Design of an Automatic Irrigation System

Abstract

Over the years, a lot of irrigation systems have been developed to aid crop farming but most of them are manually operated. The few automatic irrigation systems available in the country are very expensive and therefore not easily available to the peasant farmers. The need for improved non-seasonal crop farming gave rise to this research work on a low cost irrigation system made from locally sourced components. The system designed in this work makes use of a locally made soil humidity sensor to check the water level in the soil. If the water level is below the required level, the irrigation system is turned on by sending a signal to the relay connected to the pump which opens the valve to let water out.  Once the required humidity is obtained, it is turned off through a similar mechanism. The control also has six buttons for time-based control of irrigation for crops that demand irrigation at specific times of the day. With a system like this, non-seasonal farming is ensured thus increasing food supply and reducing hunger.