Design and implementation automation system for hydroponic vegetable cultivation

Abstract

This research is about the design of an automation system by using microcontroller
technology. The automation system defined in this research is the automation in the irrigation
and fertilization process that has been designed by the needs for hydroponic vegetable
cultivation, in an attempt to help hydroponic farmers and the community in controlling and
caring for vegetables automatically. The research stages are initiated from analyzing the needs
of system development, continued by designing hardware and software, and implementing
automation systems for the last stage. The developed automation system consists of 1 module,
1 sensor, Arduino Uno, and 2 relays and pumps. The RTC module is utilized to adjust the
fertilizer scheduling time, while the utilization of a water level sensor is aimed to detect the
water level in hydroponic vegetable installations. Arduino Uno is utilized as a microcontroller
to process all data generated from the automation system. The data sent by the two sensors then
will be processed to the objective of turning on the relay. In this system, 2 relays are used. The
first relay is a relay as a switch to turn on the water filling pump and the second relay is a relay
for the fertilization pump. Furthermore, the automation system is equipped with 2 pumps
aiming for filling water and fertilizing hydroponic vegetables. The working system is repeating
each instruction regularly according to the program instructions that are made. This research
has succeeded in making a prototype of an automation system for hydroponic vegetables, it is
hoped that this prototype can be used by farmers and the general public in hydroponic
vegetable cultivation to achieve more satisfying results.