EAAICS: A TECHNOLOGICAL DRIVEN SYSTEM FOR IMPROVING CROP PRODUCTIVITY

This paper proposes an Embedded Arduino Automatic Irrigation-Control System (EAAICS), which monitors and maintains the desired soil moisture content via automatic watering using embedded technology. The methodology employed in this paper is solely based on the integration of both hardware and software components to design and implement an App-controlled irrigation system, which solely depends on the soil moisture content. Input to the system was derived from soil samples with the aid of a soil moisture sensor and a microcontroller controlled the rate of flow of water from an electric water pump. A prototype was tested using a flower pot containing an ornamental plant, which was watered adequately through the mobile application and it grew to become a beautiful and blossom plant after forty days. The prototype showed that it would really help bring more yield from crop production if introduced into many farms regardless of the size. To perceive the ease of system’s usefulness, it was later introduced to small and large-scale farmers to aid their farming activities and evaluated with the Technology Accepted Model (TAM). The results yielded a high acceptance rate by the respondents, which in turn signifies the importance of introducing embedded technology in automating irrigation system for better productivity.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation, Soil moisture, Arduino Technology, Embedded system Application, Controller