Wireless Sensor Networks for Smart Gardening: ESP-NOW and Blynk IoT Integration for Water and Energy Optimization

Abstract

Conventional gardening and farming approaches struggle with freshwater shortage, wasting water and fertilizers, quality of plants, energy, and costs, which are mitigated by employing smart agricultural systems that utilize wireless sensor networks and IoT technologies. A bidirectional wireless sensor network is essential to monitor and control a water management system for medium and large areas of land. Also, the IoT provides the mobility for that smart system by accessing it from anywhere in the world using the internet connectivity. Toward minimizing drawbacks and reinforcing farmers’ efforts to gain optimal results from their gardens and farms. This research aims to investigate the use of ESP-NOW to create a star-topology wireless sensor network that includes four end nodes communicating bi-directionally with a gateway node. Also, this paper discusses the nodes’ energy consumption optimization by applying two operation modes of ESP boards: a fully active mode and a hybrid mode (active and deep sleep). In addition to uploading air temperature and humidity, soil moisture, and light intensity to a Blynk server and controlling four water valves distributed with the nodes. As a result, we implemented Blynk web and mobile dashboards to visualize and control the system. We achieved a manageable irrigation system by setting upper and lower thresholds of soil moisture. Finally, we made the network nodes live eight times longer when we applied the hybrid operating mode instead of fully active mode.