The Automatic Plant Watering System Using Internet of Things for Oil Palm Plantations

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to design and build a prototype of an automatic watering plant system using the Internet of Things that can be applied to oil palm plantations. The design and construction of an automatic plant watering control system use a NodeMCU ESP32 as the main controller that works with a soil moisture sensor. To use the measured soil moisture value to control the ON and OFF of the solenoid valve in automatic operation mode for supplying water through the sprinkler installed in the oil palm plantation. In addition, the automatic plant watering system can also control the operation and show the values of pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, moisture, and temperature in the soil that the sensor can measure through the Blynk application on the smart phone. Testing the automatic plant watering system with a water supply system with 22 sprinkler heads that can distribute water in a circle with a radius of about 5-7 meters per head, covering an area of 3,150 square meters, it can be used to water about 30 oil palm trees and pepper about 45 pots planted between oil palm trees. The watering control system can control the opening and closing of the water distribution solenoid valves with 100% accuracy in both automatic and manual operation modes. Watering had the same average moisture content over the study area.