Internet of Things Based Weather-Soil Sensor Station for Precision Agriculture
This paper presents the design, development, and testing of a customizable and cost-effective Weather-Soil Sensor Station (W-SSS) for use in Precision Agriculture based on high accuracy sensors, wireless communication, cloud data storage, and computation technology. The W-SSSs operated from July 25, 2018, to September 15, 2018, using an off-grid power system, Arduino microcontroller, and Wi-Fi connection to the cloud. Sensor data quality was evaluated using several statistical techniques. The data obtained from the weather-soil stations illustrate the differences in weather and soil conditions both relative to the local weather station as well as those within a field. Knowledge of these differences would allow a farmer to vary planting densities relative to soil conditions, irrigation control, as well as pest/herbicide management.