Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)

IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0

IoT enabled Aquaponics with wireless sensor

smart monitoring
Praveen C Menon.

Asst.Professor.
Dept.of MCA,
Ilahia College of Engineering & Technology
Muvattupuzha, Kerala
Email:praveencmenon2004@yahoo.com

Abstract: Aquaponics is an advanced and emerging pump back to the fish tank so that cleaned water is
farming style in which fish farming and vegetable farm- refilled back to the fish tank. The highlight of this
ing turned out to be more professional and precise. This idea is vegetables grow 5 times faster than traditional
approach uses the latest technology for hydration and farming in direct soil as the nutrition value of the
nutrition supply to plants and fish. This paper addresses
water in the fish tank will be much higher than nor-
some technical issues faced by the farmers using aqua-
ponics and proposes the technical solution of an identi- mal water because the fish tank water will be en-
fied problem in traditional aquaponics using wireless riched with growing nutrients with fish waste and
sensors and a communication network with a GUI appli- other chemical changes.
cation. AWSM is a GUI solution for the addressed issues.
AWSM based end-user mobile application alerts the Table 1.1Difference between normal farming and Aquaponics
farmer online with the water quality notification and
suggestions even when the farmer is away. Results
showed considerable improvements when AWSM based
IoT application was implemented for the Aquaponics
system when compared with the conventional method. Criteria Aquaponics Normal
farming
Keywords: Aquaponics, AWSM(Aquaponics With Sensor
Monitoring), Sensor, Internet of Things, Precision farm-
Pesticides No Yes
ing, Prediction, WiFi, Architecture
Chemicals No Yes
I.INTRODUCTION Growth speed Five times Slow
faster
Aquaponics is getting popularity in Kerala over the
years. This innovative approach of fish farming and Water recycling Possible Not Possible
vegetable farming has got immense support from the
Fertilisers Not needed Needed
public because of the massive presence of the pesti-
cides and illegal use chemicals in the market vegeta- Nutrients pres- High Normal
bles and fish. People in Kerala consume a lot of fish ence
daily during their dine. Recent studies, daily news,
public health analysis show that lifestyle diseases Setup cost Moderate Normal
and deadly diseases have been increasing rapidly.
Studies show that immense use of pesticides and Accuracy High Normal
chemicals increases the number of patients with Technology Applied Not applied
deadly diseases. Here comes the relevance of this
idea of self farming with aquaponics. Natural Yes Yes

This is the state of the art idea of farming fish and
vegetables recycling the water used in the fish tank.
There is a fish tank with water and edible fish. On
top of that, a grow bed is placed where vegetables
are farmed. Under the grow bed, there is a filter bed
is placed using gravel and mud. The water from the
fish tank is pumped to the vegetables in the grow bed
and from the grow bed, the water flows down to the
gravel filter and the filtered water is collected to
Farmer Atten- Less required More required
tion
The paper is organized as follows. Related work is
followed by problem identification. The methodolo-
gy adopted is detailed after the problem is found.
Validation and field study is explained which is fol-
lowed by results before the paper is concluded.

