W.J.M.S.N. Dias: Shane's IOT Greenhouse Project Report - Analysis

This project report, authored by W.J.M.S.N. Dias, presents an in-depth analysis of the application of the Internet of Things (IOT) in greenhouse agriculture. The report begins with an executive summary and table of contents, followed by an introduction to the research domain, which emphasizes the potential of IOT to revolutionize farming practices, particularly in Australia. The research addresses key questions regarding the challenges and advantages of adopting IOT systems. A comprehensive literature review synthesizes insights from various articles, highlighting the development of IOT-based greenhouse monitoring systems, their capabilities in data collection, and the importance of parameters like soil moisture, temperature, and gas levels. The report discusses the project's design, focusing on high-quality sensors and its versatility for various agricultural applications. The findings and results are presented, followed by conclusions that underscore the immense potential of IOT in transforming agricultural processes through innovation and technology. The report also includes an annotated bibliography and a project proposal, outlining the project's rationale, research questions, methodology, and project plan.

Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
Project report
Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
W.J.M.S.N. Dias
11633603
Author’s Note

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Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
Executive summary
In this report an overview of the IOT and it application in the agricultural field have been
discussed. While technology has taken an important role in various sector, the application of
technology in the agricultural field is still not that prominent. In this report, a literature
review has been presented which summarizes the 12 articles in this context. Although
different authors have preened various opinions, all the authors agrees on the concept that
IOT has a potential role to play in transforming the farming process. The application of IOT
in the greenhouse farming is hence an essential consideration as it not only brings innovation
in this field, it also makes the process more effective and efficient.

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Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
Table of Contents
1. Title........................................................................................................................................3
2. Introduction to the research domain:......................................................................................3
3. Research Questions................................................................................................................3
4. Literature review....................................................................................................................4
5. Discussion..............................................................................................................................8
6. Findings and the result...........................................................................................................9
7. Conclusion............................................................................................................................10

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Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
1. Title
The title of the project is “Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
2. Introduction to the research domain:
Although technology has taken an innovative and productive role in various sectors of
economy. It is not only about industrialization, it has a lots of opportunity in the farming
sector as well. However, the adoption is still not widespread and it has not been properly
integrated as well. in Australia the farmers are still not introduced to the possibility of the
technology in the farming s majority of the farmers are still relied on manual farming process
or considers hand executed tools for farming which not only affects the productivity, it has
various issues as well like difficulties in weed seedlings, covering large farming areas
effectively. Hence an advanced system such as IOT based greenhouse monitoring system is
required for providing assistance to the farmers in their farming activities. Now the problem
is that there are very few application oriented research in this fields, especially in the context
of Australian farming sector. Hence an effective research is required in this context. This
research is focused on the application of IOT for implementing the greenhouse project for
bringing innovation and productivity in the field of farming and helping the farmer in the
economic growth. Hence this research is very important as it explores a very fundamental and
essential topic of bringing economic development through the application of technology.
3. Research Questions
The research questions are generally elaborated below:
 What are main issues and challenges while adapting IOT in farming?
 What are the advantages of adapting the IOT systems?
 Why country like Australia should adapt the IOT systems?

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4. Literature review
Dan, L. I. U., Xin, C., Chongwei, H., & Liangliang, J. (2015, December). Intelligent
agriculture greenhouse environment monitoring system based on IOT technology.
In Intelligent Transportation, Big Data and Smart City (ICITBS), 2015 International
Conference on (pp. 487-490). IEEE. / Guo, T., & Zhong, W. (2015, August). Design and
implementation of the span greenhouse agriculture Internet of Things system. In Fluid
Power and Mechatronics (FPM), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 398-401).
IEEE. / Li, G., Zhang, W., & Zhang, Y. (2014). A design of the IOT gateway for
agricultural greenhouse. Sensors & Transducers, 172(6), 75.
Here in this article, the authors have properly discussed about the innovation in
agriculture and develop a greenhouse monitoring system through the application of IOT.
Although the systems that the authors have developed are designed differently. However the
design specification and hardware requirements are different. However the focus is the same.
That is to gather data for properly monitoring the agricultural activities. In the foist articles
the authors have developed a monitoring system with the help of is the CC2530 chip, and the
overall system that the authors have discussed is powered by that chip. The system is
developed with the ZigBee technology.
However the feature that makes the model discussed in the second article, is special as
it supports both online and offline mode of data transmission with support for Wi-Fi, LAN,
EDGE, GPRS, 3G and some other methods. The IoT gateway that have been analysed in this
article uses the μC/OS-III which is considered as an embedded operating system. The system
also integrate STM32 as a multiple control unit.
The model that has been discussed in the third article is capable of detecting the
greenhouse gas levels but also measures soil temperature, humidity, and soil moisture and air

