Real-Time Climate Control and Remote Monitoring of Polyhouse based on LabVIEW

This paper discuss about the design and development of a low cost system that can monitor and control the environmental parameters inside a polyhouse. The ultimate aim of this paper is to motivate organic farming in everyone's life even in their busy schedules. So no matter where we go the entire polyhouse can be controlled and monitored by remote devices like smart phones or Personal Computers (PC) at any remote locations. The design of farmer friendly software is developed based on LabVIEW which gives complete Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the farm in e- gadgets such as laptop or smart phones. The LabVIEW software is installed in the computer. In the proposed system, online automation of the polyhouse is made possible by means of Internet. In addition, live video streaming of the polyhouse, located at remote places are captured. This leads to complete elimination of labour power. Appropriate environmental conditions are necessary for optimum plant growth, improved crop yields and good productivity. Hence the real- time climatic parameters are measured and controlled with different sensors and actuators by the computer. The computer reads and controls the climatic parameters by Data Acquisition (DAQ). PC-based DAQ systems exploit the processing power, productivity, display and connectivity capabilities of computers. Existing systems are bulky, costly and difficult to maintain. In the proposed system, the bulky and costly DAQ instrument is replaced by a low cost, specially designed microcontroller based DAQ card.