Automatic plant watering controller component using FPGA device

Abstract

Many farmers do not have much time to perform maintenance on agricultural plants, especially in watering of plant routinely. Besides that, sometimes watering was done not compatible with the water necessity of plants. This has an impact on agricultural products which is not maximized. In general, automatic plant watering used only watering timer-based, of course, is not in accordance with the characteristics of the water necessity of each plant. However, the automatic watering plants using soil moisture sensors can overcome problems of farmers. The prototype of automatic watering plant consists of FPGA board, driver relay, water pump, LED, soil moisture sensors, and the ADC module (ADC0820). Soil moisture sensor is a probe made from metal as soil moisture detector. Soil moisture measurement results in the form of voltage fluctuations. Soil moisture sensors generate a voltage that will be converted by the ADC module into 8-bit digital signal. The conversion results carried classification. This classification is based on ideal condition of the plant such as high water necessity, medium water necessity and low water necessity. If the sensor detects the soil in dry condition, the water pump will be activated. If the sensor detects the soil in wet conditions, the water pump will not be activated. Besides more easily, it also adjusts to the natural conditions and the needs of each plant. This research result is a description of component (IP Core) for controlling the watering system automatically.