Remote Monitoring in Agricultural Greenhouse Using Wireless Sensor and Short Message Service (SMS)

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1 International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol:09 No:09 35 Remote Monitoring in Agricultural Greenhouse Using Wireless Sensor and Short Message Service (SMS) Izzat Din Abdul Aziz, Mohd Hilmi Hasan, Mohd Jimmy Ismail, Mazlina Mehat and Nazleeni Samiha Haroon Computer and Information Sciences Department Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS Bandar Seri Iskandar, Tronoh, Perak MALAYSIA {Izzatdin, {mazlinamehat, Abstract In traditional method of farming, human labors were required to visit the greenhouse at specific time and need to check the humidity level and temperature level manually. This conventional method is considered time consuming and needs a lot of work and effort. Therefore this research focuses on developing a system that can remotely monitor and predict changes of temperature level in agricultural greenhouse. The objective of the research is to develop a remote temperature monitoring system using wireless sensor and Short Message Service (SMS) technology. The proposed system has a measurement which capable of detecting the level of temperature. This system also has a mechanism to alert farmers regarding the temperature changes in the greenhouse so that early precaution steps can be In this research, several tests had been conducted in order to prove the viability of the system. Test results indicated that the reliability of the system in propagating information directly to the farmers could be gained excellently in various conditions. increases the value of resistance. But it not happens in capacitance behavior as firmness change. The capacitances were decreased as firmness improved. Index Term Remote Monitoring; Wireless Sensor; SMS; GSM; Monitoring System. 1. INTRODUCTION The concern with a lot of consumer needs and demands for agriculture products has stimulated awareness for the farmer to increase their products in the market by implementing new technologies in this industry. Among the important things that may come to the farmers interest is how to control the used of natural sources and natural environment which agricultures depend on. Therefore, this problem has captured farmers interest to implement agro-environmental remote monitoring method in their agriculture industries. The agro-environmental remote monitoring method can be implemented in various situations such as in monitoring qualities of soil and water. However this research focuses solely in remotely monitoring levels of temperature in greenhouse. By utilizing proper technology, the natural environment and resource, in this case is temperature, which is very important for the plants can be monitored efficiently. Previously, human labor plays a very important role in monitoring farm and plants in this industry. For some critical plants such as vegetables and flowers, they need 24 hours attention from human so that the quantities and qualities of the plant can be controlled. With proper management of collected data and information, this will provide them with strong foundation for future development and future growth of their plants. However, because of increasing size in farming areas, this type of manual practice is apparently time consuming and labor-intensive. However, with the improvement of management in agriculture techniques, modern telecommunication technologies can be implemented which provide great assistance for the industry. Due to the fast development in telecommunication technologies, it is believed that wireless communication is a good practice for remote sensing in the agriculture industries. This research has fully utilized wireless sensor network, Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) and short message service (SMS) to carry out data from the sensors to computers or directly alert the workers through their mobile phone. This practice has eliminated the used of wired technology and improved old method of collecting data in farming areas. This technology has seen to be suitable in the current era of wireless age. Moreover, this research focuses on the study on remote monitoring system in greenhouse which has capability of sending alert notification messages to farmers using GSM and SMS technology. The proposed system is aimed to be a reliable and cost effective. There are a lot of technologies that have been created to perform the operation; however, many of the existing technologies would still require a great deal of human intervention. A part from that, existing technology for detecting level of temperature works based on reactive measurement whereby it only alert workers when the levels reach at certain values. Therefore we propose a proactive system which can predict possible changes of temperature level so that early precaution steps can be

