4th Scientific International Conference – Najaf – IRAQ (4th SICN-2019)
Arduino Based Automatic Irrigation System:
Monitoring and SMS Controlling
Hajar M. Yasin Subhi R. M. Zeebaree
IT Dept. Duhok Polytechnic University
Technical College of Informatics - Akre
Duhok Polytechnic University subhi.rafeeq@dpu.edu.krd
Duhok, Iraq
hajar.yaseen@dpu.edu.krd
Abstract - Nowadays, there is speed and diversity in scientific
innovations that enter into the way of an individual’s life and
make the life easier. There are many inventors of irrigation
systems that rely on the control system which facilitates the way
towards a solid system of irrigation. In this research, a new
system is designed to monitor and operate the irrigation system.
The system uses the Arduino mega 2560 enhanced with Global
System for Mobile communication (GSM) technology so that
Arduino platform allows to receive/send SMS to/from the mobile
of farms/homeowner according to soil needed for water or the
instructions sent by the user. The system is equipped with
moisture sensors that are inserted in the soil to irrigate the plants
automatically if the ground is dry or controlled by mobile using
SMS messaging. The mobile of farms/homeowner can inform him
if soil needs watering and in turn the farmer/householder sends
an SMS message to the controller to start irrigation, and then
send another SMS message to stop the irrigation after receiving
an SMS message from the microcontroller that the soil saturated
with water. There are probabilities to take into consideration,
one of them is if the water tank is empty, which in this situation
the moisture sensor inserted in the tank to inform the homeowner
there is no water if empty and in turn the homeowner has sent
the SMS message to microcontroller to turn ON the water pump
to provide the tank with water. Another probability is rain fall;
in this state, the rain drop sensor module is added to the system
to stop the irrigation via SMS sent by homeowner.
Keywords – Irrigation System, Arduino, GSM, Soil Moisture,
SMS, Rain Sensor, Water Pump.
I. INTRODUCTION
We watch the technological development in the world and
are entering the scientific technology in all aspects of life and
they measure the quarterly evolution of nations and
advancement because of their role entrance in various
scientific fields of health, education, industry and agriculture
[1]. So we have to always think how to invent and to fill a
vacuum through the proper understanding and interpretation of
circumstances to meet the needs of society [3]. The stress on
the water distribution system is increasing and therefore the
importance of water management has raised thanks to the
property irrigated farming [4]. Therefore, the idea of this
research to contribute to the provision of water through design
an automatic irrigation system to work without wasting water.
The research comes as the Kurdistan region’s need for
agriculture being contributed to a sufficient level of national
income. An intelligent system for watering plants is
978-1-7281-4425-2/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Florida. Downloaded on March 31,2022 at 00:31:47 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Ibrahim M. I. Zebari
IT Dept.
Duhok, Iraq Technical College of Informatics - Akre
Duhok Polytechnic University
Duhok, Iraq
ibrahim. mahmood@dpu.edu.krd
Environmentally friendly that aim to preserve the water, since
the initial test proved the possibility of providing more than
two-thirds of the water used for irrigation [5]. It is also
economically important in reducing costs and expenses by
reducing agricultural labour, and shortens the time and effort
through the irrigation process remotely without the need to be
in under-watering place [6]. The traditional automatic
irrigation machine is to modernizing agriculture technology by
means of programming components and built the essential
issue for the system [7]. in the modern span of economic
growth, agriculture is the key area that resolves the economic
development of the country [2]. Due to the human activities,
rapid industrialization and climate change are raising the lack
of rain and scarcity in water level. Irrigation is the method of
the artificial application of water to the land or soil at a regular
interval of time, that helps us to grow agricultural crops. An
automatic irrigation system is used to control and monitor the
irrigation process [8]. The main aim of this research is to
produce a proposed Arduino based automatic irrigation
system. This proposed system will reduces the water
consumption and monitoring the irrigation process. One
advantage of the proposed system is reduce labor and time,
where the home owner is not required to monitor and irrigate
the plant by himself the system is automatically does it and the
home owner make the watering process in anywhere, whether
outside or at home, and when plant need water. Also reduce
costs for vehicles used in for irrigation is one of the
advantages of the system. The disadvantage of the system is
highly Cost, there are costs in purchasing, installing and
maintaining automatic equipment of irrigation systems.
In [9] author has design system to convert manual
irrigation into an automated irrigation which with the help of
soil moisture sensor will detect dankness content of soil
leading to turn ON/OFF of pumping motor. The author use
8051 family micro-controller to collects the input signals
converted into values of moisture in the soil via soil moisture
sensors, and it creates an output to turn on/off the water pump
motor. The water level sensor is used in his system to detect
the level of tank so that tank contains efficient water to
transfer into crops. In [10] author designs system for
monitoring and operation of irrigation system for smart
garden, which depends on the microcontroller
ATMEGA328P-PU. The system works with two cases, in the
case of a lack of water into the soil or run the cooling fan in
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the case of high temperature and humidity around the plant. signal from sensors and send/receive SMS to/from mobile
Use the Bluetooth device with mobile device to control the through GSM Shield.
temperature and humidity. In [11] author proposed automatic
irrigation system to decrease the effort spend by farmer form
monitoring the watering plants and keep records about the
changes in soil humidity. The author also used Raspberry
device to process the humidity levels and time stamps that
recorded in CSV (Comma Separated Value) file and then store
it over the internet. In [12] author has designed an irrigation
system which is site explicit in which watering system device
is controlled electronically by a program which update the
geographic area of sprinklers from a GPS and convey that
wirelessly to base station. In [13] author presented the
Agriculture System mansion based on cloud. Cloud
implemented as Software as a Services so that the Android Fig. 1. Arduino Mega 2560
smart phone used as a remote control to switch on/off the
drive motor, this phone connected to Arduino UNO through B. SIM900 GSM Shield
HC-05 Module. In [14] author described the automatic In fig. 2, the SIM900 GSM Shield is an ultra-compact and
watering system depended on Arduino platform with moisture wireless module. It is a shield board and a minimum system of
sensor, the communication between them established via SIM900 Quad-band GSM/GPRS module [16]. In this system
Zigbee protocol and the automatic watering process will be the GSM Shield connects to Arduino boards to send and
start according to value of moisture sensor. receive the SMS to/from home owner mobile using GSM
Table I illustrates a comparison of some hardware parts library.
features used in some closest previous works with the
proposed system.

