ISSN (e): 2250 – 3005 || Volume, 09 || Issue, 3 || March– 2019 ||

International Journal of Computational Engineering Research (IJCER)

IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

1
Anju Soman.T, 2Jayasudha.R, 3Ruth Rufina.S, 4Shreya Jayachandran
Nair,
5
Irayya C Mathad, 6Chidambaram.S
1,2,3,4
UG Scholar Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering CHRIST(Deemed to be
University),Bengaluru –560074, Karnataka,India.
5
Project Engineer Centre for Digital Innovation CHRIST(Deemed to be University),Bengaluru –560074,
Karnataka,India.
6
Assistant Professor Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering CHRIST(Deemed to be
University),Bengaluru –560074, Karnataka,India
Corresponding Author: Anju Soman.T

ABSTRACT
Agriculture is one of the important aspects of Indian economy. Traditional method integrated with
the wireless sensor network helps in increasing the productivity of the field and thus raising one’s
profit. Internet of things (IoT) plays a pivotal role in smart gardening system. Irrigation is key
factor of agriculture and thereby achieving the efficient watering system to utilize the water
resources adequately. Thus, the paper aims at achieving automation in gardening by controlling
and monitoring the system ensuring the safety of the plants. It focuses on increasing the quality
and quantity of agricultural production using sensing technology making the system efficient and
cost effective. The system uses various sensors such as Moisture sensor, DHT11, PIR and LDR
which helps in monitoring and controlling several parameters. These sensor data are transferred
via LoRa transmitter and received via LoRa receiver which connects to the server using MQTT
protocol. The features of this application include displaying the sensor output using an Android
application which uses MQTT protocol to receive the data, controlling the watering system and
providing feedback to the user.

KEYWORDS:Agriculture, CSS,IoT, LoRa technology, MQTT protocol,Sensor nodes, Smart

farming,

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
Date of Submission: 26-02-2019 Date of acceptance:19-03-2019
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

I. INTRODUCTION
The largest sector of Indian economy is agriculture where India being the second largest farm producer in the
world contributes to 17-18% of GDP and is responsible for 50% of employment in the country. Almost 43% of
geographical area is occupied by the agricultural sector and over 70% of the households depend on
agriculture[1].The main source of income and the commitment of agribusiness in India is the basis for
agriculture being the backbone of nation‟s economy. According to the survey of FAO, 1/3 rd of food production
has become a challenge in Indian agricultural sector due to the ever-growing population. Green-house farming
in terrace helps in energy conservation and thereby energy sources can be easily controlled. Green-house helps
in creating and controlling the optimum growing environmental parameters to enhance the growth of plants and
gives healthier better-producing plants.
IoT helps in eliminating the traditional methods of farming and provides the real time information about the
agricultural fields[2]. Here the system is built for monitoring the plants with the help of sensors and automates
the irrigation system. LoRa (Long Range) technology is a low power wireless platform for building IoT
networks worldwide[3]. It offers a combination of long range, low power consumption and secured data
transmission. This technology provides better solution for connecting sensors and gateway at longer distances
with low-battery consumption. This paper focuses on deployment of automated and controlled irrigation system
by interpreting moisture, temperature and humidity values. In this system, we use sensors like PIR sensor,
www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 15
 IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

DHT11 sensor, Moisture sensor, LDR and each sensor has its own different functionalities. The sensor nodes
are connected to the Arduino Uno with LoRa transmitter and these sensor data are sent to LoRa receiver which
is connected with ESP8266 NODE MCU. Then the received sensor data is sent using MQTT protocol to the
server. Android application is developed using the Android Studio which monitors the system.

