Control Of Environmental Parameters In A Green House

In this project, we will have a look at Control Of Environmental Parameters In A Green House. Agriculture is the source of food supply in the world. So, proper care has to be taken for improving the yield with minimum usage of the available resources such as water, energy etc. The project focuses on the development in the agricultural sector with minimum water usage and the excellent utilization of the solar energy.The main parameters of agriculture are rain,temperature,wind and soil moisture which are found with the of sensors. The output of these sensors are send to the PIC through RF module. The PIC in turn activates the control unit. The control unit consist of exhaust fan, valve and shield. The following are the operations taking place

• When rain is detected by the rain sensor, shield is activated to cover the field. 
• The temperature is displayed on the LCD screen with the help of temperature sensor. As the temperature exceeds the threshold value, the exhaust fans are activated. Moisture sensor help to measure the moisture level. If the moisture is low, valve is opened so that water flows through the valve in to the field.
• Anemometer is used to detect the speed of the wind. The flaps of the window which is placed across the field is rotated depending on the wind speed.
• Solar cells placed on solar tracker is used to obtain efficient solar energy. These energy is used to power the sensors.

For the large rural distract, the greenhouse production has become a way of being rich. The growth of crop in greenhouse depends on temperature, humidity, wind and other parameters in greenhouse. So it is important to properly measure and adjust the temperature, humidity and other parameters in the greenhouse. The wireless monitoring system is developed, which based on wireless communication technology, does not need cables, adds or reduces configuration at random, possess simple system construction. A greenhouse environment parameters monitoring system based on wireless communication technology has been developed, which realizes the measurement, summary and control of temperature, humidity and the other parameters. To give more Importance to conservation of energy, solar energy is used. To increase the efficiency of the solar panel, sun tracker is also designed.

After many survey and research we finally ended up in doing a project in agricultural sector. To make the irrigation simpler we planned of controlling several environmental parameters. Thus the title to our project was given as 'Control of Environmental parameters in Greenhouse'. The base papers that suits our project were 'Wireless measurement and controlling of Environmental parameters' and 'Remote Sensing and Control of an Irrigation System Using a Distributed Wireless Sensor Network'. In addition to the above, we planned of utilizing a conventional source of energy as a part of conservation of energy. Several sensors were introduced like rain sensor, temperature sensor and soil humidity sensor since rain, temperature and soil water content are the most important parameters in irrigation system. The description of the above mentioned sensors are as follows:

1. Soil moisture sensor: For proper cultivation of crops, proper check on soil moisture has to be monitored continuously .The idea about soil moisture sensor was available

from the webpage 'http://blog.makezine.com/2009/03/04/nocost-soil-moisture-sensor'. According to the web page, it says that if two nail when dipped in plaster of Paris and separated by a fixed distance can act as a soil moisture sensor. The principle of operation was that the resistance of a porous block is proportional to its water content. Thus, wetter the block, lower is the resistance measured across the two embedded electrodes. Thus soil moisture was able to design.

2. Rain sensor: The idea about the rain sensor was available from web page 'http://www.nationalstemcentre.org/CEM5.pdf'.' In the web page, it says that a simple PCB using etching process can be used as a rain sensor. It is the cheapest form of rain sensor.

3. Temperature sensor: Too much temperature can fade away the crops. In order to avoid the above, we thought of introducing a temperature sensor. The idea about temperature sensor was available from web page 'http://www.engineersgarage.com' electronic-components/lm35-sensor data sheet. In the web page, LM35 is used as the temperature sensor. The features of LM35 are 

• Sensor gain of 10mV/C
• Temperature range of 0-100V