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0
II.RELATED WORK
Certain researches are going on in precision farming,
but specifically towards Aquaponics is rare. This
paper discusses real-time monitoring of the environ-
mental parameters of an Aquaponic System Based on
IoT, it shows aquaponics and related monitoring
strategies using IoT.[5] Another work focussing an
autonomous aquaponics system using 6LoWPAN
based WSN” proposes an end-to-end system to ena-
ble “Connected Aquaponics” which includes WSN
and Next-Gen Telco to increase the crop yield and
provide organic sustainable food to the world com-
munity.[2] A study that titles the “System Design of
Controlling and Monitoring on Aquaponic Based on
Internet of Things” proposes a monitoring system of
water temperature and water value of pH in aquapon-
ic’s system. It also adds a controlling system to keep
aquaponic’s environment stable and to feed fish au-
tomatically through the Internet of things.[3] Another
paper defines aquaponics as the production routine
joining traditional aquaculture to hydroponics. The
water quality is the main focus in deciding the aqua-
ponics success[4].
The above papers and other papers included in the
literature study does not address the issues raised by
the farmers of the field of study. The main issues
include the possibility of removal of bell siphon,
precise sensing of water purity, wetness identifica-
tion of the grow beds, quality verification of the
fresh inlet water, the possibility of automatic feeding
for fishes etc. This paper tries to cover the local
problems faced by the farmers of Njeezhoor,
Kottayam, Kerala
AWSM algorithm is implemented using IoT. The
main components of IoT include an Arduino Mega
2560, various sensors such as nitrate sensor, wetness
sensor, ammonia sensor, Ph sensor etc. Arduino
Mega is enabled with ESP8266 Microchip for effi-
cient WiFi transfer.
Arduino Mega 2560
Arduino is an electronic board with a microcontroller
installed. It is computer hardware. Arduino is based
on ATMega 2560 which is devised with 54 In-
put/Output pins and 6 analog pins. Each pin in this
designed to accept a maximum of 40 mA. This mi-
crocontroller contains a resistor of 20-50 K ohms.
Arduino Mega can communicate with a computer,
another Arduino Mega or another microcontroller.
Text information may be sent from and to the Ar-
duino Mega IDE when wanted to program on this
chip. This microcontroller is designed to be coded in
almost all popular coding languages such as
C/C++/Java or Python. The microcontroller code is
named sketch and may be carried using a USB cable.
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Fig1: Arduino Mega and its PIN Layout
Fig1 shows the Arduino Mega microcontroller and
its PIN Layout used in the AWSM applications inter-
face the sensor and system
ESP8266 Microchip
ESP8266 is a relatively cheap Wi-Fi microchip.
ESP8266 has adopted TCP/IP protocol array., which
may be easily mounted to the chip.ESP8266 may be
used to get access to the Wifi network specified. An
ESP8266 chip is equipped with a Wi-Fi unit which
works in a -built set up using an AT command. This
module uses a rubber duck receiver in an antenna
structure with a coverage of 479 meters.
III. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
The main components of the aquaponics system are
bell siphon, aerator, grow bed, water recycling pipe,
pumping motor. Aquaponics system is studied in
depth in Agricultural University, Palakkad, Kerala.
This problem is mainly defined after the discussion
with the farmers using Aquaponics implemented at
Njeezhoor, Kottayam, Kerala. According to the
farmers, bell siphon is the main component which
determines the wetness of grow bed and water flow
of the system from and to the fish tank. The efficien-
cy of the bell siphon will determine the cleanliness of
the water flowing back to the fish tank and current
wetness will enhance the growth speed of the plants.
It is found that grow bed should not bed over dry or
over flooded and grow bed should not be too wet for
more than 4 hours. This is very critical in growth
speed of vegetables
IV. METHODOLOGY
When the farming environment was studied, it is
understood that it is very much needed to automate
the system using IoT to improve the efficiency of
farming. Also when we spoke to the farmers they
were very keen on some requirements which will
only be satisfied using IoT application. For example,
one of the common suggestions from many Aqua-
ponics farmers was to control the system online spe-
cially when they are away from the farm. Also
watching the farm and the production from the farm
is important for them. Many papers have discussed
the IoT application for Aquaponics, but in this paper,
172
 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0
we keenly focus on farmer needs after the discussion
with them directly, through many meetings.
For example, in this paper we have focused on grow
bed wetness which is the most important for the pro-
duction from the farm, failing in which will destroy
the farm completely. Also, many farmers commented
that since they don’t get to know the dangerous vari-
ations in Nitrate and Ammonia content in the tank
water which resulted in the death of fishes in large
scale. Since there no such system implemented in the
farms at Njeezhoor where we have studied a tech-
nical solution for the above-stated issues by the
farmers is devised.
The proposed system works in three areas of the
farm, Vegetable monitoring, fish monitoring and
grow bed and water monitoring. The system was
studied for 2 months on these three aspects in a nor-
Fig 2: IoT architecture of the proposed AWSM Ap-
plication
Fig 2 shows the IoT architecture of AWSM applica-
tion detailing the communication flow between the
sensor data and the IoT system and the end-user app.
Main issues faced by the Aquaponics farmers is that
the complete automation and monitoring of plants
and fish are highly desirable and automation and
sensor implementation will help them a lot since it is
precision farming where precision is very critical.
This paper mainly focusses on keeping the wetness
of the growled in an optimum level, quality monitor-
ing of the water, automatic fish feeding, through an
interactive interface application installed in a person-
al computer or mobile phone. A smart recommender
algorithm is implemented to help the farmers moni-
tor the growth maintain the farming, fish and vegeta-
bles. The algorithm suggests the farmer with recom-
mendations and options when he/she is alerted with
an issue identified by the app. The main sensor used
in the system is water wetness sensor installed in the
grow bed, ph value sensor, ammonia and nitrate
sensor in water, chlorine sensor in inlet water. Wet-
ness sensor will continuously sense the wetness of
grow bed and whenever as over dried or wet grow
bed is harmful to the farming. Ph value sensor, an
ammonia sensor and nitrate sensor regularly check
for its values in the water to determine the purity of
water which directly affects the fish health. Chlorine
presence in the fresh inlet water to the tank is veri-
fied by the chlorine sensor whenever water is refilled