2 International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol:9 No:09 36 In this research, we took a strawberry farm as a case study. In one of the data collecting activities in this research, we interviewed Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI), an agency which delivers the research and development in Malaysia s agriculture industry. Based on MARDI, it is significantly hard to monitor the greenhouse particularly strawberry farm which requires scheduled monitoring for every 3 hours. They believe that it will be very helpful if remote monitoring system and alert mechanism can be implemented in the greenhouse since the existing method is costly and time consuming. The next section in this paper contains description of the works related to this research. After that, section 3 describes the system model implemented in the development of the proposed system. Section 4 contains results and discussion while this paper is summarized in the conclusion part in section RELATED WORKS Nowadays, the number of the development of more complicated and advanced monitoring and control systems is increasing due to the availability of cheaper and pervasive components such as processors and hardware in the current market. The trend is moving towards wireless solutions due to an increased interest in it as compared to the current wired-based systems [1]. In addition, modern wireless technology can very much improve the efficiency of data collection and agriculture techniques, as compared to the traditional time-consuming and labor-intensive manual practices [2]. Moreover, the current agriculture monitoring devices have two main drawbacks, which are less user-friendly and costly. To overcome these, there is a need for easy-to-use and less costly devices for agriculture monitoring activities [4]. In related research, the United States Wireless Industrial Networking Alliance (WINA) stated that Wireless technology and wireless networking systems hold great promise to help US industry use energy and materials more efficiently, lower systems and infrastructure costs, lower production costs and increase productivity [5]. They also made a prediction on the price reduction for remote monitoring sensor products as shown in the graph in Fig. 1. Based on this work, we may conclude that the price of the products will continue to reduce though it may not follow the same pattern. Fig. 1. Projected price reduction for remote monitoring products [5] Meanwhile, the research done in [2] stated that even though now we have the advanced technology applied in some fields, for example earth surface environment study and resource survey, pervasive wireless systems is believed to be more effective for data collecting and transmitting in agriculture field. In this research, we propose the use of wireless sensor for temperature monitoring in greenhouse and GSM and SMS technologies to conduct the transmission of the monitored information to the end user. Based on the research done in [2], it is believed that the GSM and SMS solutions would provide benefits which include among others simple power solutions, wide range of coverage, and store-and-forward capability which in the case of the host server is out of service, it allows the user to still gain information after the problem is fixed. In addition, the use of mobile phone in this operation will result in a significant cost and time saving as well as the user would benefit from being able to use familiar gadget [7]. Furthermore, the SMS technology provides an efficient information delivery service to the users. Based on the performance test done in [2], a total of 915 SMS data were sent, and as a result all of them were delivered correctly. 25 SMS data encountered retransmission because of interruption, while 6 SMS data were lost. Data lost is defined as the data that could not be received after 24 hours in terms of the overall sent SMS data in the considered time period. The summary of this test is shown in Table I below IJET-IJENS October 2012 IJENS

3 International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol:9 No:09 37 T ABLE I Summary for SMS data transmission performance evaluation Effect Developed disease Example White rash research was EZ430-RF2500 wireless sensor to perform the temperature monitoring activities. Moreover, we also used D-link 3.5G Express Card T ABLE II Effect of humidity and temperature to strawberry plants Lost of nutritional value Vitamins Minerals Measurement Total Transmitted Data Percentage Value Over-ripen Texture damage easily Rotten quickly Accuracy of data transmission 915 / % Texture Appearance Flavor Toughness Firmness / softness Juiciness Size Color Shape / form Sweetness Acidity Bitterness Apart from those research works, we also believed that it is important to get information regarding the effect of humidity and temperature to vegetables or plants. Based on our case study of strawberry farm, MARDI had provided the information which is summarized in the Table II below. The information shows that the humidity and temperature