Agriculture, or farming, is the science of cultivating the soil, growing crops, and raising livestock. Ever since the days of the first plow from sticks over ten thousand years ago, agriculture has always depended on technology. As technology and science improved, so did the scale at which farming was possible. With the popularity and growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) in recent years, there are even more avenues for technology to make agriculture more efficient and help farmers in every nation. In this paper, we designed a smart IoT-enabled drip irrigation system using ESP32 to automate the irrigation process, and we tested it. The ESP32 communicates with the Blynk app, which is used to collect irrigation data, manually water the plants, switch off the automatic watering function, and plot graphs based on the readings of the sensors. We connected the ESP32 to a soil moisture sensor, temperature sensor, air humidity sensor, and water flow sensor. The ESP32 regularly checks if the soil is dry. If the soil is dry and the soil temperature is appropriate for watering, the ESP32 opens a solenoid valve and waters the plants. The amount of time to run the drip irrigation system is determined based on the flow rate measured by the water flow sensor. The ESP32 reads the humidity sensor values and notifies the user when the humidity is too high or too low. The user can switch off the automatic watering system according to the humidity value. In both primary and field tests, we found that the system ran well and was able to grow green onions.

Emergency exit lights in public buildings are necessary for safety and evacuation. International safety standards require such lighting in many public places, like airports, schools, malls, hospitals, and other spaces, to prevent human casualties in emergencies. Emergency exit lights have become an essential part of casualty reduction projects. They can pose several application problems, including fire safety concerns. The issue of providing a safe way and operating emergency exit lights along one side of a long path arises during an emergency. Many studies in this field consider the case in which emergency exit lights’ battery or main power fails. Power failures in dangerous situations such as fires or terrorist attacks make it difficult for people to escape. The lighting in open areas and stairwells during an emergency should be at least 2 lux. This work proposes an innovative technique for wirelessly powering emergency lights using microwave energy. Specifically, the study designed and fabricated a new wirelessly powered emergency lighting prototype. This prototype’s wireless power transfer (WPT) base comprises an RF/DC converter circuit and an RF microwave transmitter station. The device can harvest RF microwave energy to energize the emergency light. This research aimed to develop a compact device that captures maximum RF strength to power emergency lights. As a prototype, the proposed device was designed to provide sufficient microwave energy to power an emergency light at 3 W over a 62 m distance.

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