Managing your Greenhouse Using A Smartphone

May 20, 2023

Smart farming technologies are the current talk of the town. This is due to the increased awareness of the benefits of adopting digital and smart technologies in the entire value chain of agriculture. However, are you aware of managing your greenhouse using a smartphone?

Smart farming is the use of smart gadgets like phones, pcs, and tablets, among other devices. They are enabled to utilize the internet. The smart devices depend on a reliable network connection to operate whereby they have access to massive databases. The information obtained from these databases helps in better decision-making for the agrepreneurs.

For instance, through the use of smartphones, images of crops can be taken and sent directly to micro-controllers (computer-like devices),. They then transfer the information to PCs acting as servers. Depending on the design of the system, information about the crops’ health, nutrition quality, moisture content, or any other parameter can be determined. Feedback is sent to the smartphone user.

Why is Smart Phone Use Best Applicable in Controlled Environment Agriculture?

Controlled environment agriculture refers to the production of crops in enclosed structures. The internal environment is different from the external environment. Unlike normal farming using farmlands outdoors, controlled environment agriculture relies on use of glass houses, green houses, high tunnels, and other indoor farm structures. So, managing your greenhouse using a smartphone is the real deal.

The controlled environment, thus makes it easy to incorporate micro-controller based system technologies, which are crucial in managing your green house. This allows automation of the green house that is key in eliminating demands for many people to manage the greenhouses. For instance, the automation allows for the incorporation of climate detectors and sensors that monitor for environmental factors like temperature, humidity, lighting, and carbon dioxide concentration, among others. The information is transmitted to the servers and micro-controllers for interpretation and a command is then sent to gadgets like water sprayers to spray water to increase the humidity or to switch on fans to enhance air exchange in the green houses.

A young research student with a tablet computer in a greenhouse

Smart Phone Use in the Green House

A greenhouse is one where you control the environment of the crop-growing and you target it through smart farming.

Ordinarily, many growers using greenhouses rely on manual human intervention in running them. While this is the most straightforward, affordable, and workable approach in the short term, the method has numerous challenges in the long term.

For instance, manual physical interventions in managing greenhouses require intensive labor, takes time, is not precise, all of the factors that could affect productivity and efficiency.

Commercial agriculture is all about minimizing costs and maximizing profits, which calls for the best technologies to increase production efficiency. This is where smart farming comes in because it enhances precision, reduces labor needs, optimizes water and farm inputs use, among other resources. In the long-term therefore, the production costs reduces greately, despite the initial automation costs being higher.

The Smart Phone Use- Smart Agriculture

You can use your smart phone to remotely monitor and manage your green house.

In order to automate a green house operation, several smart technologies comes in handy including:

Internet of Things (IoT)- the smart gadgets and technologies connected via internet.
Wireless instruments- computers, smart phones, smart devices like humidifies.
Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms
Sensors
Cameras

Smart Devices have an inbuilt Brain!

Generally, what the smart gadgets does is to help you as an affluent farmer, get more control of your greenhouse without need for regularly intervening manually. The gadgets are designed in a way that they have a “brain” of their own. What this means, is that the devices have algorithms or inbuilt thinking capabilities of thinking- receiving, interpreting, analyzing, commanding, and responding to the commands, to act in a manner that the farmer intends.

Notably, smart devices possess the knowledge-based decision support systems, which keeps you away or enables you to operate from a distance saving you time and other resources, while tremendously increasing productivity and operation efficiency.

A smart phone is one of the simplest device in the IoT that can be employed in green house farming. This is because it has capability to connect to the internet and also supports innumerable number of applications and softwares that are used in greenhouse automation.

Integrating IoT in your farming, today will, therefore, make you a more successful farmer. It is an upgrade from the normal farming to a more precision-based commercial agriculture.

In our subsequent articles we will expound on this noble technology that could transform you into an affluent farmer. Specifically, follow to learn of the various benefits you get from automating your green house and integrating your smart phone gadget and other IoT technologies in farming.

Do you have any experiences in smart farming? Do you now know managing your greenhouse using a smartphone is possible? You can give us feedbacks.