Reducing turfgrass water consumption using sensor nodes and an adaptive irrigation controller

Abstract

This paper describes a complete wireless sensor and irrigation control system that reduces water consumption for residential turfgrass irrigation. It has been estimated that 50-75% of residential water use is for irrigation. Current systems are exceptionally poor at adapting irrigation to meet demand, primarily due to incomplete information for system operators who rely either on visual inspection or periodic irrigation programs. This results in over-watering and fertilizer and soil leaching. Our approach couples easy-to-deploy wireless soil moisture sensors nodes with an adaptive irrigation controller that waters on demand without user input. The result is a system that requires less user intervention, lowers water consumption, and adapts to changing climatic conditions.

Wireless Sensor Network and Monitoring of Crop Field

“…3. Using WSN in agriculture can help reduce wastage, preserve resources, and utilize them effectively resulting in improved efficiency, reduced efforts and boost economy [13,18,21,22] Precision Agriculture model consist of, Wireless sensors to assist for spatial data collection, irrigation control model, Arrangement for supplying information to farmers, Variable-rate technology model and Green house parameter control system. In spatial data collection, a mobile field data acquisition system is available to collect useful data for crop management.…”

Successful deployment of a Wireless Sensor Network for precision agriculture in Malawi

“…The measurement of the soil moisture potential (SMP) using Watermark 200SS sensor is done in two stages: (1) reading the frequency of the alternating current signal pushed into the sensor which is then converted to resistance and (2) using a nonlinear calibration equation to convert the Watermark electrical resistance (in kΩ) into SMP (in kPa). Using an Agriculture Board as an interface of the Watermark sensor and a Waspmote microcontroller unit (MCU), it was possible to measure the frequency directly.…”

“…Off-the-shelf irrigation controllers are usually expensive and not effective in managing scarce water resources [1,2]. On the other hand, an irrigation management system (IMS) based on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can accept any desired irrigation scheduling strategy to meet specific environmental requirements.…”

Fast sorting on flash memory sensor nodes

“…The maximum amount of memory available for data processing is 2000 bytes with the rest of the memory used for node functions and program stack space. This node design was used for field measurement of soil moisture for use with an automated irrigation controller [8]. The system was designed to collect sensor readings every minute, store them locally, and periodically send them back to the controller.…”

“…The real data set consists of 10,000 records (160KB) collected by the sensor network system during Summer 2009 [8]. Since the data is collecting soil moisture, the data variation is in a confined range, and the data follows a fairly regular pattern.…”