II. RELATED WORKS

In IoT based Smart Irrigation System [4]focuses on how to monitor the plants as well as maintains desired
moisture contents required for the soil. The control unit is implemented using ATMEGA328P microcontroller.
This system is used to measure the water content in the soil by making use of the soil moisture sensors. There
are two sections in this paper that is the hardware and the software section. Hardware section consistsof
embedded systems and the software section about webpage design. It consists of three section that is moisture
sensing section, control section and IoT section. The sensors values are transmitted to GSM-GPRS SIM900A
modem that supports features like integrated TCP/IP stack, Voice, GPRS and SMS. The last is the IoT section
that comprise of webpage that connects to the thing speaks that depicts sensor values and displays the water
sprinkler status using on-off button.
In IoT based Agriculture System using Node MCU [5],says current agricultural practices have a great impact on
the development of the economy of a nation. Hence, this paper brings in an innovative project to help the
farmers and also the farms. Smart Agriculture is a real time monitoring system. This developing model monitors
the soil properties like temperature, humidity, soil moisture, PH, etc. Arduino Nano boards microcontrollers are
being included with the Node MCU which acts as a microcontroller as well as a server. This paper focuses on
supplying water when the farm is dry and to prevent water being wasted during the irrigation process. Finally an
App is created which displays the Temperature and humidity values and water pump can also be controlled
using the app based on the farmer‟s needs.
In Precision Agriculture Using LoRa[6], here it is explained in brief about the precision agriculture in farming,
its uses and how LoRa technology is used in it. Precision agriculture uses remote sensing in order to detect
something on time such that relevant corrections can be made. It includes collection of sensor data from various
sensors nodes and provides solution to the farmers from the collected data. This helps the farmer to provide the
desired amount of water, fertilizers and pesticides to the plants. They have tried to analyse the nutrient
requirements of tomato and potato plant using LoRa and cloud technologies thus alerting the farmer using the
email notification. This was done by placing the sensors in the agriculture field and the data that was collected
LoRa gateway will be uploaded to cloud for further analysis and depending on these data measures to increase
the crop field can be taken. They used flow chart in order to explain the algorithm for client and gateway
module.
In Future of Smart Farming with Internet of Things [7]mentioned the future of smart farming with IoT and open
source and solutions for smart farming using kaa which is an open source IoT platform that allows walking
safely to agriculture field.The projects they talk about are: Cold chain Management tracking, Remotely piloted
equipment, Smarter irrigation, Storage Mapping, Soil Quality Checking, Auto Irrigation for Crop, Animal
Tracking, Smart Dairy with IoT, Product recall/security, Home Gardening, Remote control of farm irrigation
system, Automatic tractors and drones, etc. Hence this paper gives a brief review of the automation that is taking
place in the field of Farming.

III. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

The below Figure:3.1 is the system architecture for the LoRa node to node communication with the help of
LoRa RA-01 Module. The Transmitter section consists of various sensors, an Arduino UNO and a LoRa RA-01
Transmitter module. The Receiver section consists of the LoRa RA-01 Receiver module, ESP8266 (Wifi
Module) NodeMCU, Android Application and the MQTT Broker. The Transmitter section demonstrates the
sending of the sensor data to the receiver LoRa module with the help of various sensors and Arduino UNO. The
sensors which are connected are Temperature & Humidity (DHT11), Motion (PIR), Moisture (Digital) and
Light (LDR – Light Dependent Resistor). The Receiver section which has the Receiver LoRa Module and
NodeMCU which is connected to the internet receives the data from the Transmitter LoRa Module and
transports the sensor data to the Android Application through the MQTT Protocol.

www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 16

 IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

Figure:3.1 System Architecture

IV. METHODOLOGY
Smart irrigation system can optimize the water levels based on the soil moisture and weather conditions and
determines whether the plant has to be watered or not.Irrigation management of the plants is by monitoring and
calculating on Real time different values[8]. High production yield can be obtained depending on the
temperature and humidity of the environment. Temperature conditions can be controlled by making use of
cooling fan. Nutrient efficiency of the soil can be measured based on the Electrical Conductivity using LDR
sensor. Detailed values of the sensor data‟s can be viewed in the mobile app and decisions can be made by the
user accordingly. A significant amount of money is saved and hence the irrigation system optimizes the
resources so that everything gets what it needs without needless waste.

4.1. LoRa Technology

LoRa (long range) is a spread spectrum modulation technique derived from chirp spread spectrum
(CSS) technology. LoRa Technology [9]is a long range, low power wireless platform that has become the
technology for Internet of Things (IoT) networks worldwide. LoRa Technology enables smart IoT applications
that solve some of the biggest challenges facing our planet: energy management, natural resource reduction,
pollution control, infrastructure efficiency, disaster prevention, and more[10]. The figure 3.1 represents the
LoRa architecture and its elements.

