Energy-Efficient IoT-Based Light Control System in Smart Indoor Agriculture

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Engineering
• Computer Science
• Environmental Science

Background:

• Indoor agriculture, particularly plant factories, offers increased efficiency and sustainability in food production.
• Current plant factories face challenges with high energy consumption and precise environmental control.
• Growing demand necessitates scalable and sustainable solutions for indoor farming.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an energy-efficient remote control architecture for grow lights in indoor farming.
• To leverage Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and automatic control algorithms for enhanced monitoring and management.
• To address limitations in energy consumption and environmental control within plant factories.

Main Methods:

• Developed a master-slave device configuration for controlling and monitoring grow lights.
• Implemented a 6LoWPAN network with the RPL protocol for wireless data transfer.
• Utilized emulation software (Contiki-NG v4.7) for method evaluation and scalability testing.

Main Results:

• The proposed architecture enables precise, centralized control of growth conditions.
• Real-time monitoring of plants within the indoor farming environment is achieved.
• The system demonstrates scalability for large-scale production facilities.

Conclusions:

• The developed IoT-based control architecture effectively addresses control, cost, and scalability issues in indoor farming.
• This approach contributes to making smart indoor agriculture more effective and sustainable.
• Integration with decision support systems can further improve yields and quality.