Advanced Automation System for Greenhouse Climate Control

Abstract

Although the cultivation of crops in greenhouses is considered as the best alternative to obtain quality crops, they often need constant supervising and maintenance unlike the outdoor cultivations. The best solution for this problem is to go for an automated system to monitor and control the micro climate in the greenhouse. Therefore, this research focuses on developing an advanced automation system in order to constantly monitor the crucial environmental conditions in a greenhouse and hence provide with good quality crops. The proposed system has the ability to monitor the essential factors for plant growth including the temperature, humidity, soil moisture and light intensity. In addition to that, it has a mechanism to control the above mentioned conditions using fogger systems and exhaust fans. Furthermore, a mechanism to inform the farmer constantly about the conditions happening inside the greenhouse is proposed via the Short Message Service (SMS) technology. The system was designed for a prototype structure and the experimental results obtained through the system and the analysis have shown that this automated system is very effective and suitable for home gardening and can even be extended to large scale commercial greenhouse cultivations in Sri Lanka.