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Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
temperature which is then sent to the admin for controlling the process for bringing
improvement in the agricultural activities with proper control over the issues.
Pallavi, S., Mallapur, J. D., & Bendigeri, K. Y. (2017, December). Remote sensing and
controlling of greenhouse agriculture parameters based on IoT. In 2017 International
Conference on Big Data, IoT and Data Science (BID) (pp. 44-48). IEEE. / Kodali, R. K.,
Jain, V., & Karagwal, S. (2016, December). IoT based smart greenhouse.
In Humanitarian Technology Conference (R10-HTC), 2016 IEEE Region 10 (pp. 1-6).
IEEE.
In both of these articles the authors have analysed the importance of the smart
greenhouse system and the development idea for the smart greenhouse monitoring system.
Both the authors have represented and agreed with the concept that due to the nature of way
IOT works and its capability of working remotely has made it an ideal choice for the smart
agriculture.
The smart monitoring system that the authors have proposed is capable of monitoring
the moisture content of the soil. Along with that the system also intend to control the sunlight,
temperature and the carbon-di-oxide for improving the process of organic farming.
The system that the authors have proposed in the second article is also aimed towards
measuring the moisture content of the soil and maintain the level of greenhouse gas properly.
In order to achieve this, the authors have considered the proper wavelength of the sunlight,
ultrasonic sensor, bee-hive boxes along with some minerals such as phosphorus, nitrogen and
the potassium. This approach as per the author is an excellent strategy for developing an IOT
based smart monitoring system for measuring moisture content and maintain greenhouse gas
effectively.

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Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
Ye, J., Chen, B., Liu, Q., & Fang, Y. (2013, June). A precision agriculture management
system based on Internet of Things and WebGIS. In Geoinformatics
(GEOINFORMATICS), 2013 21st International Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE. /
Khattab, A., Abdelgawad, A., & Yelmarthi, K. (2016, December). Design and
implementation of a cloud-based IoT scheme for precision agriculture.
In Microelectronics (ICM), 2016 28th International Conference on (pp. 201-204). IEEE.
In the above two articles that have been listed here talks about the application of IOT
in the precision agriculture. However the authors have presented two different
implementation approaches in the two different articles. The authors in the first article have
proposed IOT and WebGIS for implementing the precision agriculture.
In the second article the authors have proposed for a system that has a three layer architecture
which collects the data which are then provided to the cloud based backend system. In this
back-end system after analysing and processing the data, feedbacks are then sent to the front-
end nodes. This helps to take proper decision regarding the precision agriculture based on the
feedback provided by the system.
Carrasquilla-Batista, A., Chacón-Rodríguez, A., & Solórzano-Quintana, M. (2016,
November). Using IoT resources to enhance the accuracy of overdrain measurements in
greenhouse horticulture. In Central American and Panama Convention (CONCAPAN
XXXVI), 2016 IEEE 36th (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
According to the authors due to various issues related to the climate change,
greenhouse horticulture is an efficient and effective strategy for food production and
agriculture. Although greenhouse horticulture provides effective means to deal with the
issues related to the climate change, it is also complex to implement and manage. Hence even
after so much benefits provided by the greenhouse horticulture, it is not widely implemented

