International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)

ISSN (Online): 2319-7064

Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2014): 5.611

Android based Automated Irrigation System using

Raspberry Pi
Suprabha Jadhav1, Shailesh Hambarde2
1
Savitribai Phule Pune University, JSPM’s JSCOE, Handewadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-28, India

Abstract: Nowadays, adopting an optimized irrigation system has become a necessity due to the lack of the world water resource. The
system has a distributed wireless network of soil-moisture and temperature sensors. This project focuses on a smart irrigation system
which is cost effective. As the technology is growing and changing rapidly, Wireless sensing Network (WSN) helps to upgrade the
technology where automation is playing important role in human life. Automation allows us to control various appliances automatically.
DC motor based vehicle is designed for irrigation purpose. The objectives of this paper were to control the water supply to each plant
automatically depending on values of temperature and soil moisture sensors. Mechanism is done such that soil moisture sensor
electrodes are inserted in front of each soil. It also monitors the plant growth using various parameters like height and width. Android
app.

Keywords: Android App, Automation, Raspberry Pi, Sensors.

1. Introduction plant. Drip irrigation is also termed as localized irrigation or

micro irrigation.
In China, water resource is in severe shortage and
agricultural water consumption accounts for about 80% of Main purpose of this project is to save the water and to
the total water consumption. Because of out-dated increase the production of crops by monitoring the growth of
agriculture irrigation method, the coefficient of irrigation plants. To substitute the flooding method/manual method of
water for effective utilization is only 0.3-0.4 or so. One giving water to each plant by irrigation system. To design
important way to improve the utilization rate of irrigation irrigation by drip that would be economical and efficient as
water is to implement precise controlled information on the water management has a crucial importance. To maximize
basis of water crops demand data. utilization of available water. The conventional drip
irrigation system is fully controlled and monitored by the
In the modern drip irrigation systems, the most significant farmer. This project presents a fully automated drip
advantage is that water is supplied near the root zone of the irrigation system which is controlled and monitored by using
plants drip by drip due to which a large quantity of water is Raspberry Pi.
saved. At the present era, the farmers have been using
irrigation technique in India through the manual control in 1.1. Background
which the farmers irrigate the land from time to time. This
process sometimes consumes more water. Irrigation refers to the process of supply of water through
artificial means such as pipes, ditches, sprinklers, etc. The
Automatic irrigation scheduling consistently has shown to be irrigation system helps the farmers to have less dependency
valuable in water use efficiency with respect to manual on rain-water for the purpose of agriculture. The necessity
irrigation based on direct soil water measurements. The aim and importance of irrigation is highlighted below in points:
of the implementation is to demonstrate that the automatic 1) Variety of Climate: Indian climate and weather conditions
irrigation can be used to reduce water use. The experiences a varied range of climate. There is extreme
implementation is a automated irrigation system that consists heat at some places, while the climate remains extremely
of a distributed wireless network of soil moisture and cold at other places. While there is excessive rainfall at
temperature sensor. some places, other places experience extreme dryness. So,
irrigation is needed in India.
There are different types of method for irrigating farm field 2) Irregular and uncertain monsoon: India is a land of
for different types crop field. Basically Indian farmer use monsoon. But monsoon is irregular and erratic in nature.
these three methods channel system, sprinkler system, drip Sometimes it comes easily and brings heavy rainfall, but
system. Channel system is a traditional method of irrigation. sometimes it come late and brings inadequate rainfall.
But a smart irrigation system is a new technology to Further, there is irregularity in the distribution of rainfall
irrigating farm field automatically. throughout the year. The irrigation system helps the
farmers to have less dependency on rain-water. During the
Drip irrigation is one of the methods of irrigation that saves months of inadequate rainfall, the crops are supplied water
water and fertilizer. In drip irrigation method, water drips through irrigation systems.
slowly to the roots of the plants either onto the soil surface 3) Agriculture based economy: Indian economy is based on
or directly onto the root zone through a network of valves, agriculture. A large portion of Indian population depends
pipes, tubing and emitters. The process is completed in on agriculture. Without irrigation agriculture is not
narrow tubes so that water is given directly to the root of the possible in dry areas or during the months of inadequate

