Measurement and Monitoring of Soil Moisture using Cloud IoT and Android System

Objectives: Soil moisture information plays an important role in environmental monitoring, agricultural production and hydrological studies. Particularly, agricultural yield depends on several growing parameters like temperature, humidity, soil moisture and pH of the soil, etc. In this paper, we have designed and developed a system for measuring and monitoring soil moisture by interfacing low-cost soil moisture sensor with CC3200 LaunchPad and using Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud computing and Mobile computing technologies. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Two types of soils, namely red and black were collected from the field and experiments were carried out at room temperature. Moisture levels were measured using the commercially available soil moisture sensor: FC-28. Such values downloaded from the Cloud (earlier these values are uploaded into AT&T’s M2X Cloud technology and mobile application using CC3200 LaunchPad) are compared with the gravimetric dry basic technique. The results are in agreement with a deviation of 2%. Findings: Data corresponding to the moisture contents of red and black soils were uploaded to the AT&Ts’ M2X Cloud and accessed on-line and monitored the humidity levels on the screens of the mobile/laptop. In parallel the data acquired is also stored in the form of excel sheet for further processing. Conclusion: In this paper, we have designed and developed a Cloud computing Android system that gives on-line information about soil moisture. The results obtained for two types of soils are uploaded to the Cloud and accessed through the mobile/laptop from a remote area are presented.