Internet of Things (IoT) Based Continuous Growth Rate Monitoring System of Plant Stem

Abstract

In the field of precision agriculture, plant growth rate monitoring is an important issue to study the influence of soil, weather, or agronomic practices on its growing condition. A plant’s growth rate can be evaluated by measuring the radial/ circumference growth of its body parts like stem, trunk, branch, and fruit. In this paper, the internet of things (IoT) based plant’s stem growth rate monitoring system has been developed. Here, the most commonly used PC (Personal Computer) optical mouse is used as a sensor for monitoring the radial growth of the sunflower stem. To sense the radial growth of the stem, a paper-based strap is used across the stem. A computer mouse is used for the measurement of strap movement which is occurred due to the radial growth of the stem. Eventually, the mouse sensor output has been calibrated using Wi-Fi enabled processing unit and transmits the same data to the server for real-time monitoring. To store the growth rate information, an open-source IoT platform namely ‘ThingSpeak’ has been used. In presence of the ambient condition, the performance of the developed system has been tested for a long duration of time over a sunflower stem and provided satisfactory results.