IoT-based Monitoring of Temperature and Humidity with Fuzzy Control in Cherry Tomato Greenhouses

Temperature and Humidity are two environmental factors that heavily impact the growth of a plant. The unpredictability of external environmental conditions in traditional farming present difficulties in obtaining stable fruit yields. This can be avoided in enclosed environments through the implementation of an automated temperature and humidity controller. The study performed in this paper shows the effect of maintaining temperature and humidity levels within a greenhouse environment on cherry tomato fruit yield. Changes to internal temperature and humidity levels were done through sensors and controlling devices responsible for influencing internal readings to remain within a certain threshold. The implementation of fuzzy logic in the decision making automated the actions required to maintain optimal conditions within the greenhouse. To determine whether the controlled greenhouse temperature and humidity levels introduced a positive effect on cherry tomato yield, harvests from an outside plot and the greenhouse plot were recorded and compared using the two-sample t-test statistical treatment. Under the null hypothesis, the assumption that no increase in fruit yield was made, whereas the assumption that an increase in fruit yield was made under the alternate hypothesis. With a calculated value of t = 1.7271 and a critical value of 1.701 which was found using a degree of freedom of 28 and a confidence interval of 95%, the alternate hypothesis was been accepted. Thus, showing that the fuzzy logic controller has been effective in making the appropriate decisions to maintain optimal temperature and humidity levels for fruit production.