Environment Control with Low-Cost Microcontrollers and Microprocessors: Application for Green Walls
Agronomy Department, University of Cordoba, 14014 Cordoba, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2019, 11(3), 782; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030782
Received: 17 December 2018 / Revised: 26 January 2019 / Accepted: 30 January 2019 / Published: 2 February 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Low-cost Sensors for Environmental Exposure Assessment and Mitigation)
Green wall irrigation procedures are a particularly important and hard task, given that the quality of the green wall depends on them. There is currently a wide variety of irrigation programmers available, with a range of functions and prices, thereby replacing manual activities and making it easier to maintain green walls. This paper proposes the use of low-cost automated irrigation programmers via a freeware called Arduino. The system is based on air and substrate measurements to ensure optimal plant growth and high water-use efficiency. At certain thresholds, the irrigation system is activated. This not only makes irrigation more convenient but also helps to reduce energy consumption, increases irrigation efficiency and saves time. The data is then sent via Transmission Control Protocol using Internet of Things technology, in this case ThingSpeak. The platform compiles the data and presents them in simple graphical format, thus enabling real-time monitoring from wherever there is Internet access. Together with Arduino, the project incorporates the Raspberry pi system that operates like a database via Hypertext Transfer Protocol Wi-Fi received by a Structured Query Language (MySQL) server using Hypertext Preprocessor. These data are used for the subsequent analysis of green wall performance.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
smart irrigation; green walls; low-cost; Internet of Things; microcontroller and microprocessor; environmental control
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Rivas-Sánchez, Y.A.; Moreno-Pérez, M.F.; Roldán-Cañas, J. Environment Control with Low-Cost Microcontrollers and Microprocessors: Application for Green Walls. Sustainability 2019, 11, 782. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030782
AMA Style
Rivas-Sánchez YA, Moreno-Pérez MF, Roldán-Cañas J. Environment Control with Low-Cost Microcontrollers and Microprocessors: Application for Green Walls. Sustainability. 2019; 11(3):782. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030782
Chicago/Turabian StyleRivas-Sánchez, Yair A., María F. Moreno-Pérez, and José Roldán-Cañas. 2019. "Environment Control with Low-Cost Microcontrollers and Microprocessors: Application for Green Walls" Sustainability 11, no. 3: 782. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030782
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
