Greenhouse Environmental Monitoring and Control
(book excerpts)As greenhouses are designed to provide controlled climatic conditions, it is necessary to monitor, control, and maintain the parameters that are essential for plant growth. The efficiency of plant production in greenhouses depends on the adjustment of optimum climate growth conditions to achieve high yield at low expense, good quality, and low environmental load. To achieve these goals, several parameters, such as air temperature, humidity, light intensity, soil moisture, and carbon dioxide concentration, must be monitored and controlled. All these systems are independent. They may affect or be affected by the other functions, so monitoring and controlling them in an integrated system is of great importance in obtaining maximum crop production. Good crop management depends on having the right information to make necessary decisions. Often, the grower is the greenhouse sensor and control system—checking conditions and adjusting equipment settings as needed to optimize crop growth. However, even at the smallest facilities, this method is inefficient, time-consuming, and vulnerable to error. The grower or staff can’t physically monitor and control the greenhouse environment around the clock, but a remote greenhouse monitoring and control system can automate much of the work and is on duty 24/7. To improve crop management, a number of sensors and instruments can (and should) be used to monitor crop conditions. A control system can then use this information to make regular adjustments to equipment settings to optimize growing conditions. Today, monitoring and control systems are the standard for modern greenhouses, with continued improvements as technology advances. Environment conditions can be maintained by these control systems, where the system can be operated manually and/or automatically.
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Topics Within This Chapter:
- Greenhouse Environmental Monitoring Sensors
- Types of Greenhouse Sensors
- Temperature Sensors
- Humidity Sensors
- Light Sensors
- Carbon Dioxide Sensors
- Irrigation Scheduling with Substrate Sensors
- Wind Speed and Direction Sensors
- Wired vs. Wireless Installations
- Greenhouse Environmental Control Systems
- Theremostats and Timers
- Analog “Stage” Controllers
- Computer Zone Controllers
- Integrated Computer Controls (ICC)
- Greenhouse Wireless Sensor Network
- Greenhouse Applications with WSNs
- Wireless Communication Protocols
- Base Station
- Sensor Nodes
- Sensors
- User Interface
- Data Logging
- Artificial Intelligence in Environmental Monitoring and Control
- Machine learning
- Deep Learning
- Fuzzy Logic
