Design and Implementation of an Automated Indoor Hydroponic Farming System based on the Internet of Things

Abstract

Urban farming has been growing in popularity to help secure food needs in urban areas. Hydroponics is one of the methods to grow crops without soil media being an option for urban farming. However, hydroponic farming has its challenges as farmers must carefully monitor the environmental conditions of the plants regularly and adjust the nutrient solution and water circulation based on the environmental conditions. This paper describes designing and implementing an IoT-enabled Hydroponic farming system to monitor the environmental condition of plants and control the nutrient supply plants. Our system is built from sensors, actuators, a micro-controller unit (Arduino), and a single-board computer (Raspberry pi) attached to the hydroponic system. The system can monitor the environmental condition of hydroponics through sensors such as temperature, humidity, pH sensors, and Total Dissolve Solid (TDS) sensors and control water pumps to circulate the nutrients to the plant. The Raspberry pi acts as a Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) broker for distributing the data from sensors to subscribers. It also controls the nutrient pump to adjust nutrient solution. We use Node-RED installed in the Raspberry pi to build and connect the system to hardware devices. Users can monitor the environmental condition of plants in hydroponics through a web browser on their smartphone and laptop. This IoT-based indoor hydroponic system can automate the delivery of nutrients and water to plants, ensuring they receive the optimal amount at the right time.