperature, p , electrical module, potentiometer, air pump, water pump,
conductivity, and color. Sensors and cameras turbine, LCD screen, power supply ICs, solar
collected required parameter values and images panel, buck converter, resistors, capacitors,
by the Arduino and the acquired data and images LEDs, etc.
were processed by the Raspberry Pi and then
stored in a server [30]. The specific objectives of this research are to-
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A research group published a work on the design Check the turbidity condition, p value,
and implementation of an automatic monitoring dissolved oxygen level, temperature,
and governing system for Bio-floc fish farming by humidity, height, etc. of pond water.
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Adjust the values of those parameters in signals. In the middle, there is an Arduino Uno
water. microcontroller and Node MCU.
Get the notification for each parameter via
SMS. The left side blocks are for various sensors that
Create a proper environment for collect various information from the water body
pisciculture. individually and send the corresponding electrical
pulses to the microcontroller that reads those
If such system can be implemented then fish signals in the digital format from its input ports.
farmers would be benefitted at low cost by Then microcontroller processes the received
getting higher fish yields from their fishponds. signals according to its programming instructions
This would also help the country to become self- and then sends the appropriate action signals to
sufficient in fish production and thereby earn its output ports. Here, we used a pH sensor to
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foreign currency by exporting fishes abroad. measure the p value of water. We also used
here a feeding system for fish to monitor the
4. HARDWARE DESIGN AND position of the feed. For this purpose, we used
IMPLEMENTATION here an LDR with a resistor to find the actual
conditions of the feed every second. We used a
The system architecture shows the arrangement turbidity sensor to measure the turbidity of water
of components and sub-systems or objects in the for ensuring its cleanliness. To control the
system. The conceptual design of the system is percentage of dissolved oxygen in the water, we
completed and then simulated to get its real-time used an air pump so that air can be pumped into
behavior. Therefore, to get a complete system of the water from the bottom to the upper parts of
the conceptual design, a block diagram is drawn the pond. Another important part of our system is
for the hardware design process of the whole the temperature measurement sub-system that
system. The block diagram shows how different can measure the water temperature regularly
components are connected with various input from three different levels of the water, viz. lower,
and output terminals of the system. This diagram middle, and surface. When the temperature rises
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also refers to what happens from input to output. above 40 C then it will send a notification that the
The block diagram of our proposed system is temperature is high using the GSM module.
demonstrated in Fig. 1. Fig. 1 represents three However, the GSM module is employed here for
main blocks where the left side blocks are for multiple purposes, like making calls, and sending
giving input signals to the microcontroller and the notifications based on several sensor data. To
right side blocks are there to receive the output provide electrical energy to operate various parts
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of the complete system, we used a solar panel to the code, we used the flow chart, which is self-
reduce its operating cost. Besides, we used a explanatory as shown in Fig. 3. The developed
switched-mode power supply (SMPS) to work code is also used for the real-time prototype
during no sunlight conditions. However, during implementation of the system.
the sunlight, it will charge the power bank to
store electrical energy, also. To save the data of After the successful simulation of the system, we
various sub-systems, the data are sent through realized a prototype of the hardware system as
the gateway to the cloud via mobile applications. shown in Fig. 4. Then we tested and evaluated
Not only that, 16 characters by 2 lines LCD is the system performance by taking various data
used here to show all the values of this system from the system.
instantaneously using the serial port of the
microcontroller. 5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
From the conceptual block diagram of Fig. 1, a After implementing this system, we tested the
circuit diagram of the system is developed using system by applying various input conditions and
the Proteus software. The circuit diagram is some output results that we observed on the
shown in Fig. 2 where various images of each LCD screen are shown in Figs. 5-12. Figs. 5-6
component are used. The interconnections of show that the system is ready for displaying the
each element are shown, also in this diagram output results of its operation. First, it will
with the necessary pin connections. Fig. 2 welcome everyone to this system.
represents the hardware pins connected to the
Arduino Uno microcontroller, the main unit of the Fig. 7 shows that the system has available
designed system. The supply pins of various feeds for the fish if the system senses that
sensors are connected to the Arduino Uno enough feeds are there. On the other hand, if
microcontroller board’s power supply so that the the system senses that there are not enough
input data reference is the same for all input and feeds available then it will show feed the result
output pins. The output pins are connected to the as “Not available”. After that, we can see the
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digital pins and analog pins of the Arduino Uno. value of the p sensor in Fig. 9 to confirm that
the water is good in terms of this data. We know
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The assembly program is developed for the that if the p value of water is in the range of 6.5-
Arduino Uno using the Integrated Development 9 then it is suitable for pond fish farming
Environment (IDE) and then this code is used in and if it is > 9.5 then it is inappropriate for the fish
the microcontroller for simulations. To develop [37].
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Fig. 9. Displaying the p value of the pisciculture system prototype
Fig. 10. Displaying the temperature value of the pisciculture system prototype
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We also monitored the temperature of the pond We monitored the p level of water on different
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water, and it was found slightly above 32 C as dates at two particular times in the day and
displayed in Fig. 10. This is one of the most evening. Then it is sent to the mobile Apps that
important parameters to be monitored to showed it in two different plots of a graph as
maintain the water quality. Based on the culture shown in Fig. 13. Similarly, the system sent the
period, the optimum temperature range for a high water temperatures on different dates at two
yield of fish is recommended by the researchers particular times in the day and evening, and the
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as 28-34 C [38]. graph is shown in Fig. 14. Fig. 15 shows the
turbidity of water at two different times of the day
Then we can see the turbidity of the water. It will on different days. However, the water level
show two stages of the water, that is whether the collected from the ultrasonic sensor is shown at
water is clear or dirty. We used here different times on a particular day in Fig. 16. The
drinking water in our prototype model so it LCD data and other environmental monitoring
showed the turbidity of water as clear as shown system data confirm all the data displayed on
in Fig. 11. various plots as shown in Figs. 13-16.
We can monitor the level of water A breakdown of the component cost of the
in three stages, such as low-level, mid-level, completed system is shown in Table 1. It shows
and high-level. We use a small amount that the total cost is slightly higher than six
of water to test our system, so it is showing thousand Bangladeshi Taka (BDT6,025.00),
“Low level” on the LCD screen as shown in which is equivalent to fifty-nine US Dollars
Fig. 12. (US$59.00), approximately [39].
Fig. 11. Displaying the turbidity of the pisciculture system prototype as clear
Fig. 12. Displaying the water level of the pisciculture system prototype as low
pH Level
Date
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Fig. 13. Plot of the p levels of water on different dates and time
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Temperature
Date
Fig. 14. Plot of the water temperature on different dates and time
Turbidity
Date
Fig. 15. Plot of the water turbidity on different dates and time
Table 1. The design cost of a microcontroller, solar power, and an IoT-based pisciculture
system
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Water Level
Time
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© 2023 Bhuyan et al.; This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
Peer-review history:
The peer review history for this paper can be accessed here:
https://www.sdiarticle5.com/review-history/95811
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