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in the agricultural process. However when IOT is integrated in the horticulture process, it
provides the facility to obtain the data such as when to irrigate and also provides information
about the nutrients and moisture requirements which helps in proper management of the
greenhouse horticulture.
Dlodlo, N., & Kalezhi, J. (2015, May). The internet of things in agriculture for
sustainable rural development. In Emerging Trends in Networks and Computer
Communications (ETNCC), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 13-18). IEEE.
The authors have discussed about the problems in the rural agriculture. According to
the authors, some of the problems which have always been the major issues in the rural
agriculture are regarding crop farming, wildlife management, weather forecasting, livestock
farming, rural financing and market identification. The authors have recommended the
application of IOT for identifying the issues and solve those issues more efficiently.
Fajrin, N., Taufik, I., Ismail, N., Kamelia, L., & Ramdhani, M. A. (2018, January). On
the Design of Watering and Lighting Control Systems for Chrysanthemum Cultivation
in Greenhouse Based on Internet of Things. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science
and Engineering (Vol. 288, No. 1, p. 012105). IOP Publishing.
The authors in this article have discussed the importance of the light and the moisture
in the agriculture process. In order to control the moisture content for the agriculture, the
authors have proposed a system that combines control system with the IOT technology. the
system that have been developed by the authors are web based pump control and for the light
control an application based control system has been developed. The applications have been
tested by the authors which has provided temporary result as described by the authors. The
system supports the Android, the iOS. This system is also compatible with the several
browsers and the windows OS, with a good wireless connectivity speed of 58 Mbps.

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Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
Tzounis, A., Katsoulas, N., Bartzanas, T., & Kittas, C. (2017). Internet of things in
agriculture, recent advances and future challenges. Biosystems Engineering, 164, 31-
48. / Sreekantha, D. K., & Kavya, A. M. (2017, January). Agricultural crop monitoring
using IOT-a study. In Intelligent Systems and Control (ISCO), 2017 11th International
Conference on (pp. 134-139). IEEE.
Here in these two articles, the authors have discussed about the innovation in
agriculture through the application of the IOT and how it is providing ways to improve the
agricultural activities through proper identification of the challenges in the manual
agricultural process. The smart monitoring system that the authors have implemented is
capable of detecting the water level, animal intrusion, pests and the growth of the crops. The
image or the video regarding the field that the system capture is directly sent to the computer
or the smartphone wirelessly which helps farmer to be aware of any issues in the agricultural
process. In both of the articles, the authors have agreed that IOT has an immense potential
for transforming the agricultural process through innovation and technology.
5. Discussion
The project is about the implementation of the IOT in the greenhouse development.
The application of IOT in the greenhouse design is focused on the procedure of monitoring of
the moisture content of the soil. It is also designed for sensing humidity, temperature,
presence of fire, and to detect the toxic gas through colour of leavesand. The sensors hence
used in the design need to be of high quality as it need to perform various advanced and
complex tasks. Hence the sensors that have been chosen have properly checked for quality
and efficiency as those sensors have an important role to play for the design to be effective.
The project has been designed such that it is not only meant for the application
considered in this context of the report, it is applicable for a wide range of agricultural

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Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
applications. It is applicable for any kind of irrigation field which makes the project versatile.
Not only for agricultural purpose or setup, it is even applicable for nursery and botanical
garden as well.
Any close area, which needs monitoring without the presence of human, this project is
equally applicable. One possible example is the research area which is based in very high
altitude and often difficult to access.
6. Findings and the result
The result of the project is obtained with the effective management of environment
associated with the greenhouse. The management has been conducted both in automatic as
well as in manual fashion. In order to achieve automation in the management process, code
has been designed which is then executed on the Arduino platform. during this execution if
there is any issue like if the sensors have any performance issues, no input is provided to the
system as the result obtained through this process is not only incorrect but might affect the
performance of the overall system. In order to effectively manage this kind of issues, human
intervention is required. Hence this project has considered both sensor based automatic
management as well as human effort based manual management for ensuring optimization
and performance improvement of the system.
The sensors which are connected to the microcontroller is connected through the ADC
as the sensors are analog. Hence the signals need to be transformed to the digital form as
microcontroller is not capable of processing the analog signals. ADC transform analog signal
to the digital signal. Hence this is a very important component of the overall design.
The sensors process various inputs from the environment such as humidity,
temperature, moisture and display that information on the LCD display connected to the
system. the colour sensors of the system is capable of sensing the colour of the leaves and if

