An Intelligent IoT-enabled Lighting System for Energy-efficient Crop Production

Abstract

In this paper, an intelligent lighting instrumentation and automation system is presented with the objective of achieving high energy-efficiency in greenhouse supplemental lighting based on the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The system runs on a Raspbian operating system which interacts with wireless-enabled light emitting diode (LED) fixtures for plant growth, an online data server, and different light sensors including RGB and quantum sensors. The communication is achieved through RestFul API, UART, and I2C. The system is utilized to implement a feedback controller that automatically adjusts the light dimming levels and, in particular, the ratio of red and blue light intensities based on the plants’ needs. A series of experiments involving plant growth were conducted which indicate that the proposed system can achieve energy-savings up to 34%, when compared to a conventional time scheduling scheme. Additionally, the experiments demonstrate that the system can achieve a highly uniform light distribution under unpredictable natural lighting conditions while saving energy due to supplemental lighting.