An IoT Platform for Urban Farming

Technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) and big data have been widely adopted to improve quality of life. In this paper, an IoT platform is proposed to automate urban farming process by embodiment of IoT, big data and cloud computing. The IoT platform is designed so that users especially farmers can monitor the growing environment and the nutrient can be adjusted automatically without human intervention. The platform utilises pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), oxidation reduction potential (ORP) and temperature data to regulate the optimum concentration of the nutrient solutions. The growth rate of the plant is monitored continuously using camera. The proposed system uses a WiFi-based network and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol to send sensor data from IoT device to server hosted in the cloud. Web and mobile based user application is included in the platform to allow users to monitor the urban farm anytime, anywhere.