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Hand-held soil moisture meter using polymer coated sensor.
- Source :
- IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine; Oct2019, Vol. 22 Issue 5, p24-29, 6p
- Publication Year :
- 2019
-
Abstract
- An appropriate proportion of water content in the soil is critical for plant growth [1]. The use of capacitive soil moisture sensor exploits the very property of soil that the dielectric value of soil varies with the amount of water content [2], [3]. Use of a capacitive sensor for soil moisture measurement provides some advantages such as better accuracy after soil-specific calibration, high sensitivity, flexibility in probe design, easy installation and cost-effectiveness. A copper cladded epoxy material, coated with a thin film of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) polymer, is an established procedure to fabricate the sensor [3], [4], which has been used here for soil moisture sensing. This paper describes the development of a rechargeable battery-operated hand-held meter for fieldwork by using this PMMA coated sensor along with a suitable signal conditioning circuit. The thermo-gravimetric method has been utilized to obtain the actual moisture content of soil [5] and calibrate it with respect to the voltage output of the meter. Moreover, with the moisture content, surrounding temperature and humidity are also useful atmospheric parameters used by weather stations [6]. For this, a DHT12 sensor has been integrated with this hand-held meter. IoT extension of measured data is implemented by a SIM900A GPRS/GSM modem to make the meter smart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 10946969
- Volume :
- 22
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 139227806
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1109/IMM.2019.8868273