2019 The 3rd International Conference on Electrical, Telecommunication and Computer Engineering (ELTICOM)

Implementation of Real-Time Monitoring on

Agricultural Land of Rice Plants Using Smart
Sensor
Romi Fadillah Rahmat Tifani Zata Lini Pujiarti
Information Technology Department Information Technology Department Information Technology Department
Universitas Sumatera Utara Universitas Sumatera Utara Universitas Sumatera Utara
Medan, Indonesia Medan, Indonesia Medan, Indonesia
romi.fadillah@usu.ac.id tifani.zatalini@gmail.com pujiarti@students.usu.ac.id

Ainul Hizriadi
Information Technology Department
Universitas Sumatera Utara
Medan, Indonesia
ainul.hizriadi@gmail.com

Abstract— The soil fertility of plantation area is vital for
determining the farmers' success in producing rice. Several
factors of the rice plants environment are mandatory to be
monitored to achieve the maximum quality of the harvests.
Today, the use of control systems are widely encountered in
various aspects of life, manual measurements to determine the
environmental conditions of rice plants will be less efficient in
terms of time. Therefore, a system is required that is able to
monitor the rice crops in real time. The method implemented in
the research was supported by several parameters such as
changes in humidity, temperature, pH, soil moisture and light
intensity. Data of every sensor will be stored in the database
and farmers can receive notification on plantation area
monitoring in the form of SMS Gateway. These sensors will be
placed in several locations on the field to improve the
measurement accuracy. Based on the 1-week test, all sensors
generated stable values and average errors of pH at 1.99
temperature at 1.29%, air humidity at 0.54%, soil moisture at
0.31%, and light intensity at 0.49%. The result of the test was
aligned with the architecture, and all sensors showed that the
monitoring went well.
Keywords— real-time monitoring, rice, smart sensor,
GSM/GPRS, arduino uno, SMS gateway
I. INTRODUCTION
Rice is a plant that plays a vital role in the life of
Indonesian people because most of its people consume rice as
the staple food. This led to the rice plants becoming the most
widely-produced plants in Indonesia.
The use of control system, especially smart sensor, has
been found in various aspects of life, the control system is
used to facilitate human work such as in industrial,
manufacturing, healthcare, and agricultural and plantation.
Smart sensor is a sensor that is more easily applied and
integrated with other electronic devices, supports the latest
technology, the smaller the size, and has a higher sensitivity
value [2]. The development of control system enables to
improve system performance and optimize the result of this
research that is in the agricultural sector. The main obstacle
in the rice cultivation development is the problem of
environmental factors such as changes in temperature, pH,
humidity and light intensity that can affect the product
quality and could lead to losses.
The agricultural sector is very vulnerable to climate
change because it affects cropping patterns, planting time,
production, and yield quality. [3] Climate is closely related to
climate change, and global warming can reduce agricultural
production at around 5 – 20% [4]. One of the actions to
achieve optimal rice yield is to control the growth
environment of rice plants. Growth environments include
soil, water, air, sunlight, and many more.
A monitoring system for agricultural land conditions
should be developed to help farmers obtain information on
the measurement of pH, humidity, temperature, light
intensity and soil moisture to minimize crop failure. Through
this type of system, farmers can monitor and calculate the
required fertilization for the plants to achieve maximum
harvest. The process of fertilization conducts in excess, or
lack of will affect the production process of rice crops.

Agricultural also has a significant role in the nation's
economic development. The agricultural sector is not only as
a provider of food needs, but also a source of livelihood for
the population. Although Indonesia is one of the largest
countries regarding the area, the rice production of the
country is not enough to cover the demand for this food
staple resulting the government to import the rice every year
through Indonesian Bureau of Logistics. If the area of harvest
and rate of population growth remain, then to the anticipated
the increase in demand for rice in 2030, rice production
should rise at least 30% or to at least 6.5 tonnes/ha compared
with the last ten years data of Statistics Indonesia which was
at 5.0 ton / ha [1].
The system to be created by the authors is
"Implementation of Real-Time Monitoring on Agricultural
Land of Rice Plant Using Smart Sensor." The parameters
used are soil moisture measurement which can be performed
using soil moisture sensor, acidity measurement using pH
meter analog sensor, light intensity using LDR sensor, and air
temperature and humidity using a DHT11 sensor which will
utilize Arduino Uno microcontroller. This method can be
applied to obtain more accurate data and faster time, to make
predictions of rice productivity through direct monitoring.
This system can help the farmers to understand the rice field
condition in short time so that farmers can decide the best
action for the plants' fertilization based on the monitoring
results.

