IoT enabled Plant Sensing Systems for Small and Large Scale Automated Horticultural Monitoring

Abstract

We report small scale and large scale sensory systems that can monitor climatic conditions in greenhouses, laboratories, or crops that affect plant growth. An ultralightweight flexible sensory platform using bare die CMOS chips having a light, temperature, and humidity sensor on a flexible polymer substrate is demonstrated. It is made up of flexible and transparent materials and weighs merely 0.44 gram. Thus, the standalone multisensory platform can be seamlessly placed on a plant leaf without affecting its functions. Furthermore, a strain sensor using our unique fabrication strategy with 10 fold enhanced linear strain range (22%; conventional metal-based strain gauges have 2-5% linear range) is used to monitor physical plant growth over long time intervals. A framework is further provided for large-scale deployment of these sensors for remote monitoring of large cultivated areas of crops. The sensory platform is equipped with biodegradable paper wings to soften the landing during their deployment, dropped using a compact dropping mechanism. The sensors are equipped with IoT enabled electronics to allow realtime online data representation and monitoring.

Application of Precision Farming in Horticulture: A Comprehensive Review

“…A key element of precision agriculture is automated yield monitoring, which gives farmers real-time information on yield variability in their farms. Farmers can make educated decisions to save expenses, raise production, and enhance system efficiency by quantifying this variability [44]. For real-time mapping of fruit yield, such a system usually consists of colour cameras, a laptop computer installed on a Specialized Farm Motorized Vehicle (SFMV), proprietary software, and a real-time kinematics-global positioning system (RTK-GPS).…”

Autonomous IoT Monitoring Matching Spectral Artificial Light Manipulation for Horticulture

“…With the explosion of IoT technologies, new solutions for greenhouse monitoring have emerged, exploiting more efficient data transmission techniques, both in terms of energy consumption and of network coverage, as well as more complex data management architectures. Exploited data transmission technologies include UHF RFID [32], Bluetooth Low Energy [33] as well as LoRa [34], while some contributions propose the adoption of cloud services such as Thingspeak for data management [9,35]. Despite the great interest in setting up autonomous IoT infrastructures, little interest has been put on the problem of power management which may be in some cases an actual bottleneck.…”

Paper as a Substrate and an Active Material in Paper Electronics

“…The properties of paper can be further enhanced by activating the surface of the paper using activation materials or by mixing the cellulose fibers with the active material in its structure . Additionally, paper is used in energy storage elements such as paper-based supercapacitors and fuel cells. − Following the increased popularity and interest in electronic skin for plants and marine species, paper has also been to create an electronics skin for humans. − In such a skin, paper acts not only as the flexible biocompatible substrate but also as a sensing material …”