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mal aquaponics system as well AWSM enabled aq-
uaponics system which was placed under the same
controlled environment. Sensor readings will go to
the Arduino Mega 2560 for processing and the data
will be processed with AWSM algorithm. The results
are sent to farmers and response from the farmer is
executed through Arduino Mega 2650 which will
reflect in the farm. For instance, suppose the pres-
ence of Chlorine is detected quickly as the new water
is being filled, the farmer will be intimated so that
farmer can stop filling water through online instruc-
tion which will be implemented through Arduino
Mega 2650 in the farm. Detection of Nitrate presence
and Ammonia presence in the water crossing the
permitted values will be alerted in the AWSM appli-
cation to the farmer and he can respond accordingly.
to the tank.its so critical to avoid chlorine presence
for growing healthy fish and vegetables.
Pseudocode of Prediction Algorithm
AlgorithmAWSM(SD, NVWD, FT)
Step (a). Read Sensor Data SD from sensors
Step (b): Collect and store Normal Values NV
Step (c): Store Date of Water stored WD
Step (d): Store Fish feed timing FT
Step (e): IF FT exceeds stored_timing
Trigger IoT to open feed store to feed the fish
Inform the farmer
Step (f): IF WD exceeds optimum_date THEN
Trigger IoT to open the inlet water resource to test for 3 seconds
Step (g): IF SD from Chlorine Sensor shows the presence of Chlo-
rine in water
Then
Trigger IoT to stop the water resource
Else
Trigger IoT to open the inlet water resource until the tank is filled
Inform the farmer
Compare SD of Ph, Ammonia and Nitrate with NR
If variation THEN
A.alert farmer for an immediate water change
B. Start alarm to inform the farmer
C.Suggest the farmer to check the status of the bell siphon
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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0
V.VALIDATION AND FIELD STUDY
The aquaponics system was connected to Arduino
Mega 2560 at the field interfaced with Ph sensor,
Ammonia Sensor, Wetness sensor and Nitrate sen-
sor. Standard data was collected after the experi-
ments and water and grow bed wetness sampling
using sensors. The received data is transmitted over
WiFi from the Arduino Mega using Wifi mi-
crocontroller installed on the board, to the system
where the AWSM algorithm is implemented. The
data processing on different sensors is as follows.
Grow bed Wetness sensor
The system was tested with wetness sensor using
Arduino Mega to find what is the reading form the
sensor when grow bed maintains the optimum value
of wetness at the presence of a farmer who owns
multiple Aquaponics farms and working in this farm-
ing style since years. He identified the optimum level
of grow bed wetness at the point where the reading
from the wetness sensor was 703. So the algorithm
condition is set to alert the farmer when growing bed
wetness goes beyond 703.
Nitrate Sensor
Natural pure drinking water will show a reading of .2
mg/l [11], but in Aquaponics water, it can be above
that reading since the drinking purity is not required.
The Nitrate sensor showed a reading of .5 mg/l when
tested with the Aquaponics system in which the wa-
ter was about to change. The farmer showed us some
more Aquaponics system with Nitrate value was read
to be .9 mg/l and farmer suggested that water is too
contaminated for the fish to live and grow. So the
Standard Nitrate value is set as .5 mg /L, ie, the
farmer will be alerted by AWSM app when Nitrate
level goes higher than .5 mg/l.
Ammonia Sensor
Normal Ammonia presence in natural water is 0.2
mg/l[10].The Aquaponics system with the water
about to replace showed a reading of 0.5 mg/l.The
contaminated water in the system being tested
showed a reading of 0.7 mg/l and so the standard
value of Ammonia sensor is decided to be 0.5 mg/l
and any value beyond that will caution the farmer
and suggest for water replacement.
Chlorine Sensor
Natural water will have a chlorine presence of 0.01
mg/l [12] and can't be tolerated much more reading
from the Chlorine sensor for our system as even
small presence of Chlorine is highly dangerous for
the fish. The sensor read 0.03 mg/l for contaminated
water being tested and so the standard value for
Chlorine sensor is set as 0.02 mg/l and any value
beyond this data will inform the farmer.
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Ph Value Sensor
Natural water will show a Ph reading of 7[9] The
water being tested which was very impure showed a
result of 11. So our sensor data reading is fixed to be
9 as the standard value. All sensor data were com-
pared in the AWSM algorithm and the variations are
alerted to the farmer as a push notification. The algo-
rithm also showed the status of the farm water in
three states, ie., in red, green or orange depending on
the sensor data priority. For example, Chlorine read-
ing variation is least tolerable and was given high
priority and replacement status turns red. Water with
only PH value /Ammonia variation can have little
relaxation for the water replacement. Variation in
two sensor data reading together will put the Farm in
Orange state. When the sensor data of the water in
the system being tested, it showed a red status show-
ing the water to be replaced at the earliest.
VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A mobile application is developed in the Android
platform to support the farmers. The farmer may
view the status of the system in general, view and
update the data, view the current state of the grow
bed, water quality. Also, the app recommends the
farmer with suggestions when water needs to change.
Also, AWSM algorithm predicts the fish health in
case if the water quality is degraded than in expected
time frame assuming that unhealthy fish may be the
cause of quick water contamination. The App works
in the background so that farmer gets updated
through push notification as the mobile phone is ac-
tive and connected to the internet.
Experiments were done at the aquaponics farm at
Njeezhoor, Kottayam, Kerala for the tenure of 120
days. The system was tested with AWSM and IoT
technology and without applying any technology
monitoring the same fish and vegetable growth for
the specified time of 120 days. Soil conditions and
water was tested and confirmed that both soil and
water have the same properties and fertilizing capaci-
ty. Green chromites are selected for testing fish
growth since this breed is very responsive to food
and fast-growing and needs very sensitive to water
quality. This breed of fish needs fresh water for qual-
ity and faster measurable growth. Leafy vegetables
and vegetables like Brinjal, beans are selected in
vegetable growth testing since they are also so re-
sponsive to soil fertility and water quality and rela-
tively less sensitive to unexpected weather changes.
The test is conducted in such a way that the farming
with IoT and AWSM application continuously alert-
ed the farmer about water quality, grow bed wetness
feeding was accurate with automated feeding system
and no surveillance was done for Aquaponics system
without AWSM implementation.AWSM application
intervened when growth was affected with ph value
174
 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0

