An Eco-friendly smart battery-less Wi-Fi-based environmental condition monitoring system for precision agriculture

Abstract

Agriculture is the primary source of food for the world's population. The agriculture industry has seen many changes in the last few decades. One of the most critical changes is using small electronic devices to manage an optimum environmental condition such as soil moisture, temperature, and humidity for crops Therefore, with the help of electronics products, farmers can achieve a good and quality yield. Every electronics equipment needs a power source, and on most occasions, environment condition monitoring devices use a rechargeable battery. Therefore, the lifetime and performance of the device depend on the battery life of the device. This study is focused on an eco-friendly Smart battery-less Wi-Fi-based environment condition monitoring system for precision agriculture to overcome the limitations mentioned above. In this design, a small 6 V/0.6 W photovoltaic module (PV) with a 5.5 F supercapacitor is used as an energy source, which is a sustainable, eco-friendly and cost-effective solution for agricultural devices. The performance of the proposed device may change due to variation in power generation by PV module due to variation of solar irradiance of the daytime. Hence, a performance management algorithm is used to manage the power dissipation of the device's internal circuitry. The proposed device uses a specially designed low power consuming supercapacitor charge discharging circuit to manage the device performance and power. The Schmitt-trigger based power management circuit controls the output voltage of the circuit for the ESP8266 microcontroller at 3.3 V. The BME680 air quality sensor and capacitive soil moisture sensors are used for environmental condition measurements. With the help of this study, conventional battery-powered agricultural devices can be replaced using the proposed low-cost solar-powered supercapacitor assisted battery less agricultural monitoring devices that are Wi-Fi enabled and IoT ready. This solution will not only be of low maintenance cost but also will help to reduce the global e-waste collection. Hence this study helps to protect our environment as well as human and animal life.