Team 2: AgriSense

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Abstract

This project aims to construct a wireless sensor node for detecting soil moisture in agricultural settings. A network of them will be used to detect the spatial variation of moisture over large land areas, which will allow for more efficient water use and automate labor. The current method for determining soil moisture is a time and labor intensive process involving taking wet soil samples, weighing them for initial weight, drying it in an oven, and then weighing the dry soil to get the gravimetric water content. We aim to design a capacitive sensor whose value will change depending upon the moisture content (permittivity) of the soil, causing a detectable shift in the resonant frequency of an LC tank. This project will serve as an incremental prototype for IoT4Ag, an NSF Engineering Research Center focusing on developing Internet of Things technologies for precision agriculture and addressing societal scale challenges of food, energy, and water security.