Evapotranspiration (ET)-Based Irrigation System with Internet of Things (IoT) Integration for Capsicum Annuum Farming: A Methodology

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology to develop an irrigation system that determines the amount of water to be provided based on water loss due to evapotranspiration (ET) process. The computed amount of water was based on the data gathered from an automatic weather station (AWS) sensor suites installed in the plantation plot. Capsicum Annuum or commonly known as Chili is the crop of interest in the conducted study due to its popularity amongst Malaysians. The system comprises microcontroller with the integration of sensors, actuator and valve modules where each node serves as an IoT device. The environmental parameters are being monitored directly over the AWS console and remotely over mobile application that helps in the controls of each node and configuration settings for irrigation. The computed amount of water for irrigation is based on CIMIS Modified Penman model for the computation of the daily reference ET, ETo. Compared to the conventional irrigation method, it is anticipated that the proposed irrigation model would help in reducing water usage without compromising its produce.