Ahmed Adel Ahmed Saad - Islam Gomaa - Mahmoud Allam Mahmoud Gamea

STEM School Egypt

Keywords: Greenhouse - LDR Soil Moisture Relative humidity - Arduino Dew Point - Condensation
Abstract

Methods:

Appropriate environmental conditions are necessary for optimum plant growth,

improvement of crops yields, and efficient use of water coupled with other
resources. Our system provides these required conditions. First and foremost it
rationalizes the consumption of water, recycling it to reuse it as well as
reaching the optimum growth of crops. The system consists of three main parts
, one part for the saving of the irrigation water. Another part is used for
reaching the optimum growth . The function of the last part is to condense
the transpired vapor of the plants so as to use it again for irrigation part. The
system depends on Arduino-based circuit along with other electronic
components namely LCD that will help the consumer be aware of what is going
on inside the system, Moisture sensor, Humidity sensor, LDR, Keypad and
temperature sensor. All of these components will be inserted inside a
greenhouse, so parameters that influence the consumption of water and plant
growth can be easily controlled.

1. First of all was the researching for conditions that affect plant
consumption of water and what are the tools and methods existed to
eradicate this problem.
2. After collecting the required scientific principles ,materials, circuits ,
equations and statistics we started interfacing the circuits together
started with Arduino which has to be connected to Vcc +5 and GND
columns in bread board followed by the moisture sensor , LM36GZ
temperature sensor then LDR circuit which consists of Light
resistance 5mm and 10K ohm resistor [5] in addition to air humidity
sensor, the majority of these sensors are connected to power
columns (+5, GND) in bread board and one of the analog pins in
Arduino (A0:A5).
3. The circuit was programmed by using Arduino C programming
language. Then load it to Arduino.
4. The next stage was designing the entire expected system that
includes irrigation part, temperature, light-controlling part and
condensation part using a software program called GOOGLE
SKETCHUP .
5. Finally we make the tangible design in the FABLab using the laser
cutter machine to make the model of greenhouse with dimensions
40*30*25 cm by using sheets made of Acrylic which is kind of
plastic then all of materials and circuits were inserted inside it to
have completed, bootable prototype.

Introduction
Water is everywhere. Life of both animals and plants is impossible without it. It
is very crucial for every thing on earth including us. Water is the main thing in
our biological system where Water makes up more than two thirds of human
body weight, and without water, the body system will collapse. The human
brain is made up of 95% water; blood is 82% and lungs 90%.
All of Egypts Grand Challenges involve systems. Because water is an
indispensable part of any systems, Egypt's future depends on its decisions
about the use and distribution of water. Water is very important in the
economy of the Egypt .It has a vital role In farming where 80% of water in
Egypt goes for agricultural uses. It is also has an obvious impact in our daily
life and industrial activities. So we can consider that Egypt is a human boy that
can not survive without water.
Considering that Egypt faces a crisis in water resources especially in the latest
era as a result of political and economical conflicts, actually if we compare
Egypts resources of water with its consumption we will figure out that Egypt
has a huge gap estimated by 11.11 Billion M3/Year so its clear that the problem
is not trivial. Another problem with water in Egypt is that it is extremely polluted.
Not to mention that people treat it very badly and throw organic and nonorganic pollutants in it. This makes water need to be treated ,purified and
filtrated biologically, physically and chemically. About 62.1 Billion M3/Year of
Egypts water goes for agricultural uses which represent 82.25% [1] of Egypts
water but about 20% of this quantity is wasted without being used in anything
beneficial.
In brief, we aimed to design an automated system that control variables inside
the greenhouse that affect consumption of water used in irrigating crops. The
project is based on using Arduino-based circuit and variety of sensors and
other, in addition to that LCD that shows the readings of the sensors.

Materials and Methods:

Arduino Uno board: to program the component of the circuit.
Soil Moisture Sensor: to estimate the level of water in the soil
(%) and has three conditions: dry condition from 0 to0 .5 V,
optimum condition from 1.9 to 3.4 V and excess water
condition more than 4.2 V. [2]
Temperature sensor (LM36GZ): to detect the temperature
inside the greenhouse (oC), The sensor has a sensitivity of
10mV /oC.[3]
LDR: to determine the light intensity inside the greenhouse to
reach the optimum gross of the plant (Lux).
Relative Humidity sensor: to know the amount of water vapor
in air this sensor measures linear relation between Voltage
%RH, the output voltage ranges from 0.8 to 3.9V as the
humidity varies from 0% to 100%. [4]
Relay: to turn the light and the fan on or off to control the light
intensity and the relative humidity level in the greenhouse.
Two fans: one for cooling and another one (connected to a
heater) for heating.
Breadboard: to test the quality of the circuit and its working.
LCD: to monitor the readings collected by the sensors to the
farmer or the user of the greenhouse to be aware of the
process running on inside.
Water pump (350 gallon/hour) : to provide the system with the
needed water for agriculture.
Other small components: resistances, diodes and transistors.

Figure (7) The readings of Humidity senor in (%RH)

according to he Voltage (V)

This graph shows the change in readings of Relative Humidity that appeared
on LCD according to the change in Voltage, in other words, the relation
between Relative Humidity and Voltage. This relation can be calculated as
following :

Rh= Relative Humidity (%) ,

Vcc= volt of power supply (5V) ,

[5]
Vout = Reading of sensor (V)

Figure (8) the relation between Temperature (oF)

and relative humidity (%RH) [6]

Figure (2) part of the circuit

Interference (LCD & Arduino)

Figure (4) Block Diagram of Electronic part

in the project

The materials are:

Discussion

Data Analysis:

Figure (3) 3D design of the Greenhouse

and system

Figure(5) Part of the system program

This graph shows the results we got when we relate between Temperature (oF)
and Relative Humidity (%RH), the observation was that as temperature
decreases the value of Relative Humidity increases and vice versa so the
conclusion was that is the temperature is inversely proportional to Relative
Humidity.