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 2019 The 3rd International Conference on Electrical, Telecommunication and Computer Engineering (ELTICOM)

The fertility level of agricultural land will affect the pH sensor for measuring the acidity level of the rice field, the
growth and productivity of rice crops. To achieve maximum LDR sensor for measuring the light intensity, the DHT11
yields of rice crops, farmers should always pay attention to sensor for measuring temperature and humidity of the air,
several factors of the rice plant growing environments, which while soil moisture sensor used to measure the humidity of
are changes in humidity, temperature, pH, soil moisture and the rice field.
light intensity. Since the manual measurement will be less
efficient in terms of time, therefore a system is required to The smart sensor can be remotely controlled because it
monitor the environmental factors that can affect the quality uses SIM800L which will send the monitoring results to the
of rice field in real time. user. Each sensor will take the value from the measurements
of the field, and the data from the monitoring will be stored
Rice crops can be well cultivated in the dry season with on the database server that has been configured so it can be
the help of irrigation water while in the rainy season it is vital accessed via the website address
to control the amount of water available. In lowland, rice http://monitoringpadi.000webhostapp.com/. The monitoring
plants require a height of 0-650 m above sea level with a result will be sent to the users in the form of SMS gateway.
temperature of 22-27 ° C while in the plateau is at 650-1500 Every 8 hours, the sensor will take the data and send the
m above sea level with a temperature of 19-23 ° C.. Rice monitoring results of agricultural land conditions to the
plants require full sun exposure without shade. Wind affects farmers.
pollination and fertilization, but if the wind is too strong, it
will knock down the plants. The soil acidity for rice plants B. General Architecture
ranged from pH 4.0 - 7.0. The general architecture is a chart that illustrates the
process, flow and interaction between components of a
Real-time monitoring of the quality of rice crop system The inputs of this study were obtained from various
agricultural land to obtain data on the changes in pH, data taker of pH, soil moisture, air temperature, air humidity,
temperature, humidity, light intensity and soil moisture using and light intensity in rice fields. The output will be generated
Arduino microcontroller on the sensor network. in the form of web-based monitoring applications for the
In 2014, a study was conducted by Eko Ihsanto and Sadri admin and SMS Gateway notifications every 8 hours for the
Hidayat under the title "Design of a pH Meter Measurement farmers. The general architecture of this study can be seen in
System Using an Arduino Uno Microcontroller." In this Fig. 1.
study, Arduino and Android connections to send float data
using Bluetooth module HC-06 and to display the results of
its monitoring using a Blueterm application in android [5].
Another research was performed by C. H. Chavan and
P.V.Karande with the title of "Wireless Monitoring of Soil
Moisture, Temperature & Humidity Using Zigbee in
Agriculture." The study was wireless monitoring of
environmental conditions in the form of temperature,
humidity, and soil moisture using AVR as a microcontroller.
The system used LCD [6]. Jimmi Martin, Erwin Susanto, and
Unang Sunarya conducted research on "pH Control and Soil
Humidity Based Fuzzy Logic Using Microcontroller." In the
research, fuzzy logic control system was applied to control
the sensors and coordinate with the pump so that the pH and
humidity control system can run well [7].
Yamping Wang and Zongtao Chi conducted a study
entitled System of Wireless Temperature and Humidity
Monitoring Based on Arduino Uno Platform. The research
applied AVR as the microprocessor and DHTI1 sensor to
measure the temperature and air humidity. The system
generated the measurements of the temperature and air
humidity, and give warning in the form of a bell sound and
blinked LED if the temperature and air humidity are not in
accordance with the pre-determined standard [8]. Lim et al
performed a research that aimed to create a wireless
telemetry system to be used in the field of agriculture. The
study applied Arduino as the microprocessor in conjunction Fig. 1. General architecture.
with sensors to measure environmental factors namely the
temperature, humidity and soil moisture[9]. Another research III. RESULT AND IMPLEMENTATION
also conducted to monitoring the process of red onion in
hydroponics environment[10]. A. Implementation
The system was built with C ++ and PHP programming
language using the library of dht11.h, GSM.h, highcharts.js,
II. ANALYSIS AND SYSTEM DESIGN and SoftwareSerial.h. The tools implementation at the rice
field to monitor the condition of rice plants from changes in
A. System Analysis pH level, air humidity, temperature, soil moisture, and light
In this study we use several sensors, they are described as intensity was conducted for seven days. The implementation
DHT11 sensor used to measure temperature and humidity, of the tool was performed on the uncultivated rice field and
Sensor pH ETP306, to measure pH, LDR sensor used to cultivated rice field.
estimate the intensity of light and Soil Moisture Sensor used
to measure soil moisture. This smart sensor consists of
several sensors combined into one, the sensor comprising a

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 2019 The 3rd International Conference on Electrical, Telecommunication and Computer Engineering (ELTICOM)

using tools with manual procedures. The details of the

measurement comparison are shown in Table 1.