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Paper ID: NOV164836 http://dx.doi.org/10.21275/v5i6.NOV164836 2345
 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2014): 5.611
rainfall. Naturally, for the agricultural activities across 2. Literature Review
diverse regions, there is a need for proper irrigation
system. After the research in the agricultural field, researchers found
4) Winter crop: India is a vast country with fertile plain lands that the yield of agriculture goes on decreasing day by day.
suitable for Rabi as well Kharif crops. But there is no Use of technology in the field of agriculture plays important
rainfall during winter months in several places. Without role in increasing the production as well as in reducing the
irrigation production of Rabi crops along with other crops extra man power efforts, water requirement and fertilizer
is not possible. Rabi crops are grown during the long dry requirement.
spell of winter season. This is possible mainly due to
advanced irrigation facilities. Model includes soil moisture, temperature and pressure
5) High breed seeds: At present because of high-breed seeds, sensors to monitor the irrigation operations. Specifically, we
crops can be produced at any seasons. But the production take into account the case where a system malfunction
of crops is totally depending on water. The introduction of occurs, as when the pipes burst or the emitters block. Also,
advanced irrigation system have enabled the farmers to we differentiate two main traffic levels for the information
produce crops even on during dry season. transmitted by the WSAN, and we use an adequate priority-
6) Soil Character: In many places, the soils have less water- based routing protocol to achieve high QoS performance.
retaining capacities. Simulations conducted over the NS-2 simulator show
7) Jute and Paddy: Irrigation is needed for growing some promising results in terms of delay and Packet Delivery
thirsty plants like jute and paddy. Ratio (PDR), mainly for priority traffic [1].

Hence, irrigation is of utmost importance for a agriculture System has a distributed wireless network of soil-moisture &
based country like India. To feed a population of over one temperature sensors placed in root zone of plants. Gateway
billion people, there is a need for production of crops round unit handles sensor information, triggers actuators, and
the year. But for this purpose, irrigation water is needed. So transmits data to a web application. An algorithm was
for the production of food crops and cash crops, irrigation is developed with threshold values of sensors that was
a must. programmed into a microcontroller-based gateway to control
water quantity [2].
1.2. Need
Small embedded system device (ESD) which takes care of a
The artificial way of supplying water to the agricultural land whole irrigation process. The PIC18F4550 microcontroller
at the right moment in an appropriate volume for the proper interfaced with GSM module works as a brain and several
growth of the plants in order to get the maximum yields of sensors like temperature, level and rain works as eyes of this
cultivation is technically called irrigation. But irrigation also ESD. If and only if eyes of the ESD sees all parameters are
includes clearing away of excess water from the agricultural within a safe range, the PIC18F4550 starts irrigation process
land. by starting the irrigation pump. The farmer gets time to time
feedback from ESD through SMS about the action that has
There is a great necessity of irrigation in Indian agriculture. taken place by PIC18F4550 [3].
India has a great diversity and variety of climate and weather
conditions. These conditions range from extreme of heat to The commands from the user are processed at raspberry pi
extreme of cold and from extreme dryness to excessive using python programming language. Arduino
rainfall. Due to some reasons irrigation is needed in Indian microcontrollers are used to receive the on/off commands
agriculture. from the rasperry pi using zigbee protocol. Star zigbee
 Uncertainty of Monsoon rainfall both in time and place. topology serves as backbone for the communication between
Irregularity in distribution of rainfall throughout the year. raspberry pi and end devices. Raspberry pi acts a central
 Excessive rainfall causing flood. coordinator and end devices act as various routers [4].
 Draught is an annual event in some areas.
 India is a land of Rabi Crops. But there is not rainfall in In the research field of wireless sensor network power
winter months. efficient time is major issue which can be overcome by using
 Some soils need more water. ZigBee technology. The main idea is to understand how data
 Introduction of H.Y.V seeds and multiple cropping need travels through wireless medium transmission using WSN
water throughout the year. and monitoring system. Design of an irrigation system which
is automated by using controllable parameter such as
1.3. Types temperature, soil moisture and air humidity because they are
the important factors to be controlled in PA(Precision
The types of Irrigation mainly practiced in India are: Agriculture) [5].
 Tanks
(a) Sichhni, (b) Donga It proposes a technique of real-time spatial interpolation
 Well using nearby ASW to predict real-time local weather
(a) Dug Well, (b) Tube Well: (i) Shallow. (ii) Deep. parameter. Also proposes a correction technique by using
 Canal sparse WSN with soil moisture sensor installed in it [6].
(a) Perennial, (b) Non-Perennial Wireless irrigation system for a smart home garden that can
be integrated with existing smart home control systems. The
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www.ijsr.net
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: NOV164836 http://dx.doi.org/10.21275/v5i6.NOV164836 2346
 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2014): 5.611
system consists of slave nodes and a master station each of 3. Proposed Block Diagram
which is equipped with a wireless microcontroller. Each
slave node is equipped with a temperature sensor, a soil-
moister sensor, a water valve, a microcontroller and a zigbee
transceiver. The slave microcontroller reads and frames the
surrounding temperature of the garden's grass and trees
along with soil moisture. Then, the frame is forwarded to the
master station via a zig bee ad-hoc network. The master
station has an embedded fuzzy logic irrigation algorithm to
water the grass and trees based on a set of rules. A home
web-server is interfaced with the master station for remote
access monitoring and operation [7].