Figure: 4.1LoRa Architecture

www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 17

 IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

This technology uses star topology which helps in increasing the battery lifetime for long range
connectivity.Some of the important elements of this system are End-nodes, LoRa gateways and Network
servers. The remotely placed node such as sensors or application sense and controls the system[11]
The data transmitted by the nodes is sent to the gateway and it sends the transmitted signal to the network
server. Then the server sends the packet to the specific application.

Figure:4.2LoRa Ra-01

4.2 MQTT Protocol

MQTT[12] is a Client Server publish/subscribe messaging transport protocol. It is light weight, open, simple,
and designed so as to be easy to implement. The MQTT protocol was invented in 1999 by Andy Stanford-Clark
(IBM) and Arlen Nipper (Arcom, now Cirrus Link). MQTT nodes communicate in a one-to-many mapping
model, where a message sent by one client (the publisher) is delivered to many clients (subscribers) through
topic names. Messages are exchanged via a central node known as the broker[13].

4.2.1 Client and Broker

An MQTT client is any device (from a micro controller up to a full-fledged server) that runs an MQTT library
and connects to an MQTT broker over a network. Both publishers and subscribers are MQTT clients.
The broker is responsible for receiving all messages, filtering the messages, determining who is subscribed to
each message, and sending the message to these subscribed clients.The broker is at the heart of any
publish/subscribe protocol.

Figure: 4.2.1 MQTT PUBSUB model

www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 18

 IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

4.2.2 Topics
MQTT packets sent by publishers are delivered to all subscribers registered for the same topic or matching topic
filter. The topic name can be hierarchical with „/‟ as the delimiter in between to avoid collisions; e.g.,
temperature/city/state/country.

4.3Arduino Uno
Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board based on 8-bit ATmega328P microcontroller. Along with
ATmega328P, it consist other components such as crystal oscillator, serial communication, voltage regulator,
etc. to support the microcontroller. Arduino Uno has 14 digital input/output pins (out of which 6 can be used as
PWM outputs), 6analog input pins, a USB connection, A Power barrel jack, an ICSP header and a reset button.
Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. The Arduino board
started changing to adapt to new needs and challenges, differentiating its offer from simple 8-bit boards to
products for IoT applications, wearable, 3D printing, and embedded environments. All Arduino boards are
completely open-source, empowering users to build them independently and eventually adapt them to their
particular needs.

Figure:4.3.1Arduino UNO

4.4 ESP8266 Node MCU

NodeMCU is an open source IoT platform. Which includes firmware which runs on the ESP8266 Wi-Fi Module
from EspressifSystems,and hardware which is based on the ESP-12 module. The term “NodeMCU” by default
refers to the firmware rather than the dev kits. NodeMCU firmware was developed so that AT commands can be
replaced with Lua scripting making the life of developers easier. So it would be redundant to use AT commands
again in NodeMCU.
The ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi chip with full TCP/IP stack and microcontroller capability produced by
Shanghai-based Chinese manufacturer, Espressif.

Figure:4.4.1 ESP8266 Node MCU

www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 19

 IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

V. IMPLEMENTATION
The flowchart 5.1 illustrates the implementation of the system at client section.The below flowchart explains
about the flow of the algorithm. Initial pin settings such as transmitter-receiver pins and data pins assignment
has to be assigned properly. Then set the required Baud rate and frequency. Check for the serial communication
since the algorithm uses serial communication. Once it is made sure that the serial pin is available move to the
next step else continuously check for the availability. Now collect the sensor values and check for the
availability of the gateway. If the gateway is available, check for the acknowledgement from the gateway and if
the acknowledgement is received, it indicates successful communication between the LoRa and the Gateway.

Flowchart:5.1. Client mode

This algorithm explains the flow at the server side. Initially the required Baud rate and Frequency has to bet set
and continuously check for the data set frequency. Now publish the data to the MQTT broker. Check for the

www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 20

 IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

availability of the data. If the data is received, then subscribe the data from the MQTT broker and display the
obtained result on the application.

