A Solar-Powered Semi-Autonomous Greenhouse Management Framework

Greenhouse farming enables all year-round cultivation of crops outside of typical seasons. Moreover, increased global concerns of climate change and food security continue to popularize greenhouses as a viable alternative to open field farming. However, maintaining the required greenhouse conditions is still a demanding task yet crucial to achieving the desired high yield farming. This work presents a successful implementation of a semi-autonomous solar-powered framework for managing a greenhouse. Soil moisture and ambient temperature are continuously recorded, and accordingly, irrigation or aeration is automatically initiated when the desired threshold values are violated. The continuously captured sensor data (soil moisture, and ambient temperature) as well as the timestamps (start time, and stop time) for automatic actuations (irrigation and aeration) are transmitted to a remote database to enable real-time visualization of the greenhouse's condition. This framework could therefore facilitate high yield farming as it enables semi-autonomous management of greenhouses as well as real-time remote visualization.