Design and Development of an IoT-Based Smart Greenhouse Prototype Integrating a Solar Energy System and a Solar Tracker

Abstract

Conventional greenhouses still require manual monitoring and environmental control, which is inefficient for long-term management. This study aimed to design and implement a Smart Greenhouse prototype integrating the Internet of Things (IoT), automatic control, solar energy, and a solar tracker. The system used an ESP32 as the main controller with DHT22, capacitive soil-moisture, BH1750, and LDR sensors. The actuators consisted of a DC water pump, an LED grow light, a DC fan, and an MG996R servo. Energy was supplied by a 100 Wp solar panel, a 10 A solar charge controller, and a 12 V 20 Ah VRLA battery. Monitoring was performed through a 16×2 I2C LCD and a Blynk dashboard on a smartphone. The functional test results showed that the sensors responded to changes in the test conditions, the pump and the LED could be controlled both automatically and manually, the solar panel was able to charge the battery through the solar charge controller, and the solar tracking mechanism was able to change the panel orientation based on the difference between the LDR readings. Testing in this study was limited to system functionality and did not cover the evaluation of any energy gain of the solar tracker compared with a static panel. The prototype successfully integrated the monitoring system, automatic control, the solar energy source, and the panel tracking mechanism at the functional test level.