Design and Implementation of an IoT-Enabled Solar-Grid Hybrid Smart Irrigation System for Multi-Crop Cultivation in Semi-Arid Areas Case Study: Garoua Cameroon

Abstract

The paper introduces a project of creating a precision irrigation system based on Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity and a hybrid solar-grid energy system. The study will seek to maximize the utilization of water in the multi-crop production through the use of real-time soil moisture sensors as well as threshold-based control logic, which will run on an ESP32 microcontroller. The power module of the system focuses on the solar energy and the system automatically switches back to the grid when there is not enough sunlight to power the system thus maintaining a constant power supply and energy security. The Blynk platform provides a complete IoT monitoring interface, which allows visualizing the data in real-time and controlling irrigation processes remotely. It is experimentally proven that the suggested system is effective in automating irrigation, water conservation, and self-sufficiency in energy usage. The findings show that this hybrid IoT-solar design will improve the efficiency of the resources and will be a big step towards climate-resilient and sustainable agricultural automation.