Development of smart control system for cultivation of orange man Japanese melon in greenhouses via IoT platform

Abstract

    We present a smart control system for cultivation of orange man Japanese melon in greenhouses via IoT platform. The study was performed at an organic complete farm. The objective of this research was to create a smart control system and control the environment inside a greenhouse to provide optimal conditions for seedling growth. The designed structure of the nursery greenhouse could accommodate a maximum of 360 seedlings, allowing the cultivation of healthy and complete melon seedlings within an area of 600x1800x300 cm before transplanting them for actual cultivation. This smart system design was divided into five parts: 1) seedling nursery design, 2) control system design, 3) photovoltaic system setup, 4) workflow design, and 5) user interface design; the user interface was designed by using the Blynk IoT platform version 2.0 to monitor all results on web applications and mobile applications. The results showed that the developed system could effectively monitor and control according to the setting  conditions. Additionally, the system could increase germination rates and enhance the growth efficiency of Japanese organic melon seedlings. The germination rate improved by 93.33% compared to traditional nursery cultivation methods. It was found that the seedlings grown through this smart system had an average height of 6.5 cm, which indicated a growth rate increase of 54.76% compared to traditional cultivation methods. It was concluyded that the developed system effectively enhanced the germination rate and reduced damage to Japanese melon seedlings.