© JAN 2022 | IRE Journals | Volume 5 Issue 7 | ISSN: 2456-8880

Design And Construction of a Microcontroller Based

Automatic Plant Watering Device for A Sustainable
Environment
OLAYIWOLA, J.O1, ADAMU, DAHIRU2
1, 2
Department of Computer Engineering, Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ogun state, Nigeria

Abstract- Many People enjoy living around the plants During the dry season, the plants will suffer
due their benefits to mankind and the environment. insufficiency in water supply which would stunt the
Regular watering of plats is among the major factor growth of plants that have been planted. Many
that will keep them healthy and alive. Considering individuals forget to water their plants owing to their
when and how much water needed by plants is two hectic daily schedules, and as a result, their plants
significant aspects of watering process. To make the suffer from a variety of ailments and eventually die.
work smart, an automatic plant watering system was Therefore, it is essential to manage the supply of water
developed to manage resources. The device is to plant efficiently (Divani Patil & Punjabi, 2016).
controlled using ATmega328 microcontroller which
is manipulating the moisture content of the soil and Healthy plants require regular watering, which results
gives out the signal to the water pump. The system in an increase in the humidity of the greenhouse air. A
was programmed to sense moisture level of plants at high relative humidity (above 80%) can increase the
a given time. If the moisture content is below the incidence of the disease and plant transpiration and
specified threshold moisture value stated in the should be avoided (Gupta et al., (2016).
program code, then desired volume of water is
supplied until it reaches threshold moisture value. Smart irrigation system seems to be helpful especially
This system can be used in greenhouse operation for for those who engaged with day-to-day activities. If
small and large gardens. designed and constructed properly, automatic
irrigation systems can be effective by saving energy
Indexed Terms- Automatic Watering System, and lot of water conservation (Bishnu et al., 2017).
Environment, Microcontroller, Moisture sensor, Traditional watering methods prove to be time
water Pump consuming, less sensitive and wastes water. Automatic
plant watering systems can be designed in a way that
I. INTRODUCTION regulates the amount of water supply in a targeted area
as it when needed.
Many people love to have plants around them. Having
plants around the environments (house, schools, This work uses ATmega 328 microcontroller to
hospitals, etc) are very beneficial in many aspects of control the flow of water that goes to the plant. The
human beings lives. Plants help in keeping the microcontroller is programmed on Arduino board
environment healthy by producing oxygen and using the IDE application software. This was archived
cleaning air naturally (Tashneem, 2018). on the principle of measuring the soil moisture level at
Environmental sustainability is involved with the state a given time. The moisture sensor measures the level
of the environment in which we dwell. It encourages of moisture in the soil and sends the corresponding
people to live in a way that produces little waste and analog signal values to the microcontroller for
even regenerates some of the resources we use on a necessary decision/action.
daily basis. The increasing demand for sustainable
development and beautification of the environment
requires the rapid improvement in the technology used
in catering for the plants. In a country like Nigeria,
where we have two seasons: raining and dry season.

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II. COMPONENTS USED FOR To build an automatic plant watering system,

IMPLEMENTATION OF SYSTEM following components are needed.

Table 1: COMPONENTS SPECIFICATION

S/ COMPONENTS COMPONENTS SPECIFICATION DIAGRAM

N
1 Arduino Uno AVR RISC-based microcontroller with 14
(ATmega328) digital I/O pins, 6-channels 10-bit A/D
converter, 2KB SRAM, 1024B EEPROM, and
32KB ISP flash memory. 7V to 12Voperating
voltage

2 Moisture Sensor Output value Dry soil 0-300

Humid soil 300-700
Water 700-950
Output voltage signal 0-4.2v
Operating voltage 3.3v to 5v

3 12V DC Mini Input voltage: DC 5-12V

Brushless water pump Current Max:0.5A
Continuous working life (24hrs nonstop)
Maximum flow: 350L/H

4 UB12100-S Lead Acid Battery 12V 10Ah

Universal Battery

III. HARDWARE CONFIGURATION In this work, three major functional components were
used; soil moisture sensor, water pump and Arduino
• BLOCK DIAGRAM Uno board. The microcontroller was programmed
using Arduino IDE application software. Soil

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 © JAN 2022 | IRE Journals | Volume 5 Issue 7 | ISSN: 2456-8880

moisture sensor was embedded into the plant which • Flowchart

measures the level of moisture in the soil and send to The software programming of an automatic watering
the microcontroller. Block diagram for the automatic system was guided by a flowchart shown in figure 3
watering system is shown in Figure 1 below. below.

