Smart IoT system for Chili production using LoRa Technology

Abstract

The chili plant remains a major cash crop for local farmers in Malaysia. However, growing chili requires a huge amount of time, energy, labor, a lot of care, an adequate amount of water and nutrients are needed for a successful production. Exiting method such as the semi-automated system which makes use of scheduler for fertigation has profound limitations. The limitations include requires human intervention and time intensive, does not take into account environmental conditions and soil conditions. This makes it less efficient in resource management and production of chili. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposed the use of an automated monitoring system. The automated monitoring systems for chili fertigation need advanced technology like the Internet of Things (IoT) with the support of reliable communication technology which is LoRa. The continuous sensor’s values collected and the automated fertilizing and watering mechanism based on the real soil and nutrients range of data will increase the efficiency of water and nutrients management. Hence, the use of IoT and data analysis aims at reducing the amount of time, energy, and labor and help increase the productivity of chili among chili farmers. The preliminary results of the developed system are presented in this paper.