TABLE I. MEASUREMENT COMPARISON

Using tools Manual Procedures

Day
pH Temp Soil Light Air pH Temp Soil Light Air
I 5.4 27 76 81 64 5.3 26 77 80 64.5
II 5 28 80 84 64 5.1 28.5 80 83 64.8
Fig. 2. Before cultivation.
III 6.1 28 79 79 72 6 28 79.1 79.5 71
Fig. 2 shows the implementation of the tools at the rice
IV 4.5 27 85 80 68 4.6 27 85.5 80.2 68.2
field before cultivation.
V 4.2 30 82 79 65 4.3 30.5 82.2 79 65
VI 5.4 27 80 84 70 5.5 27.5 80 84.1 70
VII 4.8 28 73 85 75 4.7 28 73 85 75.1

According to Table 1, there is existence of data deviation

between the data obtained from manual procedures with the
one obtained using the tool. Data deviation occurs in some
sensors, this can occur due to error calculations in the library.
Table 2 shows the detail of the result from each sensor along
Fig. 3. After cultivation.
with the average error values obtained from the comparison
Fig. 3 shows the appearance of the tool implementation at with the manual measurement performed by farmers. The
rice fields after the rice cultivation. This implementation was error values in the measurement can be calculated using (1):
=
carried out for three days on uncultivated land and four days | |
100%
on cultivated land and the data obtained were daily average
data of the sensor.
In this system, the user will get a notification every 8 TABLE II. PH TEST
hours in the form of SMS Gateway. The message contains
the monitoring results of the rice field such as the values of Day Tools Manual % Error
air humidity, light intensity, temperature, soil moisture, and I 5.4 5.3 1.88
pH levels. The SMS will be sent by the server that has
received the data from Arduino microcontroller as shown in II 5 5.1 1.96
Fig 4. III 6.1 6 1.66
IV 4.5 4.6 2.17
V 4.2 4.3 2.32
VI 5.4 5.5 1.81
VII 4.8 4.7 2.12

Fig. 4. SMS sample. Based on the test result shown in Table 2, the average
error of sensor readings using the tools compared to manual
For the admin interface, it utilizes a web-based measurement is 1.99%.
application that will display the values of air humidity sensor,
light intensity sensor, temperature sensor, soil moisture TABLE III. TEMPERATURE SENSOR TEST
sensor, and pH sensor in a graphic form. The application is to
monitor the needs of the field and will be updated Day Tools Manual % Error
periodically every 8 hours. The result of the monitoring is in I 27 26 3.84
the form of graph as shown in Fig. 5.
II 28 28.5 1.75
III 28 28 0.00
IV 27 27 0.00
V 30 30.5 1.63
VI 27 27.5 1.81
VII 28 28 0.00

From the temperature sensor temperature measurement,

Fig. 5. Graph of monitoring result. the average error value obtained from the sensor readings is
1.29% compared to the manual procedure as stated in Table
System testing is performed to determine the success and 3.
accuracy of the system in taking value changes in pH levels,
air humidity, temperature, soil moisture, and light intensity.
The test was conducted by comparing the results of the test

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 2019 The 3rd International Conference on Electrical, Telecommunication and Computer Engineering (ELTICOM)

Based on the test, the average error of air humidity sensor VI 84 84.1 0.11
reading of the tools compared to standard equipment is
0.54%. The detail of the test is shown in Table 4. VII 85 85 0.00

TABLE IV. AIR HUMIDITY SENSOR TEST

Based on the calculation above, it can be concluded that
Day Tools Manual % Error the tool generated the similar value to the real value. Errors
can occur due to several things, such as error calculations in
I 64 64.5 0.77
the library. It can also be due to the unstable circuit and the
II 64 64.8 1.23 sensor readings.
III 72 71 1.40 IV. CONCLUSION AND FURTHER RESEARCH
IV 68 68.2 0.29
The conclusions of the research on the quality monitoring
V 65 65 0.00 system of rice crops is that the study on real-time monitoring
VI 70 70 0.00 for rice plants using Arduino microcontroller on sensor
network has been successfully implemented. Also, based on
VII 75 75.1 0.13
the test results of 1 week, all sensors provide a stable value
and average error of pH of 1.99%, temperature of 1.29%, air
The average error values of the soil moisture sensor humidity of 0.54%, soil moisture by 0.31%, and light
reading are 0.31% compared to the manual procedure. It was intensity of 0.49%
obtained from the test conducted on the soil moisture sensor
that can be seen in Table 5.

TABLE V. SOIL MOISTURE SENSOR TEST

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