Saving resources through smart farming : An IoT experiment study

Abstract: Context: Smart farming, agritech, is growing in popularity and is starting to develop rapidly with some already existing technology that is implemented in agriculture for both industrial and private use. Objectives: The goal of this thesis is to investigate the benefits and issues with implementing technology in agriculture, agritech. In this thesis the investigation and research is performed by conduction a literature study and an experiment. Realization: A prototype was created to monitor the soil moisture level and calculating the average soil moisture value, then water the plants when needed. This was then compared to a manually watered pot to investigate if agritech could reduce the water usage when maintaining plants. Results: The result of the experiment indicates that it is possible to improve the use of resources such as human labor, time spent on maintaining the plants and water usage. Conclusions: The conclusion of this thesis is with the help of agritech, human workers can spend more time on other tasks and maintain the technology implemented. Instead of observing the plants to see if they need watering and watering them manually. Water usage may also be minimized with the help of sensors that make sure the plants only get watered when needed by constantly checking the soil moisture level.