TABLE I. COMPARISON BETWEEN PROPOSED SYSTEM AND RELATED WORKS

Fig. 2. SIM900 GSM Shield

C. Soil Sensor
Soil Moisture Sensor as shown in fig. 3 is one of analog
sensors. It is an easy-to-use sensor, and it works on two copper
rods that increase the contact between them by increasing the
water in the soil. It is suitable for monitoring soil humidity in
plants and controlling the amount of water for irrigation [17].
In this system this sensor connected to Arduino and inserted in
the soil to send the signal to Arduino when soil wet or dry to
star/stop irrigation.

II. NECESSARY REQUIREMENTS OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

A. Arduino board
Arduino is an open scores electronic platform based on
ATmega microcontroller, Arduino software can work on
Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems which is
based on C programming language and can be expanded
through C++ libraries [15]. The depended microcontroller in
this paper is shown in fig. 1. All other hardware components
in this system are connected to Arduino in which is receive the
Fig. 3. Soil Moinsture Sensor
D. Relay
Relay Module is an electrically operated switch of mains
voltage, it can be turned on or off, letting the current go
through or not, the relay depended relay module is shown in
fig. 4. In the proposed system, relays used between the
Arduino board and the water pump, which operate by
supplying 5V DC and work as a switch for 220V AC by

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getting a trigger from an Arduino board [18]. The relay can be

controlled by the I/O pins of the Arduino board which in turn
controls the Water Pump.

