Development of Automated Hydroponics

Project Title

Development of Automated Hydroponics

Project Area of Specialization Internet of ThingsProject Summary

Hydroponics production system has the potential to revolutionize agricultural production and ensure food security in the era of accelerating urbanization. It is a method of cultivation, where plants are grown in soilless media using water and nutrient mixture. It kindles a hope for food production in non-agricultural lands as well as in urban areas. Hydroponics production system has following advantages:

• A water efficient method of cultivation
• Optimal use and reuse of nutrients and minerals
• Freedom from Soil born diseases/infections/weeds/pests
• Faster growth rate of crop than traditional farming
• Amiable to cultivation in areas with water shortage or lacking soil cover
• Suitable for farming on ships/floating gardens, roof top farming in urban areas
• A precursor to vertical farming

In this project we are aiming to indigenously develop a low cost automate the hydroponics system. The developed system will be a closed loop control system with graphical interface & programmability. The system will allow to automatically control and remotely monitor of solution temperature, pH and conductivity. The automation enables easy graphical user interface based programmable timing control and other monitoring of system. The system can be scaled as per requirement to add new features.

Project Objectives

The key objective of the project is to indigenously develop a low cost automated hydroponic farming system and remote monitoring of the said system. As hydroponic system requires much care, automation will remove human labor and it can manage the hydroponic much more efficiently. The system will allow to automatically control and remotely monitor of solution temperature, pH and conductivity.

Features of Proposed Automated Hydroponics System:

• Indigenous development of low cost automated hydroponics system
• Continuous monitoring of solution temperature, pH and conductivity
• SMS Alert/Query, Alarm, report generation and data logging with graphical representation
• User friendly touch screen based Graphical User Interface
• GUI based programmable controlled parameters
• Crop based Management System
• Remote monitoring using SMS

Once this project is completed, we are interested to commercialized this project. As it has its application in commercial farming and urban farming. For example: farming in smart cities, roof-top farming, farming on Ships. It has also be commercialized in areas where there water shortage or lacking soil-cover, like district Tharparkar and costal areas of Sindh

Project Implementation Method

Firstly, a small prototype of a hydroponic system will be build in which plants can be grown.

Secondly sensors system will be built and calibrated. Once calibrated, they will be integrated in to a control system consist of Raspberry PI. PID control algorithm will be developed and tested for automatic control of parameters of interest. Small pumps acting as actuators will be used to control hydroponic system parameters based on computed control command of the controller.

In order to monitor system parameters remotely using IoT, real time data will be  sent to edge devices to get data on ground and push on cloud.The detailed flow diagram of the system is shown in the figure below

Benefits of the Project

The key Benefit is that indigenously develop automated hydroponic system will be a low cost solution. Further Automating Hydroponics allows most parameters of the system to be monitored remotely and controlled closely, thus achieving overall higher operational efficiency. Further hydroponics system also provides following benefits:

• Produces Higher Yields.
• Require Less Labor
• To eliminate human errors
• There is no problem or worried about nutrients reading it controls automatically
• Nutrients adds automatically while needed no human interference
• Monitoring in a real time like, ph of water, temperature, TDS level can be viewed in real time
• Produces Higher Quality Food.
• As compare to manual, automated system gives many crops can be produced twice as well as fast         

• Human Labor is so expensive to afford nowadays so our project will work automatically there will not be need of human to check regularly, everything will be process automatically

• In our automated hydroponic system we are working to benefit more from our project as almost land of Baluchistanhas wilderness, land of Sindh has also same problem. So we are working on this project to give benefit to people of Sindh and others too who get less yield and less dense crops.

• It’s also an issue to maintain pH level manually so we can control pH level in our project automatically.

• TDS total dissolved solution cannot be measured manually easily so TDS and temperature these problems can be came over with our automated hydroponic system.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Final deliverable will be prototype of a hydroponic system whose parameter can be remotely monitored and automatically controlled. The system will includes sensor system integrated with the controller. Sensors included will measure  PH level, TDS, Water level and Water Temperature. Whereas multiple pumps will be used to control PH levels, TDS and water level. Further a edge device will be used get data regarding these parameters on ground and push on cloud

     An application will be developed to access Automated Hydroponic systems for central monitoring. SMS Alerts/Query, Alarm, report generation and data logging with graphical representation. Further a GUI based interface will be provided for control parameters can be programed as requirement.

Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry AgricultureOther IndustriesCore Technology OthersOther TechnologiesSustainable Development Goals Good Health and Well-Being for People, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Climate Action, Life on LandRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	80000
Raspberry-pi 4 model B Starter kit	Equipment	1	34350	34350
PH Level Sensor	Equipment	1	5500	5500
TDS Sensor	Equipment	1	4310	4310
Temperature Sensor	Equipment	1	300	300
Water Level Sensor	Equipment	1	2671	2671
Rigid PVC pipes &other fitting components	Equipment	1	8150	8150
Smart devices, Smart pump for solution	Equipment	1	6500	6500
Hydroponic pH Up and Down Control Kit	Equipment	1	8219	8219
Nuts and Screw pack	Miscellaneous	1	500	500
Courier Charges and Custom duties	Miscellaneous	1	9500	9500