Figure1. Block Diagram for Automatic Watering

System

• WORKING PRINCIPLE
The principle behind this system is in embedding the
soil moisture sensor into the plant to the ATmega328
microcontroller; establish communication between the
controller and other electronic components. The Figure3: System’s flowchart
microcontroller sends signal to the water pump upon
reception of the moisture level below the threshold • Software Programming
value setup in the program which triggers the water Apart from the design and hardware setup, a set of
pump to turn ON thereby supplies water to the plants instructions (or a program) to control the operation of
until the desired moisture level is reached then turn the system with the aid of a microcontroller on the
OFF. Water pump operate at a 12-voltage level Arduino board was developed. ATmega 328
whereas microcontroller sends out signals at 5 voltage microcontroller was programmed using the Arduino
level. However, Darlington amplifier was used to IDE application software. The software was created in
amplify the 5-voltage signal received from the the Arduino IDE using the built-in C language. The
microcontroller to 12 voltages for normal operation of instructions (codes) are written, compiled, and then
water pump. The overall system operated at the uploaded to the ATmega328 microcontroller using the
recommended voltage of 12 volts. Main circuit Arduino IDE. The program design was guided by a
diagram for the automatic watering system is shown in flowchart shown in figure 4.
Figure 2 below.

Figure2: Circuit diagram for the automatic watering

system

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 © JAN 2022 | IRE Journals | Volume 5 Issue 7 | ISSN: 2456-8880

supplied. This shows that the moisture level of the soil

of plants can be monitored and controlled periodically.
The system was programmed to sense moisture level
of plants at a given time. If the moisture content is
below the specified threshold moisture value stated in
the program code, then desired volume of water is
supplied until it reaches threshold moisture value. The
system setup was shown in figure 5 below.

Figure5: Hardware layout

Figure4: Program Code
REFERENCES
CONCLUSION
[1] Gupta, A., Kumawat, S., & Garg, S. (2016).
Automatic Plant Watering System has been
“Automatic Plant Watering System”. Imperial
implemented and tested to function automatically.
Journal of Interdisciplinary Research
Features of all the hardware components used are been
(IJIR), 2(4).
integrated during the development process. Normal
working condition of every hardware unit wired and [2] Divani, D., Patil, P., & Punjabi, S. K.
software IDE contributes to the best working state of (2016). “Automated plant Watering system”.
the system. The moisture sensors sense, measure the 2016 International Conference on Computation
moisture level of the plants and send to the of Power, Energy Information and
microcontroller. If the moisture level is found to be Communication (ICCPEIC).
below the desired level, microcontroller will triggers [3] Tasneem Khan Shifa (2018). “Moisture Sensing
the Water Pump to turn ON and supply the water to Automatic Plant Watering System Using
the plants. When the desired moisture level is reached, Arduino Uno” American Journal of Engineering
the system sends another signal to Water Pump to turn Research (AJER) 7(7).
OFF. Thus, the automatic operational capability of this [4] Bishnu Deo Kumar, Prachi Srivastava, Reetika
system requires the minimum quantity of water for the Agrawal, Vanya Tiwari (2017). “Microcontroller
irrigation system. Based Automatic Plant Irrigation System”
International Research Journal of Engineering
RESULT and Technology (IRJET).

In this work, automatic plant watering system have

been constructed and implemented. Basically, the
system designed can serves as the introduction to the
embedded technology in smart irrigation system. The
existing moisture level of the plant was measured and
desired volume of water needed by that plant was

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