Fig. 4. Relay Module

E. Water Pump
Small water pump motor 220V as shown in fig. 5 is a device
Fig. 7. Block Diagram and Proposed System
that moves water through pipes by mechanical action. So, it is
used to supply the soil with water. Hence, it is connect to
Fig. 8, illustrates the mechanism of the system in terms of
Arduion through the relay module. This device operate
sending SMS from the Mobile Phone (MP) to the Arduino
acordong to SMS command sent by mobile the home owner to
Board (AB) for controlling the Water Pump (WP), as well as
Arduino for irrigation the greenn area or tur it off to fishlize
receiving alert messages from the AB.
the irrigation process.
All hardware componets are connected to Arduino Mega via
wires, and the arduino platform supplied by 5V DC adapter.

Fig. 5. Water Pump Motor

F. Rain Drop Sensor

The proper usage of water is very important part in the
proposed system. Therefore, using Rain Drop sensor is an easy
method which will give the alarm when there is rain, so the
homeowner can make some actions to stop irrigation. It is one
of the analog sensors and suitable for outdoor use. It is detect
both rain and snow [19]. The depended rain drop seneor in the
proposed system is shown in fig. 6.

Fig. 6. Rain Drop Sensor

III. STRUCTURE OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

Fig. 8. Flow Chart for Proposed System
The proposed system consists of nine hardware parts.
As shown in Fig. 8, after initializing AB&MP the system
These parts work together to apply the operations of watering
passes through three phases: Irrigation controlling phase,
planets as steps of automate irrigation or by home owner via
Rain-Monitoring phase and Water tank-Monitoring phase. In
SMS. Fig.7 represents the hardware architecture of the
the Irrigation controlling phase, the homeowner can control
proposed system.
the WP #1 (allotted to irrigate the garden) by sending special
commands from his mobile as an SMS to AB to turn it
ON/OFF after his receive SMS from AB to do it when the
Moisture Sensor value reach to threshold. While In the Rain-
Monitoring phase, if there is any detection of Rain Drop

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 4th Scientific International Conference – Najaf – IRAQ (4th SICN-2019)

Sensor (RDS) in outdoor the AB will send alarm message to depended. such command means that; the system alerts the
the MP. Therefore, in the Water Tank-Monitoring phase, the homeowner that the plants needs for watering. The command
homeowner can get the current status of Water Tank (WT) via will be sent from AB to MP. Fig. 10 (a), shows a screenshot
the value of two Moisture Sensors, one of them located in top for sending SMS “The planets need watering” as a command
of WT and another located in the bottom of the tank, the from AB to PM for begins the irrigation process, the
homeowner control the WP #2 (allotted to fill the tank with command received at the MP. In turn, the homeowner sends a
water) via sending special commands according to the sensors SMS “Start Irrigation” from his MP to AB for to operate the
values at any time. WP and start the irrigation process, as shown in Fig. 10 (b).
After the plants became saturated with water, the AM will
The Control Board (CB) for proposed system consists of
send SMS “Irrigation Finished” to MP, the home owner can
ten main parts, these parts and the sensors are illustrated in
send SMS “Stop WP” to turn off the water pump motor, as
Fig. 9, which are: Arduino Mega 2560, Two Relays Shield,
shown in fig. 11.
Three Moisture Sensor, Rain Drop Sensor, Two mini water
pumps 220V and SIM900 GSM Shield.
The first moisture sensors are connected to Arduino A0
pin for analog input to get the humidity value that present in
soil, Vcc (+) pin is connected to 5V Arduino pin; GND pin is
representing ground to connect all components. While the
second moisture sensor connected to A1 to get the water level
in the bottom of tank, and the third moisture sensor connected
to A2 for getting the critical value when the tank is full with
water. A3 port connects to Rain drop sensor through analog
pin. D2 and D3 are known as a digital pin, so it connected
with relay models and in turn connects with two water pumps.
The GSM Shield connects to D18 and D19 for receive and
send SMS from/to mobile phone homeowner.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 10. Sending irrigation system controlling command: (a) MP after receive
alart SMS for irrigation from AB. (b) MP after sends SMS to turn ON the WP.
Fig. 9. Archeticture Diagram

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The implementation results obtained by this Paper can be
categorized into three main parts: Irrigation process
controlling, monitoring raining at outdoor and monitoring the
water level in tank.

