Jol-Shinchon: Design and Development of Sensor Based Auto Irrigation System

Title Jol-Shinchon: Design and Development of Sensor Based Auto Irrigation System
Authors Muhammad Abu Muyeed (013018040), A. M. Shahriar Sadat (1020204042), K. M. RagibulHaque (1210820042)
Semester Summer, 2016

One of the factors determining the agricultural output is the provision of water. Since natural water availability is prone to many aspects of nature – especially rain, irrigation or alternative supply of water becomes a critical element in the agriculture sector. The existing irrigation mechanisms in Bangladesh through the motor-pumps are heavily dependent on fossil fuel – regarded as an offender in the carbon footprint debacle. The poor farmers find themselves with insurmountable hurdles as they are constrained by the financial cost on fuel. The profit maximization gets a major setback due to the exorbitant amount of expenditure due to fuel consumption. An innovative approach to do away with such limitation is the utilization of natural resource for irrigation purpose. In this paper, we present an implementation of an intelligent auto irrigation system that is based on the concept of harnessing the power of sun. Through the use of solar panel, sunlight is captured into the photovoltaic cells and transferred to a battery to be charged during the day. All this setting is facilitated by circuits – one associated with the solar panel and the other one for detecting the presence of sunlight during the day since the system would not allow any water to flow unless it is the night time. In order to drive the pump into action, two conditions need to be fulfilled – one darkness, detected by a photo resistor and the second one is the dryness of soil, to be determined by a moisture sensor, and this setting would be programmed by a platform – both hardware and software – Arduino Uno. Although the charging time of the battery by solar panel would be a little lengthy, the long exposure to the sun would provide enough time and charging volume to the battery.