Precise Automation and Analysis of Environmental Factor Effecting on Growth of St. John's Wort

Abstract

The main goal of this study was to enable cultivating St. John's wort not only in Europe and West Asia, but also in Thailand, Southeast Asia despite warmer climate than in the natural growth regions. The challenge then was to control environmental factors with an automatic system. The Internet of Things (IoT) was applied in the sensor devices to control and collect relevant environmental data from the designed greenhouse. Moreover, data analysis by multiple linear regression was applied to enable the control of the designed greenhouse environment. It was used to discover interesting relationships between variables. The proposed system was implemented with hardware, a web application, and a mobile application. The hardware was designed to collect data and implement control of air temperature, air relative humidity, soil moisture, and light from sensors in the field. The web and mobile applications were developed to manipulate the obtained data, for intelligent control, and for real-time monitoring of environmental factors. The control system included an evaporative cooling system, fogging system, irrigation system, and artificial light system. The results show that the proposed system to assist and support the growth of St. John's wort was successful. Moreover, the results from this research can be used to culture St. John's wort, in order to produce medicines that are beneficial to human health in regions with the tropical climate.