The system consists of distributed wireless sensor network

of soil moisture, and temperature sensors placed in the crop
field. To handle the sensor information Zig bee protocol
used and control the water quantity programming using an
algorithm with threshold values of the sensors to a
microcontroller for irrigation system. [8]. An irrigation
control system based on an FPGA is presented. Using RS-
232 interface to communicate with a host computer, the
system receives irrigation commands from the decision
making system and controls automatically the irrigation of
16 greenhouses or pieces of field. A control panel is
designed in the system to make it easier for users to manage
and intervene the irrigating. There are 16 LEDs indicating Figure 1: Block Diagram.
the status of water shortage. A small keyboard is used for
users to input commands and 12 Seven-segment displays are Raspberry Pi:
used for displaying the date and time or user inputs. With The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer.
many I/O pins, flexibility, easy debugging and all the control Its capable of doing everything you’d expect a desktop
logic supported, the control system based on an FPGA computer to do, from browsing the internet and playing
represents a new trend in hardware application design [9]. high-definition video, making spreadsheets, and playing
games. There are different models of Raspberry Pi from
Application of a wireless sensor network for low-cost Raspberry Pi 0 to Raspberry Pi 3. In this project we are
wireless controlled irrigation solution and real time using Raspberry Pi Model 1 B+.
monitoring of water content of soil. Data acquisition is
performed by using solar powered wireless acquisition Motor:
stations for the purpose of control of valves for irrigation. A Motor is a device which converts electrical power into
The designed system has 3 units namely: base station unit mechanical rotation using the principle of electromagnetism.
(BSU), valve unit (VU) and sensor unit (SU). The obtained Electro-magnetism: A wire wound on a ferrite core carrying
irrigation system not only prevents the moisture stress of electric current generates a magnetic field; this principle is
trees and salification, but also provides an efficient use of called Electro-magnetism
fresh water resource [10].
DC motor:
DC motor in simple words is a device that converts direct
current (electrical energy) into mechanical energy.

Relay
The relay module is an electrically operated switch that
allows you to turn on or off a circuit using voltage and/or
current much higher than a microcontroller could handle.

