| Abstrakt: |
The process of plant growth is strongly influenced by soil conditions, both temperature and humidity. The right soil temperature and humidity levels will support plant growth. However, sometimes plants wilt and die for unknown reason even though environmental conditions have been controlled automatically. Therefore, this research investigated the performance of a built control device that not only can be used to monitor and control the conditions of soil temperature and humidity, but also to analyse the performance of the control system and the controlled microclimate. A logger system has been embedded to save the history of control data. This system used DS18B20 sensor and the YL-69 sensor for the soil temperature and humidity measurement, respectively. The measurement results from both sensors were displayed on its LCD display and stored in the micro SD card. The system was set to irrigates the soil when the soil moisture is less than 60%. In addition, this control device was also equipped with an automatic air suction that is useful to help the temperature around the plant decrease quickly and work when the soil temperature exceeds 32℃. As the results, the soil temperature data obtained in this study were in the range of 23.94℃ – 28.5℃ and the soil moisture data obtained is in the range of 0.83 – 100%, indicating an over-watering. The further test proved that decreasing the number of sprayers could improve the irrigation quality. Furthermore, based on the calibration, the measurement system has a good accuracy of 99% and 96% for soil temperature and humidity, subsequently. Therefore, clearly, the system control worked as it was desired and by embedding the data logging feature, ease the performance analysis of the controlled microclimate and the control system itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