A. Irrigation Process Controlling

To illustrate the mechanism of irrigation process controlling, a
certain command such as “The planet needs watering” will be

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 4th Scientific International Conference – Najaf – IRAQ (4th SICN-2019)

Fig. 11. Receiving/Sending SMS for finishing the irrigation process and stop
it.

B. Rain Monitoring
In this system, the homeowner can monitor the raining at
outdoor at any time during watering plants process through the
RDS that connected to AB. Fig. 12, shows a screenshot for
sending SMS “there is rain” as a command from AB to MP to
alert the homeowner to stop the watering process if it is work,
in other hand the homeowner inquiring about the status of WP
motor via SMS to turn off the WP if it works.
Fig. 13. Receiving/Sending monitoring and controlling SMS from/to AB for
tank status.
D. Determine Resualt
The proposed system was applied in a garden house where the
water pressure reaches 1 liter in every 3 seconds i.e. 20 liters
per minute. So, the garden is irrigated in 18 minutes to be
covered with water, this mean to calculate number of liters
needed by the garden for each watering process, use the
following equation:
y=a+b (1)

Fig. 12. Receiving/Sending monitoring and controlling SMS from/to AB for

raing status.

C. Water Tank Monitoring
During the watering process there is a possibility of the
influence of the tank of water, so the AB sends an SMS to the
homeowner to inform him. Fig. 13, shows a screenshot for
such possibility.
Fig. 14. Water Spends With/Without Using Proposed System
In “Eq. 1”, a: is the number of liters that are pressed by the
water motor device every minute, and b: is the number of
minutes the garden needs for watering. While, the y: is the
number of liters needed by the garden in the watering process.
i.e. that, the garden needs (20 * 18 = 360) liters for on
watering process. So, if the homeowner forgets to end the
watering process for 15 minutes he spent 300 liters without
need.

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 4th Scientific International Conference – Najaf – IRAQ (4th SICN-2019)
Figure 14, is chart shows the difference between the rate of
water discharge during irrigation without using the controlling
system and with the use of the proposed system within one
month, taking into account the weather condition if it is wet or
sunny or rainy.
V. CONCLUSION
The most important points concluded from this research
can be summarized as below:
 An efficient system is proposed, designed and implemented
that remotely controls and monitors irrigation process, level
of water in tank and if there is an rain in outdoor via
microcontroller depending on the GSM network. This
system used Arduino Mega2560 microcontroller and
SIM900 GSM Shield.
 By using modern technology, irrigation has become easier,
through the use of soil moisture sensors and the
measurement of their value through the microcontroller and
automatic ordering of irrigation without the need to use
workers to do so. And, The preservation of water and time
has become one of the things to be considered by the
farmer. The use of automatic irrigation leads to improve the
growth of the plant and reduce the wilting of leaves, by
giving water to meet the requirements of growth.
 The proposed system shows the superiority of the irrigation
system based on the soil moisture sensor on the traditional
irrigation system, in term of the amount of water used in
each irrigation process, where the difference between the
two methods is reached to approximately 60%.
 One of the problems experienced by farmers or homeowners
is the rain during irrigation and they are outside their fields
or homes. This system solves this problem. This system
remotely controls the irrigation process by receiving
commands via SMS and GSM network. There are no any
special applications or hardware needed by mobile phone to
be used in this system, and any mobile phone supporting the
SMS service could be used in the system.
 At normal situation, just one mobile phone number
depended to send/receive command-messages in this system
(i.e. homeowner’s phone number). But, to add additional
numbers (e.g. his wife’s phone number), it can be done very
easily by changing the related source code.
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