Wi-fi dongle
It makes Internet of Things devices cable free.
Specifications:
 Weight: 2.17g
 Wireless Standards: IEEE 802.11n (draft), IEEE 802.11g,
IEEE 802.11b
 Host Interface: High speed USB2.0/1.1 interface
 Data Rate: 802.11n: up to 150Mbps (downlink) and up to
150Mbps (uplink)

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 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2014): 5.611
 Frequency Band: 2.4GHz ISM (Industrial Scientific 4. System Working
Medical) Band

Webcam:
A webcam is a video camera that feeds or streams its image
in real time to or through a computer to computer network.
When "captured" by the computer, the video stream may be
saved, viewed or sent on to other networks via systems such
as the internet, and email as an attachment.

Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC):

The MCP3204 12-bit Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC)
combines high performance and low power consumption in a
small package, making it ideal for embedded control
applications. The MCP3204 features a successive
approximation register (SAR) architecture and an industry- Figure 2: Pictorial representation
standard SPI™ serial interface, allowing 12-bit ADC
capability to be added to any PICmicro® microcontroller. It consist of different types of sensing units such as Soil
moisture sensor to measure water content of soil,
Soil moisture Sensor: temperature sensor to detect the temperature.
Soil moisture sensor includes comparator (LM393) which
converts analog data to discrete. DC motor based vehicle is designed for Irrigation purpose.
Webcam is interfaced to Raspberry Pi using USB port.
Robot moves forward for 5 secs. It stops at the 1st plant.
Image of that plant is taken using webcam. Raspberry Pi
performs Image Processing which gives calculates the
growth of plant using height and width parameters.

If the growth of plant is improper, it will spray fertilizer on

plant. If the growth of plant is proper, the soil moisture
electrode is inserted in soil. It will check the value of that
Figure 2: Soil Mositure Sensor sensor and reat the temp value sensor. The set point for soil
moisture sensor & temperature sensor is 4000 & 35
Two soil probes consist of two thin copper wires each of 5 respectively.
cm length which can be immersed into the soil under test.
The circuit gives a voltage output corresponding to the If the soil moisture value is less than 4000 and temp is
conductivity of soil. The soil between the probes acts as a greater than 35, water will be supplied for 2 secs. If the soil
variable resistance whose value depends upon moisture moisture value is less than 4000 and temp is less than 35,
content in soil. The resistance across soil probes can vary water will be supplied for 1 secs. If the soil moisture value is
from infinity (for completely dry soil) to a very little greater than 4000, no water supply takes place. The robot
resistance (for 100% moisture in soil) moves further for 5 secs and the same process repeats for
remaining plants. The Raspberry Pi will send all the
Temperature Sensor(LM35): Information to the server using Wi-Fi. We are designing a
The LM35 series are precision integrated-circuit temperature Android App based server. The android app has a GUI
devices with an output voltage linearly-proportional to the which will show all the data to user.
Centigrade temperature. The LM35 device has an advantage
over linear temperature sensors calibrated in Kelvin, as the 4.1. Data flow diagram
user is not required to subtract a large constant voltage from
the output to obtain convenient Centigrade scaling.

L293D:
L293D is a dual H-bridge motor driver integrated circuit
(IC). Motor drivers act as current amplifiers since they take a
low-current control signal and provide a higher-current
signal. This higher current signal is used to drive the motors.
L293D contains two inbuilt H-bridge driver circuits. In its
common mode of operation, two DC motors can be driven
simultaneously, both in forward and reverse direction.

Figure 3: Data flow diagram

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Paper ID: NOV164836 http://dx.doi.org/10.21275/v5i6.NOV164836 2348
 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2014): 5.611
4.2. Flow Chart: Software Ltd. B4A is an alternative to programming with
Java and the Android SDK.

B4A includes a visual designer that simplifies the process of

building user interfaces that target phones and tablets with
different screen sizes. Compiled programs can be tested in
AVD Manager emulators or on real Android devices using
Android Debug Bridge and B4A Bridge.

The language itself is similar to Visual Basic and Visual

Basic .Net though it is adapted to the native Android
environment. B4A is an object-based and event-driven
language.

B4A generates standard signed Android applications which

can be uploaded to app stores like Google Play, Samsung
Apps and Amazon Appstore. There are no special
dependencies or runtime frameworks required.

