An IoT based system for remote monitoring of soil characteristics

Remote monitoring of soil parsameters is an emerging trend which has the potential to transform agricultural practices and increase productivity. pH value, temperature and moisture content of soil are the basic parameters which help in characterizing the soil and therefore in taking proper decisions regarding fertilizer application and choice of crops sown. In this work, antimony electrode is used for pH measurement. For soil moisture content estimation, the inverse relation between soil resistance and soil moisture has been utilized and corresponding circuitry has been developed. The determination of soil temperature is done using the DS18B20 sensor working on the Dallas one wire protocol. The system is integrated with Bluetooth for the transfer of data to a nearby cell phone. The entire system is developed on STM32 Nucleo platform.