A real-time irrigation control system for greenhouses

An automated irrigation computer control system was developed for management of greenhouse container plants. To achieve this was necessary to: 1) choose suitable hardware to control water application; 2) develop a friendly software interface that allows easy control of the system; and 3) test the reliability of the control system. The system consisted of soil moisture sensors, a hardware input/output interface (A/D card), a computer with a software interface and actuators. A graphical user interface developed and evaluated by Testezlaf et al. (1935) was used. A field evaluation of the control system was performed at an experimental greenhouse of the Environmental Horticulture Department of the University of Florida. The results showed that the control system is reliable. A major difficulty is to obtain reliable measurements of container soil-moisture using sensors.