variation and when grow bed was over wet or dry so and veggies together gave a quality of 12.6 kgs from
that farmer could involve with quick remedies and Aquaponics with AWSM while the Aquaponics farm
water changes and adding nutrients to the water and without AWSM yielded cultivation of 10.4 kgs after
more solutions. It is found that the cultivation of fish 120 days, showing total growth hike of 1.2%.

Fig .3: Graph depicts the comparison of fish growth rate when AWSM enabled system and normal aquaponics farming were studied

Fig 3 shows the growth variation as Fish kgs from the system without AWSM and
growth was 9 kg for ASWM enabled Aq- IoT showing a difference of 1.12 % of
uaponics where it was estimated to have 8 growth hike.

Fig 4:Graph depicts the comparison of vegetable growth rate when AWSM enabled and normal aquaponics
farming was studied
Fig 4 shows the growth effect as Plant growth was without AWSM and IoT showing a difference of
around 3.6 kg for ASWM enabled Aquaponics 1.5 % of growth hike.
where it was found to have 2.4 kgs from the system

Fig 6:Status of grow bed wetness.

Fig 6 shows the value of growled wetness in the mo- ommends the farmer for wetting or drying the grow
bile application based on which the IoT system rec- bed.

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0

Fig 7: Pie chart of sensor readings

Fig 7 shows the values read from the different sen-
sors connected to the IoT device and based on these
VII.CONCLUSION
AWSM based aquaponics system proposes an effec-
tive way to monitor and improve farming and will
help farmers track the progress of the growth of the
farm from anywhere in the globe. This paper shows
an IoT based mechanism to implement an AWSM
application in farming. Since Aquaponics has been
an upcoming and efficient way of precision farming
in Kerala, this approach may attract more farmers to
the agriculture field as this is a completely technolo-
gy-based application which may be tracked through a
mobile app. Currently, AWSM is a notification based
app and less control over the devices and pieces of
equipment connected to the system. As a future en-
hancement, AWSM app may be extended to a com-
plete farming solution including automatically con-
trolling the devices when the sensor data violates the
standard values with the confirmation from the
farmer. Also, AWSM may be extended to water nu-
trient calculation and planting and fish culture rec-
ommender system which will predict to the farmer
about which vegetable is apt for the soil conditions
and weather circumstances.
readings, the algorithm recommends the farmer for
water change or nutrients addition.
[7]S R Prathibha, Anupama Hongal and M P Jyothi, "IoT Based
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[8]M. N. Mamatha and S. N. Namratha, "Design & implementa-
tion of indoor farming using automated aquaponics system", 2017
IEEE International Conference on Smart Technologies and Man-
agement for Computing Communication Controls Energy and
Materials (ICSTM), pp. 396-401, 2017
[9] World Health Organization (2007).Ph in drinking wa-
ter[online],Available:https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health
/dwq/chemicals/ph_revised_2007_clean_version.pdf
[10] World Health Organization(Geneva, 1996) Guidelines for
drinking-water quality,[Online]Available:https://www.who.int/
water_sanitation_health/dwq/ammonia.pdf
[11]WorldHealthOrganization(Geneva,1996),[Online]Available:ht
tps://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/nitrate
nitrite2ndadd.pdf
[12]World Health Organization (Geneva,1996)
[Online]Available:https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/d
wq/chlorine.pdf

VIII. REFERENCES

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[4] Mohanad Odema ,Ihab Adly ,Ayman Wahb,a
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