Iot And Soil Moisture Detection

Introduction

In the field of agriculture and smart gardening, accurate data about the soil's moisture content is pivotal for healthy plant growth. Utilizing Internet of Things (IoT) devices, we can create a soil moisture sensor that can send the data to a cloud platform for analysis and allow for real-time monitoring.

In this blog, we'll discuss how to build a simple IoT soil moisture sensor using Raspberry Pi, Python, and an online IoT platform called Thingspeak.

Material Required

1. Raspberry Pi
2. Soil moisture sensor
3. Jumper wires

Setting Up The Raspberry Pi and Moisture Sensor

First, we connect our soil moisture sensor to the Raspberry Pi. The VCC pin goes to pin1 (3.3v) on your Pi, GND to pin6 (GND), and the sensor's DO pin to pin 7 (GPIO4) on the Pi.

Coding

Now, let's create the Python script for reading the moisture sensor data and sending it to Thingspeak.

First, we need to install the necessary Python modules:

pip install RPi.GPIO
pip install httplib2

Now, let's write a Python script to read the sensor data:

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import httplib2
import time

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(4, GPIO.IN)  # the pin where the sensor is connected

while True:
    if GPIO.input(4) == 1:
        print("Not yet")
        time.sleep(1)
    elif GPIO.input(4) == 0:
        print("Water")
        time.sleep(15)

This script checks whether the soil moisture level is high or low every 15 seconds and prints out the result.

Sending Data to Thingspeak

To send our collected data to the cloud, you first need to create a channel on Thingspeak and get your API-key for sending data to this channel. Update the Python script as follows:

import httplib2
...

# the API-key for your Thingspeak-channel (replace with your key)
myAPI = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' 

while True:
    ...
        conn = httplib2.HTTPConnection('api.thingspeak.com')
        conn.request('POST', path)
        response = conn.getresponse()
        print(response.read())
        conn.close()

Now, when the script detects a low moisture level, it sends an HTTP POST request to Thingspeak which stores the given value in your channel.

Conclusion

With the right tools, and a few lines of Python code, you can develop your own IoT soil moisture detection system. This system can become a vital part of modern agriculture and gardening, enabling real-time improvements and optimized watering schedules.