affect significantly to the quality of strawberry. Moreover, in order to develop a reliable and cost-effective system we had also done a comparative study on three technologies namely GSM, Bluetooth and 3G. Table 3 shows the results of the study, which concludes that GSM is preferred due to several criteria tailored to the research and system needs. In term of range, GSM covers a broader area as compared to the rest. Even though the data rate is 9.6kbps, which is far lesser than Bluetooth and 3G, the nature of the data to be transmitted in this project that is just in text format, could overly waste of bandwidth if Bluetooth and 3G are used. 3. SYSTEM MODEL Fig. 2 shows the overview of the system model implemented in this research. The system was developed in four-tier models which are data acquisition, data communication, data presentation and alert notification. The hardware used in this Retransmission 25 / % Total data loss rate 6 / % which was equipped with a SIM card as the Internet broadband modem to send SMS alert as well as mobile phone for receiving SMS alert message. As for software, we used MSP430 Application UART that able to change the input data in volts to the appropriate temperature reading in Celsius and Fahrenheit. In addition, Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition and Microsoft Access were used as the programming language and database management system. The database was required to log temperature values received from the wireless sensor and record all the SMS sending activities. Besides, OzekiNG SMS was chosen as the SMS gateway software which enables the activities of sending and receiving SMS between the system and end user s mobile T ABLE III Comparison among three types of wireless technologies device. Technology GSM Bluetooth 3G Range Wide Short Limited Data rate 9.6 Kbps 700 Kbps 2 Mbps Media Security Suitable and low cost Moderat e Need access point send distant places to to Moderate Costly for sending text message s Moderat e IJET-IJENS October 2012 IJENS

4 International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol:9 No:09 38 System Model DATA INPUT System DATA OUTPUT Temperature Sensors Texas Instrument Development Tools GSM modem (Transfer Data) Graphical User Interface GSM Modem (Alert) Humidity EZ430-RF2500 Database Data Acquisition Data communication Data presentation Alert notification Fig. 2. System Model 3.1 System Architecture System Architecture Base station Temperature Sensor Radio Frequency EZ430-RF2500 Access Point Alert GSM Modem EZ430-RF2500 End Devices Computer for data presentation and database of the system Data Acquisition Data Communication Control Panel Base station Data Communication Farmers Alert Notification Fig. 3 illustrates the architecture of the proposed system. Temperature data is captured by the wireless temperature sensor, which is then propagated to the access point at the computer. This data is then relayed to the system s control panel. The data is extracted and put into the database and benchmarked by the threshold value set by farmers. If the data exceeds the threshold value, an alert SMS will be triggered and sent via GSM modem through the cellular network to the farmer s mobile phone. This proposed system also allows reverse communication whereby the farmer is Fig. 3. System architecture allowed to request for current temperature reading in the greenhouse from the system. Fig. 4 shows the control panel interface of the proposed system. The control panel contains three sections which are Sensor Ports, Current Temperature and Set Maximum Temperature. The Sensor Ports set the connection between computer and the wireless temperature sensor. For communication to be done, the end user must select the communication port from the drop down menu. Besides, the Current Temperature section displays the retrieved IJET-IJENS October 2012 IJENS

5 International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol:9 No:09 39 temperature data. There are two types of temperature data which are the data retrieved directly from the sensor, and the data extracted from the database. The upper textbox in this section contains the former type of the data. This data contains other values than temperature and it changes for every second. For the purpose of this system, this data is sent to the database and extracted to generate the temperature value only. This extracted temperature value is shown in the lower textbox of this section. However, due to the latency during the extraction process, the temperature shows a slight different in value. Furthermore, the Set Maximum Temperature section allows farmers to set the threshold temperature value in the greenhouse. If the temperature readings exceed the threshold value, alert SMS will be triggered. Fig. 5 shows the control panel interface to set user and its destination mobile phone number. The system will send the SMS alert notification to all users registered through this interface. We also provided the