Figure 4: Flow Chart

5. Software Description 5.2. Languages Used

5.1. Raspbian Operating System 5.2.1 Python

Python, C, C++, Java, Scratch, and Ruby all come installed
Raspbian is a free operating system based on Debian by default on the Raspberry Pi. The Pi in Raspberry Pi even
optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware. It is based on the comes from the Python programming language; the very idea
ARM Debian 7 'Wheezy' architecture port originally of programming is reflected into the name of device. Python
designed for ARMv7 and later processors (with Jazelle is a widely used high-level, general-purpose, interpreted,
RCT/ThumbEE, VFPv3, and NEON SIMD extensions), dynamic programming language. Its design philosophy
compiled for the more limited ARMv6 instruction set of the emphasizes code readability, and its syntax allows
Raspberry Pi. programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code than
would be possible in languages such as C++ or Java. The
language provides constructs intended to enable clear
programs on both a small and large scale.

5.2. Basics For Android:

Basic4Android (currently known as B4A) is a rapid

application development tool for native Android
applications, developed and marketed by Anywhere

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 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2014): 5.611
5.2.2. Java

Java is a programming language first released by Sun

Microsystems back in 1995. It can be found on many
different types of devices from smartphones, to mainframe
computers. Java doesn’t compile to native processor code
but rather it relies on a “virtual machine” which understands
an intermediate format called Java bytecode. Each platform
that runs Java needs a virtual machine (VM) implementation.
On Android the original VM is called Dalvik. The job of
these virtual machines is to interpret the byte code, which is
really just a set of instructions similar to the machine code
found in CPUs, and executes the program on the processor.
Figure 6: Project Setup Figure 7: Water supply to plant

7.2. Software Part

6. Cost Analysis
Component Unit cost Quantit Total cost
y Figure 8: App Design
Raspberry Pi Rs. 2500 1 Rs. 2500
Wi-Fi dongle Rs. 150 1 Rs. 150
Webcam Rs. 300 1 Rs. 300
DC Motors Rs. 160 5 Rs. 800
ADC Rs. 190 1 Rs. 190
Relay circuit Rs. 400 2 Rs. 800
Sensors Rs. 150 2 Rs. 300
Motor Driver IC Rs. 55 2 Rs. 110
Other components Rs. 1000
Total cost Rs. 6150

7. Results
7.1. Hardware Part
Figure 9: Plant growth detection using Image Processing

8. Advantages

 Moisture within the root zone can be maintained at field

capacity.
 Water distribution is highly uniform, controlled by output
of each nozzle.
 Labour cost is less than other irrigation methods.
 Fertigation can easily be included with minimal waste of
fertilizers.
Figure 5: DC based vehicle

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 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2014): 5.611
9. Conclusion [9] Zhiyong Lai, Yongli Dai, “An Irrigation Control System
Based On An FPGA” 2012 Second International
 Using this system, one can save manpower, water to Conference on Instrumentation & Measurement,
improve production and ultimately increase profit. Computer, Communication and Control.
 The automated irrigation system is feasible and cost [10] Mahir Dursun and Semih Ozden, “A wireless
effective for optimizing water resources for agricultural application of drip irrigation automation supported by
production. soil moisture sensors” Scientific Research and Essays
 The system would provide feedback control system which Vol. 6(7), pp. 1573-1582, 4 April, 2011.
will monitor and control all the activities of plant growth
and irrigation system efficiently.

10. Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank the Department of
Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering, JSPM’s
J.S.C.O.E., Hadapsar for providing resources.

References
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[2] Joaquín Gutiérrez, Juan Francisco Villa-Medina,
Alejandra Nieto-Garibay, and Miguel Ángel Porta-
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Wireless Sensor Network and GPRS Module,” IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND
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[4] Nikhil Agrawal, Smita Singhal, “Smart Drip Irrigation

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[8] G. Nisha , J.Megala, Velammal institute a/technology
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BASED AUTOMATED IRRIGATION AND CROP
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