More and more it has become necessary to use technologies in the field, not to use soil management for crops, not to use water for irrigation and human management indispensable for modern agriculture.
An example of a technique is the use of sensors and actuators that make everything in the field more efficient and modern, have you ever thought about seeing what is happening in the field, seeing the state of a plant, knowing when to replace water, and when the lack of water, with a modern graphic interface that is already possible.
In this article we will take the first step towards developing an intelligent system aimed at monitoring and controlling soil moisture in plants and plantations.
We will start by learning how to use the soil moisture sensor, also called a hygrometer, together with a esp8266 Nodemcu 1.0, showing data in variables on the Ubidots IoT platform.
Project Development Methodology
From now on we will proceed with our hardware assembly, the circuit and step by step on the Ubidots platform to view our data on it.
List of components and schematic of the electronic circuit
The complete circuit will use the following components:
- – NodeMCU 1.0 (módulo ESP12E)
- – Protoboard
- – Soil moisture sensor hygrometer
- – Jumpers
- – Resistor 1k 1/4W
- – Resistor 2k 1/4W
From the components above, we developed the following circuit:
Configuring the Arduino IDE
In order to work with the NodeMCU ESP8266 platform on the Arduino IDE, you will need to install the ESP8266 platform using the pre-configured Arduino Board Manager. If you are not familiar with adding a board with the Arduino IDE use this guide.
With the esp8266 platform installed, select the esp8266 device you are working with. In this case, we are working with a “NodeMCU 1.0 (module ESP12E)”. To select your board from the Arduino IDE, select Tools> Board “NodeMCU 1.0 (module ESP12E)”.Faça o download e instale a UbidotsMicroESP8266 .
Note: The library will create a new Ubidots device called “ESP8266” receiving the ESP8266 MAC address as the unique device label.
Source Code
The source code of the assembly can be seen below. See carefully the TOKEN settings “your_token_here” (here you must define your token acquired on the ubidots platform), WIFISSID “name of the wifi network” (here is determined by the name of your router’s wifi network), PASSWORD “password of the wifi network” (this is determined by your router’s password).
Change these parameters for your WIFI network login and password.
#include "UbidotsMicroESP8266.h"
#define TOKEN "seu token aqui" // Ubidots TOKEN
#define WIFISSID "nome da rede wifi" // Wi-Fi SSID
#define PASSWORD "senha da rede wifi" // WIFI Password
Ubidots client(TOKEN);
void setup(){
Serial.begin(115200);
client.wifiConnection(WIFISSID, PASSWORD);
}
void loop(){
amostra_umid = analogRead(0);
//We will use the map function to map the values read on the analog input range from 0 to 1023, and will be remapped to another range from 0 to 100%.
float value1 = map ( amostra_umid, 0, 1023, 0, 100 );
client.add("Umidade", value1);
client.sendAll(true);
delay(5000);
}
Deployment on the Ubidots platform
After assembling the circuit and recording the code, We had to send the data to the Ubidots Internet of things platform. The electronic circuit will use the WIFI network to send data to any device connected on the Internet via the Nodemcu board.
First, we will present how to obtain the TOKEN of the platform, to use in our code. Click on the user symbol and then click on the API Credentials option.
The result is shown in the figure below.
Next we will see what it shows on the red arrow, we copy our token and use it in our code presented above. Ready here we take the first step.
When we transfer our firmware for Nodemcu card, if we open the platform we will see a device created automatically by Nodemcu on the platform. See photo below:
From here we will create our smart panel, added widgets, as we see the arrow when clicking we will see the options to choose the indicators and graphics.
In our case, we chose an indicator to see our data.
Finally, as we can see in the image below, we chose a tank-type widgets to show the dynamics of our panel.
Right after that we must choose the device in the case created by Nodemcu connected with wifi network.
Here it is important to pay attention to the choice of our created variable, in our case “Humidity”. Finally, we must define the minimum and maximum values for our widgets.
To remember that we defined the remapping of the beautiful data on the analog port in the map function seen in our code. We set minimum 0% and maximum 100%.
Ready! Our dashboard is created and we can see the data arriving on our dashboard. Dynamically as the soil moisture increases or decreases, the sensor shows on our panel.
How does the integration of an event with Ubidots work?
We will see a very interesting part of the ubidots platform, called “Events”, if we click on this option in the menu part on the platform located above we will have the following step by step:
First we need to choose the device for which the event will be created:
Second, we must add a new event. Then we need to choose the variable for the event. In our case is the “Humidity” variable as shown in the image below:
Third step we will need to create a small logic in the fields inside the red circle to be the trigger for our event, which will be sending a telegram to our telegran account.
We chose to define whether the humidity variable is below 10% sends a telegram to our cell phone.
After that we must define the number and the message that we want to receive by cell phone.
Finally, our event is configured and when occur the specific event the user will receive a message with alert in your cell phone. The result is presented in figure below.
Now, let your system update or monitor the soil capture and wait to receive a message on your cell phone. This way, you will be notified when your plant needs water to keep it alive in the garden.
Conclusion
In variable monitoring systems, it is essential to implement event-based alerts. Through the events, we can know when a measured variable has exceeded a certain programmed value.
In addition, it allows us to leave the system operating automatically and act based on events.
Therefore, if you are interested in monitoring a quantity and need to be alerted, use the events of the ubidots platform and connect your devices on the internet. That way, you will have a secure application and will always be notified when any scheduled event occurs.
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