Flowchart:5.2 Server model

VI. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Figure: 6.1 illustrates the output of the sender LoRa in which the LoRa is initialized and the sensor values such
as moisture, motion, humidity, temperature and light intensity are displayed along with the motor state.
Figure: 6.2 illustrate the output of the receiver LoRain which the LoRa is initialized, connected to Wifi
network and then connected to MQTT server. The sensor data is retrieved from the LoRa transmitter and these
data are sent to the MQTT server.

www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 21

 IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

Figure: 6.1 LoRa Transmitter output on serial monitor

Figure: 6.2 LoRa Receiver output on serial monitor

Figure: 6.3 demonstrates the Lora testing using MQTT Lens where the data can be published and
subscribed.The android application is shown in Figure :6.4.

www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 22

 IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

Figure: 6.3 LoRa testing using MQTT Lens

Figure: 6.4.Outlook and output obtained in Android application

VII. CONCLUSION
In this research paper, we have discussed about a novel methodology to improve the crop yield by monitoring
certain parameters such as moisture content of the soil, light intensity, temperature and humidity of the
environment and motion detection using LoRa technology. This methodology has been proposed using Arduino,
Node MCU, LoRa Ra-01, MQTT Protocol[14] and Android Application. LoRa is a technology that can cover
large area with low power consumption[15]. This helps the farmers to monitor a large area and thus increase the

www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 23

 IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology

crop yield. The reliable delivery of the data from the sensor node to the user was done using a broker based
publish/subscribe messaging protocol that is the MQTT protocol. The Android Application helps the farmer to
get the real time data in their mobile phones and it helps them to take the decisions accordingly.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research work was supported by Centre for Digital Innovation, CHRIST (Deemed to be
University),Bengaluru. We generously thank Jonathan Kim for providing computing and equipment facilities.
We also thank JyotirmoyDuttafor extending scientific guidance for all the stages of our projectwork.

REFERENCES
[1]. K. M. Arjun, “Indian Agriculture-Status, Importance and Role in Indian Economy,” 2013.
[2]. J. Gaur and P. Mittal, “Enhancing The Security Of Wsn In Agriculture,” pp. 22–25, 2013.
[3]. C. Klingenberg, “Industry 4.0: what makes it a revolution?,” 2017.
[4]. S. Rawal, “IOT based Smart Irrigation System,” 2017.
[5]. K. Jyostsna Vanaja, A. Suresh, S. Srilatha, K. V. Kumar, and M. Bharath, “IOT based Agriculture System Using NodeMCU,” Int. Res.
J. Eng. Technol.
[6]. S. Tapashetti, “Precision Agriculture using LoRa,” Int. J. Sci. Eng. Res., vol. 9, no. 5, 2018.
[7]. R. Gorli, “Future of Smart Farming with Internet of Things,” no. February, 2018.
[8]. “Internet of Things Principles and Paradigms.”
[9]. A. Augustin, J. Yi, T. Clausen, and W. M. Townsley, “A Study of LoRa: Long Range & Low Power Networks for the Internet of
Things,” 2016.
[10]. “What is LoRa? | Semtech LoRa Technology | Semtech.” [Online]. Available: https://www.semtech.com/lora/what-is-lora. [Accessed:
01-Mar-2019].
[11]. “Applications of Sensor Networks,” 2017.
[12]. “MQTT Essentials | Core Concepts Explained.” [Online]. Available: https://www.hivemq.com/mqtt-essentials/. [Accessed: 06-Mar-
2019].
[13]. R. A. Atmoko, R. Riantini, and M. K. Hasin, “IoT real time data acquisition using MQTT protocol,” J. Phys. Conf. Ser., vol. 853, p.
012003, May 2017.
[14]. R. K. Kodali and B. S. Sarjerao, “A low cost smart irrigation system using MQTT protocol,” in 2017 IEEE Region 10 Symposium
(TENSYMP), 2017, pp. 1–5.
[15]. S. Heble, A. Kumar, D. Prasad, S. Samirana, P. Rajalakshmi, and U. B. Desai, “A Low Power IoT Network for Smart Agriculture.”

Anju Soman.T" IoT based Terrace Gardening System using LoRa Technology" International
Journal of Computational Engineering Research (IJCER), vol. 09, no. 3, 2019, pp 15-24

www.ijceronline.com Open Access Journal Page 24