fan status in the interface which will trigger the fan on when situation is hazardous. However the fan status functionality was not developed due to hardware limitation and is recommended for future enhancement. Fig. 4. Control Panel Interface Sensor and Temperature Fig. 5. Control Panel Interface SMS User and Fan Status TempLog noid {PK} node temperature battery strength reference time Fig. 6. Table TempLog in the database The table contains the noid column to store the identification of each data entry. On the other hand, the node column contains the information of the wireless sensor which sends the signal. This information is important to recognize the source of the signal especially if more than one wireless sensors are being used for testing. Moreover, the temperature column stores the temperature data received from the sensor. In actual case, the sensor sends data in a form of <temperature><battery voltage><strength><reference> as describe in section 3.1. Since we only need the temperature data, the original data is split into four separate parts which are temperature, battery voltage, strength and reference. These information are stored in the respective columns in the TempLog table namely temperature, battery, strength and reference. Meanwhile, the final column named as time contains the received time of the signal. 4. RESULT AND DISCUSSIONS 4.1 SMS Transmission Duration Testing This testing consists of a few tests to study duration taken for SMS to be transmitted to the farmer s mobile phone. There were three different conditions studied in this testing where fifty (50) SMS messages were sent for each condition. The first condition was tested at day-time which started early in the morning from 8.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. The test case shown in Fig. 7 was used in order to perform this test. This day-time condition becomes the most critical hours for greenhouse due to the high temperature. Based on the case study, the strawberry plants could easily be overheated and damaged in high temperature. We record the results of this test and summarize it in a graph as shown in Fig. 8. From the graph, we could see that the time pattern shows random distribution between 9 to 20 seconds. 3.2 DATABASE The system has a single database with one table named TempLog to log all the involved operations. Fig. 6 shows the details of the TempLog table IJET-IJENS October 2012 IJENS

6 Time (Second) Time (second) International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol:09 No:09 40 To test the time taken to send SMS. Day-time (8.00 a.m p.m.). registered receiver s mobile phone. Record the sending time. 2. When the message is received at the receiver s mobile phone, find the total time 3. Repeat the same steps for 50 SMS Fig. 7. Test case for SMS transmission duration testing (day-time) To test the time taken to send SMS. Night-time (10.00 p.m a.m.). registered receiver s mobile phone. Record the sending time. 2. When the message is received at the receiver s mobile phone, find the total time 3. Repeat the same steps for 50 SMS Fig. 9. Test case for SMS transmission duration testing (night-time) Time Taken to send SMS at Day-time Time : 8.00 am pm Condition : Bright Morning Time Taken to Sent SMS at Night-time Time : 10.00pm am Condition : Warm night Number of SMS Fig. 8. Graph shows time taken for SMS transmission in the morning testing condition. The second test was performed to check on the SMS transmission duration at night-time. We used the test case as shown in Fig. 9 where the test was performed in between p.m. to 3.00 a.m. This time period is also critical to the strawberry plant because the temperature might drop drastically which could over ripen the fruits. The graph shown in Fig. 10 illustrates the results of this test. The time distribution is rather predictable as compared to the graph shown in Fig. 8. However, on the 31st and 48th trial, duration of 60 second was recorded. This could possibly due to retransmission activity. Nevertheless the result does not jeopardize the reliability since the data were received successfully Number of SMS Fig. 10. Graph shows time taken for SMS transmission in the night testing condition. We also extended the test to be performed during heavy rain. This test is critical to analyze the wireless transmission reliability due to atmospheric absorption. Water vapor and drops has been known to absorb wireless transmission which would reduce the reliability of the signal. This theory has been studied in [10], which stated that water vapor and oxygen contribute most to attenuation. For example, rain and fog cause attenuation of radio wave which finally leads to the signal loss. We followed the test case shown in Fig. 11 in running the test, and the graph in Fig. 12 summarizes the results. In this testing, the time taken for SMS transmission was rather lengthy as compared to the first and second test. This is shown by the number of trials which exceeded 20 second.

