REAL-TIME MONITORING SYSTEM FOR SOIL NUTRIENTS USING NPK SENSOR AND MICROCONTROLLER-BASED HARDWARE

Abstract

The current project introduces an Internet of Things (IoT) system whose purpose is the analysis of soil nutrients and fertilizer recommendation in real-time using NPK sensors and tailored to the needs of a particular crop. The conventional soil testing techniques are cumbersome, expensive and not flexible to enable on-time provision of nutrient information. To overcome these shortcomings, the proposed system uses Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K) sensor together with microcontrollers and IoT communication protocols to monitor in real-time and with accuracy the health of the soil. Data on the collected data is sent to a cloud-based service where it is analyzed to produce farm specific crop fertilizer recommendations based on nutrient thresholds. Analysis of experimental outcomes proves that there is better utilization of the fertilizer, decreased loss of nutrients and increased agricultural production rates. The IoT architecture provides scalability and the ability to be fit in various agricultural conditions. Besides, the system promotes clean agriculture activities since farmers do not pollute the environment through excess use of fertilizers. The further development will be made related to sensor precision and accuracy, the extension of the soil parameters range and the incorporation of the machine learning into advanced precision agriculture.