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Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
any issue is found for example if the colour of the leaves are red, the sensors will then send
the message to the owner’s mobile if it is connected with the system. The users will be
notified with the audio message “the plant is affected” which will alert the users to take any
necessary actions as per the requirement or any plan designed for that. However if the colour
of the plant is green, then the users will be notified with the audio message “plant is normal”.
Hence this project provides a great value along with portability and productivity for
implementing the greenhouse technique in the farming process. however in order to
transform the received message into the audio message as discussed above, an application
needs to be installed on the mobile phone on which the users want to receive the message.
This will ensure that the users are well informed about the farming process and it will also
help them to track the farming process more effectively.
7. Conclusion
The paper discusses the possibility and the application IOT in the agricultural context.
Application of technology has gained a lot of attention in recent era due to its ability to bring
innovation and productivity in the agricultural process. IOT has specially gained attention
among all the available technology in the agricultural field due to its potential in bringing a
complete transformation in the agricultural process are managed and executed. With the
application of IOT, it is now possible to create a connected agricultural society where
farming will be executed with the help of sensor and smartphones. This project is particularly
important for the Australia agricultural process as most of the agricultural process there is
managed with mostly manual process. Hence there is a lot of scope of application. Hence this
project is an important one to consider. The prototype that has been developed in this context
is very profitable as it provides optimization to the resources in the greenhouse. The overall
system is cost effective and also requires less power. Additionally it is also intended to be
made available for everyone. It should be noted that the report outlines the basic research idea

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of implementing IOT in greenhouse project and a lot of advance research is required in this
context.

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Bibliography:
Carrasquilla-Batista, A., Chacón-Rodríguez, A., & Solórzano-Quintana, M. (2016,
November). Using IoT resources to enhance the accuracy of overdrain measurements in
greenhouse horticulture. In Central American and Panama Convention (CONCAPAN
XXXVI), 2016 IEEE 36th (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
Dan, L. I. U., Xin, C., Chongwei, H., & Liangliang, J. (2015, December). Intelligent
agriculture greenhouse environment monitoring system based on IOT technology.
In Intelligent Transportation, Big Data and Smart City (ICITBS), 2015 International
Conference on (pp. 487-490). IEEE.
Dlodlo, N., & Kalezhi, J. (2015, May). The internet of things in agriculture for sustainable
rural development. In Emerging Trends in Networks and Computer Communications
(ETNCC), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 13-18). IEEE.
Fajrin, N., Taufik, I., Ismail, N., Kamelia, L., & Ramdhani, M. A. (2018, January). On the
Design of Watering and Lighting Control Systems for Chrysanthemum Cultivation in
Greenhouse Based on Internet of Things. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science
and Engineering (Vol. 288, No. 1, p. 012105). IOP Publishing.
Guo, T., & Zhong, W. (2015, August). Design and implementation of the span greenhouse
agriculture Internet of Things system. In Fluid Power and Mechatronics (FPM), 2015
International Conference on (pp. 398-401). IEEE.
Khattab, A., Abdelgawad, A., & Yelmarthi, K. (2016, December). Design and
implementation of a cloud-based IoT scheme for precision agriculture.
In Microelectronics (ICM), 2016 28th International Conference on (pp. 201-204). IEEE.

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Shane’s IOT Greenhouse project
Kodali, R. K., Jain, V., & Karagwal, S. (2016, December). IoT based smart greenhouse.
In Humanitarian Technology Conference (R10-HTC), 2016 IEEE Region 10 (pp. 1-6).
IEEE.
Li, G., Zhang, W., & Zhang, Y. (2014). A design of the IOT gateway for agricultural
greenhouse. Sensors & Transducers, 172(6), 75.
Pallavi, S., Mallapur, J. D., & Bendigeri, K. Y. (2017, December). Remote sensing and
controlling of greenhouse agriculture parameters based on IoT. In 2017 International
Conference on Big Data, IoT and Data Science (BID) (pp. 44-48). IEEE.
Sreekantha, D. K., & Kavya, A. M. (2017, January). Agricultural crop monitoring using IOT-
a study. In Intelligent Systems and Control (ISCO), 2017 11th International Conference
on (pp. 134-139). IEEE.
Tzounis, A., Katsoulas, N., Bartzanas, T., & Kittas, C. (2017). Internet of things in
agriculture, recent advances and future challenges. Biosystems Engineering, 164, 31-48.
Ye, J., Chen, B., Liu, Q., & Fang, Y. (2013, June). A precision agriculture management
system based on Internet of Things and WebGIS. In Geoinformatics
(GEOINFORMATICS), 2013 21st International Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.