7 Time (second) International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol:09 No:09 41 To test the time taken to send SMS. Day-time (2.00 p.m p.m.). Heavy rain. registered receiver s mobile phone. Record the sending time. 2. When the message is received at the receiver s mobile phone, find the total time Fig. 11. Test case for SMS transmission duration testing (heavy 3. Repeat the same steps rain) for 50 SMS In a nutshell, every SMS alert sent to the farmers varies differently in different conditions. However, based on the testing done, all SMS transmission time are within the acceptable ranges which important to allow farmers to take immediate respond Time Taken to Transfer SMS at Day-time Time: 2.00pm-5.00pm Heavy rainy day Number of SMS Sent Fig. 12. Graph shows time taken for SMS transmission in heavy rainyday testing condition Furthermore, we continued our testing in order to find the average time taken for SMS transmission for the same three conditions which are morning to afternoon, night and heavy rainy day. In this testing, 300 SMS messages were sent which half of the number was alert notification messages to the farmers and another half were respond messages for the temperature level requests. The details of the test case are described in Fig. 13, and we summarize the results in the Pie chart in Fig. 14. As a summary, the three different conditions show no significant effect to the system. The time taken for the system to send SMS message to the farmers has been recorded to be nearly the same for all three different conditions. To test the average time taken to send SMS. 1. Day-time (8.00 a.m p.m.). 2. Night-time (10.00 p.m p.m.). 3. Heavy rain (2.00 p.m p.m.). registered receiver s mobile phone. Record the sending time. 2. When the message is received at the receiver s mobile phone, find the total time 3. Repeat the same steps for 150 SMS 4. Send SMS message from the temperature level request module to the registered Fig. 13. Test case for average time taken in SMS transmission receiver s mobile phone. Record the Average Time Taken for sending 300 SMS sending time. (Second) 5. When the message is received at the receiver mobile phone, find the total time Repeat the same steps for 150 SMS 7. Perform the steps 1-6 for all three conditions Morning Night Heavy Rainy Day Fig. 14. Average time taken for sending 300 SMS 4.2 Reliability Test SMS Reliability Test This test was conducted to study the reliability of SMS as a communication medium. The study analyzed the system s reliability to send SMS alert notification messages to the farmers and also respond messages to the request from farmers for temperature level.

8 Number of Data Sent (5 Minutes) International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol:09 No:09 42 To test the SMS reliability. 1. SMS message is received in normal transmission if the time taken is within the average transmission time (more or less 20 seconds). 2. SMS message is received in retransmission if the time taken is more than the average transmission time but less than 24 hours after it was sent. 3. SMS message is loss if it is not received after 24 hours it was sent. registered receiver s mobile phone. Record the sending time. 2. When the message is received at the receiver s mobile phone, find the total time 3. Repeat the same steps for 150 SMS 4. Send SMS message from the temperature level request module to the registered receiver s mobile phone. Record the sending time. 5. When the message is received at the receiver mobile phone, find the total time 6. Repeat the same steps for 150 SMS 7. Categorize the SMS messages into three categories; normal, retransmission and loss. Fig. 15. Test case for SMS reliability test The test case shown in Fig. 15 describes the details of the test procedure. On the other hand, Table IV shows the results obtained from this reliability test. The accuracy of data transmission was 100%. From the total of 300 SMS messages sent by the system, all were received by the farmers even though at various time intervals. There were only five retransmissions occurred during the test which took approximately 3 minutes for the system to retransmit the SMS message to the farmers. From the total amount of SMS sent, none of it was loss SENSOR RELIABILITY TEST To test the reliability of the wireless sensor to send signal in various obstacles. 1. concrete wall 2. glass wall 3. metal wall 4. wood wall 5. plastic wall 6. In vegetable farm 1. Block/cover the sensor with concrete wall. Each signal sent by the sensor will be received by the system and logged in the database table. 2. After 5 minutes, count the signal received by the system based on the database table. 3. Repeat the same steps with the other 5 Fig. 16. Test case for the wireless sensor reliability test Meanwhile, different the bar obstacles. chart in Fig. 17 shows the number of data sent in five minutes time for each condition. TABLE V Results for sensor reliability testing Measurement Total Transmitted Data Accuracy of data transmission / % Retransmission 5 / % Data loss rate 0 / 300 0% Percentage Value Concrete wall Glass wall Metal wall Wood wall Type of Obstacles Plastic wall In Vegetable farm Fig. 17. Sensor Reliability testing

