EMBEDDED SYSTEM BASED GSM COMMUNICATION FOR AUTOMATIC IRRIGATION CONTROL SYSTEM

Abstract:

Agriculture is a source of livelihood of majority Indians and has great impact on the economy of the country. In dry areas or in case of inadequate rainfall, irrigation becomes difficult. So, it needs to be automated for proper yield and handled remotely for farmer safety. In this paper we suggest a Wireless sensor network and Embedded based technique to control water flow for sectored, sprinkler or drip section irrigation. This system will be very economical in terms of the hardware cost, power consumption and call charges.

In places such as agriculture lands, there is a continuous need for monitoring the water level at particular places. In places such as drip irrigation for coconuts and bananas, the water is let out through pipes directly to each field. A person has to carefully monitor the water level at regular intervals. His job becomes tedious during night times and for frequent power cuts. Sometimes there is wastage of water and electricity due to negligence and other times there is a hard job for the user. The project helps in automating this job.

            This is highly helpful in places such as drip irrigation system where there are many flow pipes but does not require any change in the agricultural fields. Further there is a wireless communication device consisting of very high frequency transceiver. It helps to coordinate any action between the controlling authority and the fields. So each field can be placed as a separate wireless node and these field transceivers act as a high speed wireless network.

            The project proposes a water level sensor at each place where the water has to be monitored. When the motor is switched on the sensors are activated and the fields are irrigated automatically. Once the water reaches a particular level which may even take hours, the system takes appropriate steps to regulate or even stop the water flow.       

            The farmers’ job gets over immediately after switching the power supply. The circuit also monitors the water in the well/bore well so that if the water level goes very low it switches off the main motor to prevent dry run and also to prevent damage to the motor.

            The project houses a high speed microcontroller and water sensors at different fields and inside the well. These sensors are attached to the microcontroller and are controlled accordingly using motor and water control circuits.

            The microcontroller used is a high Speed microcontroller for fault free operation. It has a variety of advantages over conventional old microcontrollers such as RISC architecture, larger memory word, fast operation and a host of inbuilt features such as ADC, communication protocols etc.,

            The project also houses a GSM modem where the user can easily be notified by any fault in the system or if all fields are properly irrigated or if there is no sufficient water in the well. The same can be used to switch on the system and off by simply sending an SMS. This scheduling helps greatly because as agriculture power supplies are provided only at a particular time of day and not all hours. This is highly helpful in places if the user is out of his home for any purpose or his home is far away from his agricultural land which is a common scenario.

            This helps in precious saving of water and electricity and eases the job of the person. The project can be used in large agricultural lands, coconut plantations and many other plantations and even in home environment or industries and colleges where there are large gardens to monitor and irrigate them automatically.