Figure (9) The readings of Soil Moisture Sensor in (%)

according to he Voltage (V)

The Linear graph above shows the mathematical relation between the readings
of Moisture Sensor (%) and Voltage (V). Its obvious that Soil Moisture is
directly proportional to Voltage that cross between the two props of the
sensor. The relation can be calculated as following :
% = .

Results

% Moisture = Soil Moisture percentage

Hardware:

Vout = Reading of Soil Moisture Sensor

The aspects of water crisis in Egypt motivated us to find a solution for it. One of the
problems that related to water crisis is the misuse of this water. If we looked rapidly to the
Egypt's share of water in 1950s from the last century we will find that its share from the
Nile water was about 50 billion M3/year with less number of population. Now, this portion
is almost the same but the difference here is the population so to solve this problem we
have two options, the first one is to look for new resources which may take along time.
The second solution is the rationalization of water consumption and recycling it in order
to eradicate the gab between population and resources.
The agricultural uses consume 80% of water resources. We figured out that a system
that has the ability to provide the plant with the suitable amount of water it needs then
recycle the vapor transpired by plants to reuse it again in the part of irrigation may be
regarded as an accepted solution. By that system we will be able to save amount of
water estimated by about 20%, this percent equals 12.42 Billion M3/year.
The opposite graph shows how our project has a
crucial impact in water consumption and recycling in
Egypt. The graph represents a comparison between
the actual consumption of water and the system
consumption. It is also important to realize that you
can use the part of automated irrigation system
separately without being restricted by the
greenhouse and without the part of condensation.
You can use it in many schools like ours, enormous
Figure (11) comparison between the
consumption of water by the system
Golf landscapes and the gardens which became an
important part of any new city or even the agricultural landscapes.
From the results, we concluded that there are many conditions that should be considered
while watering plants with suitable amount of water. For instance, the moisture of the soil
and the relative humidity of the air that plays a pivotal role not only in the condensation of
the water but also the soils consumption of water. The temperature also affects the
humidity, on that account it affects the rate of condensation too. The light intensity has no
noticeable impact on the water consumption but it affects the plant itself as it helps it
reach the optimum growth. If you would like to use the entire system (condensation part
and irrigation part) you couldnt deal with any part of the
system independently; in contrast, it must be controlled
depending on the other parts.
There were parts of our project that we could not apply in
reality, instead of that; we apply the STEM principles which are
researching, criticizing, analyzing and find the best solution.in
addition to that we benefited from the chemistry and biology
that we studied this year. We considered these parts as ways
in which the project could be improved in the future. First of all,
Figure (12) picture of Keypad
was the part of the keypad that was supposed to be used as an
input device which the consumer can use to adjust the parameters of the greenhouse
according to the plant species. The second part was the part of condensation. It would
take us more materials and time to achieve it. The solution was to research intensively
and collects the possible data about it and put this part in the virtual design.
In conclusion, some of our experiments were successful and others were failure. At the
end the system works as it is expected. As mentioned, there were some parts that we
could not actually apply ,so it was embedded in the virtual design.

Literature cited
[1] CAPMAS Egypt/ 2013/ Statistics Books 2013/ Page no.15/ Table(21-6) / water balance
[2] Web. 20 Oct 2013. <http://www.fut-electronics.com/wpcontent/plugins/fe_downloads/Uploads/moisture-sensor-arduino.pdf>.
[3] Semiconductor, National, LM36GZ Precision Centigrade Temperature Sensors data sheet.
Texas: National Semiconductor Corporation, 2000. Google Docs, 2013. Web 25 Oct 2013.
[4],[6] Measurement Specialties, Inc. , RELATIVE HUMIDITY SENSOR HS 1100 / HS 1101 data
sheet. Hampton: RELATIVE HUMIDITY SENSOR HS 1100 / HS 1101,2002. Google Docs.
Web 25 Oct 2013.
[5] Monk, Simon. 30 arduino projects for the evil genius. United states: McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc., 2010, E-book.
[7] Nave, R., Relative Humidity. Hyper physics. August 2000. Georgia State University. Web.
15 Nov 2013.
[*] Arduino Forum

Figure (10) Dew Point Index

Figure (6) pictures of tangible parts of the project

Figure (1) Pictures of

some tools used in
the design

The figure shows two picture of the tangible parts of the system; the first one
is a portion of the electronic circuit which is the heart of the system.
The second picture is for the model of greenhouse with the fans, LEDS and
soil. The dimensions of this model is 40*30*23 cm.

The graph shows the dew point which is the temperature at which moisture in
the air will condense on to surfaces. The dew point depends on two things ;
the Greenhouse Temperature and the Relative Humidity. We calculated these
dew points according to the following equation:

Td = Dew point (oC), T = Greenhouse temperature (oC), Rh = Relative Humidity (%)

Acknowledgments
we would like to express our special thanks of gratitude to all who helped us finishing this
project
successfully;
our
teachers,
our
parents
and
our
colleagues.
THANKS AGAIN TO ALL WHO HELPED US .

For Further Information

ahmed56011@stemegypt.edu.eg, islam73011@stemegypt.edu.eg,
ahmed31011@stemegypt.edu.eg, mahmoud102011@stemegypt.edu.eg