Abstract: In a country like India, whose economy is mainly based on agriculture and the climatic conditions which are isotropic, we are still not able to make full use of agricultural re-sources. The main reason is scarcity of water. Another very important reason of this is due to un-planned use of water as a result of which a significant amount of water goes into waste. In the modern irrigation systems, the most significant advantage is that water is supplied near the root zone of the plants. But the modern day drip irrigation systems had not been automated. The problem incurred was the inability to adopt labour for just switching on/off the valves and one more problem unnoticed was closing of valves since it was a huge area. So, a low cost automation that is user friendly for uneducated farmers was required to handle the system. This situated can be improved if we use automatic controller based closed circuits of Mini-sprinkler irrigation system in which the irrigation will take place only when there will be intense requirement of water. The valves can be easily automated by using controllers and solenoids. Automating farm or nursery irrigation allows farmers to supply the right amount of water at the right time, regardless of the availability of labour to turn valves on and off. So, the implementation with a low cost processor will be able to sense the moisture content of the soil level and irrigate the crops. Use of wireless module and communication system like Zigbee would solve the problem of expensive cabling involved. An alarm or any signal would indicate if the connection between the sensors and the control system is lost to intimate the user so as to troubleshoot the problem. Effective programming would further improve the case.

 

Keywords: Automation, Drip Irrigation, Real Time Monitoring, Wireless Sensor Network.