Abstract

Agriculture has been one of the significant sectors in the Nigerian economy due to its contribution to the development of the country; however, there is a need for a more efficient way of Irrigation and security. Traditional ways of irrigating the farmland are not efficient, as it leads to wastage of water resources, and some fungi crop diseases due to excess soil moisture content. Security is also crucial in agricultural practices, the security of crops against the attack of pests and diseases as well as that of the farmers during agricultural operations. The application of the Internet of Things can solve the problem regarding irrigation and security in agriculture thereby securing more productive and safe agricultural operations on the farm. A functional smart Irrigation system with Intruder detection which gives farmers access to remotely check soil moisture values on the farm, automatically control the irrigation process, and monitor movement around the farm through images captured on the farm to detect an intruder has been developed in this study. The developed prototype is a blend of various hardware modules and software programs controlled using the Internet of Things (IoT). The system is made up of a DC pump, capacitive soil moisture sensors, ESP32 cam, PIR sensors, and the ESP32 microcontroller. The soil moisture level determines when the pump will be turned ON or OFF automatically for irrigation to occur. The images captured by the ESP32 cam are saved on a memory card and also displayed on the IoT platform. This prototype behaves in an intelligent way which is sufficient for modern smart farming, by eliminating manual labour involved in the irrigation process and also detecting intruders on the farm, thereby reducing the time and cost involved in the manual monitoring and irrigation of the farm.