9 Pecentage (%) International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol:09 No:09 43 The test was carried out to determine how many data can be logged in the database table within five minutes for each obstacle. The information in the Table V illustrates the results of this testing. One row of database table contains one piece of data. Based on the results, it could be concluded that none of the obstacles gave significant interference to the sensor for sending data wirelessly to the control panel. The bar chart in Fig. 18 shows that within the five minutes of testing period, the percentage of received data is more than 35% for all types of obstacles. Though we could not get the 100% percentage due to some constraints such as transmission delay, but in all, we can conclude that the materials above gave almost no effect to the transmitting process of data. Condition 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Concrete wall T ABLE IV SMS Reliability Test Result concrete wall 98 glass wall 123 metal wall 115 wood wall 121 plastic wall 101 In vegetable farm 108 Glass wall Metal wall Number of rows logged in the database table Wood wall Type of obstacles Plastic wall In vegetable farm Fig. 18. Percentage of received data in 5 minutes 5. CONCLUSIONS The study on temperature remote monitoring and alerting system in greenhouse had successfully been done in this research, which lead to the development of a reliable and cost effective system. The proposed system utilizes wireless s ensor for temperature level detection, as well as GSM and SMS technologies for sending alert notification message to the farmers. Several types of testing had been performed in this research which conclude that the implemented technology in the system capable in delivering the expected performance and reliability. Furthermore, this research has great potential to be extended to incorporate more functionality. Firstly, the research could be extended to include more environmental variables to be monitored in the agricultural greenhouse which relate to the increment of fruits and vegetables productivity. For example, other than temperature, the soil and water acidity level in the greenhouse also play important role to the quality of fruits. Secondly, the research could also be enhanced to produce a system that can trigger automatic actions of related components such as the sprinkler, lighting and air ventilators, rather than just send alert notification message. Finally, the proposed system may be enhanced by implementing artificial intelligent components to enable advanced implementations such as self-learning, predicting, and define ambiguous situation which provide preventive measures. REFERENCES [1] George W. Irwin, Jeremy Colandairaj and William G. Scanlon, An Overview of Wireless Networks in Control and Monitoring, International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Kunming, CHINE (2006), Vol. 4114, 2006, pp [2] Tseng Chwan-Lu, Jiang Joe-Air, Lee Ren-Guey, Lu Fu-Ming, Ouyang Cheng-Shiou, Chen Yih-Shaing and Chang Chih-Hsiang, Feasibility study on application of GSM SMS technology to field data acquisition, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, Vol. 53, Issue 1, 2006, pp [3] Dayang Amenozima Abang Ismail and Kamaruzaman Jusoff, Geospatial Information Technologies for Malaysian Agriculture in the Next Millennium, Seminar on Repositioning Agriculture Industry in the Next Millennium, [4] S. Correia, V. Realinho, R. Braga, J. Turégano, A. Miranda, J. Gañan, Development of a Monitoring System for Efficient Management of Agriculture Resources, Proceeding of the VIII International Congress on Project Engineering, [5] Ning Wang, Naiqian Zhang and Maohua Wang, Wireless Sensors in Agriculture and Food Industry - Recent Development and Future Perspective, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, Vol. 50, Issue 1, 2006, pp [6] Li Cai, Wenya Zhang, En Li, Zize Liang, Zeng-Guang Hou and Min Tan, Design and Implementation of a CDMA-Based Remote Monitoring and Controlling System, SICE Annual Conference, 2007, pp [7] Mikael Sjodin, Remote Monitoring and Control Using Mobile Phones, Whitepaper- Newline Information, [8] AllInterview.com, 30 September 2008, [9] Start vb dotnet.com, 30 September 2008, [10] William Stallings, Wireless Communication and Networks, Prentice Hall, 2004.