Earthy Tech by DSA void Team-148

Earthy Tech--use more waste less

Inspiration

We are very friendly to the term of “The other name of life is water” that is without water the presence of beings will be impossible. So water wastage is one of the most committed blunders we do mostly in our everyday lives. Mostly in agricultural fields water is wasted much. Also due to staging of water on the soil crop production decreases and harms the fertility of the soil and consequently farmers suffers losses and GDP of our country decreases. Groundwater level decreases too in the same and in result aquatic lives and rather all the living lives get affected badly. Water wastage is the leading trouble in all over the world and obstacle in sustainable development and reaching to the Sustainable Development Goal 13 (SDG 13). Also as mentioned above if the moisture level of soil gets much higher than required it harms the fertility of the soil and crop production becomes less. According to a survey conducted on year 2020, of the 70% used by famers, 40% is lost to the environment due to poor irrigation systems, evaporation, and overall poor water management system. And an estimated over 34% of crop production loss is traced due to bad water management. So resolving this matter can be done by a soil moisture level detector with which water will be provided automatically when needed by the crop. Consequently there will be an economic enhancement of the people in agricultural sector leading to Sustainable Development Goal 1(SDG 1) that is they will be profited more following there will be less poverty.

Background

Irrigation, drip irrigation, pipelines and several other ways are used in agricultural sectors to reduce water wastage but then also water is wasted much and the problem of over moistening of soil occurs which causes both wastage of water and infertility of the soil. Day by day wastage is rapidly increasing due to bad management and hence groundwater level is also decreasing. Amount of water in various rivers and small scale ponds are also decreasing due to the consequence of the same, harming the aquatic animals. Also every being is affected by shortage of water in some or the other way. Also due to infertility, crops and greeneries are getting affected as result farmers are suffering problems and also as greeneries are decreasing many other climatic problems are arising. So as a solution to all the problems discussed above we would like to present our software: THE SOIL MOISTURE LEVEL DETECTOR --EARTHY TECH

What it does

Soil moisture detector is designed to moisten the soil according to the water it needed depending on the crop it produces. It measures the moisture level of the soil and hence pours water into it if needed by the crop growing on the soil, when the soil becomes dry or the water is absorbed by the crop, the water is poured into it depending on the water containing in it. It is design with a microcontroller to measure the water surface level sensor and a soil moisture sensor and a 12 v dc pump connected to a supply. As the soil moisture sensor senses less water in the soil it sends a message through a relay which starts 12 v dc pump which pours water into the soil based on the amount it required .When the requirement is fulfilled the motor of the pump gets off in the same way it started. Now the water surface level sensor senses decrease in the water level and updates it in the graph given in the web server in support of this project. Thus it reduces water wastage by providing accurate amount of water needed by the soil and the crop by detecting the moisture level of the soil and also protects the soil from infertility and thus also has a look on good production of crops in it due to good water management system.

How we built it

This is totally a new model running on our own made server using the ports numbers in both the main server and the client server. Hardware Used: Firstly we used a microcontroller (NodeMCU) for controlling overall hardware system or it is the main brain of our model controlled by Arduino. An ultrasonic sensor is connected with the microcontroller to measure the water surface level. A well calibrated soil moisture sensor is used to measure the water content in soil (% by mass). A 12V dc pump is used to pump out the water out of the water source for distributing in soil. A single channel relay worked as a switch to control the water flow. The microcontroller is connected with a PC (Main Server) using data cable for power supply as well as data transmission. Software Used: The connected PC serve as Server. All the data that the microcontroller received from the sensors is transmitted to the server (PC). In the server all the data for every instance is stored and analyzed. According to which it sends back signal to the microcontroller to turn the relay on or off. The server also converts the received water level to water available in source in volumetric percentage and stores it. Server Part: Using PHP and Apache server we show the stored value. We take threshold input for the system and run the entire system remotely using our own web server. Here the Volumetric percentage of water availability is displayed using bar chart, the motor condition, soil moisture value and we can also shut the whole system down by this web server remotely using any Device that uses our local network. We used the following technologies to create and produce the envisioned project: php,Arduino,python,mysql, xampp

Challenges we ran into

A lot! Making the connection of each part of the hardware of our project was very complicated, each wires caused problem in the circuit. Also the NodeMCU board failed many a times and the motor too. Developing the code was also one of the toughest things in the process. Further than that, some of the technologies we used were totally new to us and thus it was also an obstacle to learn and implement specifically the Arduino part felt impossible to us for an instance but we successfully overcame it during our hackathon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to achieve finishing the project on time which was like touching the sky to us but we finally completed it. It is totally a new technology developed by us which will be running on our own made server only and not on any other third party server. It is very efficient and helpful in several ways. Also it targets Sustainable Development Goal 13 (SDG 13) Which is well maintained use of natural things and by this product we can accurately save water and use water efficiently the amount needed. Also it is providing profit in some or the other way to the people included in agricultural sector in the above mentioned ways, thus it is also objectifying on Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1) that is no poverty.

What we learned

Technically and non-technically we have learnt a lot during this project. Technically we learnt about the use of NodeMCU and its application, we learnt about relay, we got to know about Arduino, learnt new modules in python and gained more knowledge about the language and last but not the least we have gained more work experience with xampp, MySQL and apache. Non-technically we have learnt about the amazing functioning of the team coordination both physically and mentally and time management too.

What's next for Earthy Tech by DSA void Team-148

Looking forward we would like to add:

A feature which will choose the best water source from where the motor will pour the water into the soil that is if there is two motor in two containers, it will pour water from that container from where it can provide a large and fast flow.
We are also planning to make the system automated of water pouring according to the need of the crop growing on the soil that is according to the need of the crop the motor will pour water into it automatically within certain intervals and without any manual work.
We will also provide timer which will provide an estimation of accurate time of pouring water from the selected container.