Development of Temperature and Humidity Control System in Straw

Mushroom Growing Farms with the Concept of Internet of Things

(IoT)

Chanchai Arkaphati

, Warathorn Embamrung

Silpakorn University, Thailand. A.fram0072@gmail.com

Keywords: Control system, Temperature, Humidity, Straw mushroom growing farms, Internet of Things (IOT).

Abstract: The objectives of this research were to develop electronic temperature and humidity sensor and to develop

the application to control temperature and humidity in the straw mushroom growing farms by connecting to

electronic devices to check for the straw mushroom farms to have the right temperature and humidity, reduce

workflows of the operation in the aspects of temperature and humidity and to improve the yield of straw

mushrooms to have quality and save labor and time. This is done by using the Internet system coupled with

software development tools under the concept of Internet of Things (IoT ). In this study, the researcher

developed a sensor for managing temperature and humidity through a web application to turn on and off the

water system, lighting and ventilation fan to control the temperature in the straw mushroom growing farms.

Tools and applications used in this study were Node MCU ESP8266 board development set, temperature-

humidity Sensor, relay equipment, water and lamp system, wires, and PCBs. All devices were developed to

be integrated with Arduino software. C / C ++ and PHP were used for the development. The methods of study

and system development was started by studying the information about straw mushrooms and straw

mushroom area to collect information from the operator. All data was analyzed to be a guideline for the

development, planning, designing development of equipment and software systems, preparing the

development tools. The control scope was defined in system design. After the system has been developed, the

equipment and software were tested in straw mushroom growing farms. The system performance and

problems encountered by system testing were analyzed. The system was also updated from problems

encountered. The system performance was also summarized the before being used as a model for further

development in the future.

1 INTRODUCTION

"Straw Mushroom" is an agricultural product and one

of industries that has driven the country’s economy.

It is a popular consumable agricultural product. It is

highly nutritious, delicious, inexpensive, and can be

processed into a variety of food. (Autrakul, 1997) The

market demand is high. It is an economic mushroom

that grows on a stack of moist rice straw. It is a fungus

that grows starting with the fibers of the fungus

grouping within a few hours in an appropriate

environment. The increasing demand in the market

makes straw mushroom cultivation becoming more

and more popular. There is a need for internal straw

mushroom farms management to control temperature

by using thermometer in each mushroom farms with

staffs to periodically walk and check the temperature.

If the temperature is high, water would be turned on

to lower the temperature. If the temperature is low, it

is necessary to turn on the bulb to warm up the

temperature in the mushroom farms. This is the

background of the problem with the growth of

mushrooms and the need to use labor to maintain and

control the temperature and regularity of mushroom

farms at all times. This would cause labor and time.

(Chang and Philip,2004)

From the basic information, the researcher

collected the data and analyzed the problem from the

operator of The muchroom farm. The process was

carefully supervised at every step to control the

temperature of the mushroom farms.

It was found that the cost of cultivating 1

mushroom is 2,500 baht, revenue from harvesting

mushroom is approximately 5 ,0 0 0 baht or profit

Arkapati, C. and Embamrung, W.

Development of Temperature and Humidity Control System in Straw Mushroom Growing Farms with the Concept of Internet of Things (IoT).

DOI: 10.5220/0010038700840091

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Computer, Environment, Agriculture, Social Science, Health Science, Engineering and Technology (ICEST 2018), pages 84-91

ISBN: 978-989-758-496-1

about 2,500 baht per farm. Mushroom investing can

be done twice in 1 month. The average yield is 30-50

kg. 1 kg of mushrooms can be sold in the market at

the price of roughly 75 - 80 baht. From the problems

encountered, if the temperature and humidity in the

mushroom farm is high or too low, it will result in

mushrooms do not flower, low production or damage.

This results in mushrooms not being of desire

standard size and sold at low prices.(Chang,1980)

The appropriate temperature for straw mushroom

flowering is fibrous mushroom that is approximately

32-4 0 degrees and the humidity in straw mushroom

flowering is at 80 - 90% and the temperature is good

for the flowering of the mushrooms are at 2 8 - 3 2

degrees and good humidity in flowering will be 7 0 -

8 0 % (Chang 1974;Chang,1996) From the

information, it is important to know that the

temperature and humidity control of mushroom

cultivation is an important factor so responsive

application would be developed by being connected

to the electronic device developed by Internet of

Things (IOT) concept (Vermesan and Peter,2013) to

develop a temperature and humidity management

system to turn the water, lighting, and ventilation fan

system on and off in order to control the temperature

and humidity in mushroom farms through an

application by the functionality of the Internet

coupled with technological devices. This would be

done by using temperature and humidity sensors in

mushroom growing farms instead of using only

thermometer.

2 OBJECTIVE

1. To develop an electronic device to detect and

control temperature and humidity in mushroom

growing farms.

2. To develop application systems to control

temperature and humidity in mushroom growing

farms by being connected to the electronic equipment

to monitor each stage within mushroom farms for

achieving the appropriate temperature and humidity.

3 EXPECTED BENEFITS

1. The system reduces the operation of the mushroom

farm operators in the aspects of temperature and

humidity control.

2. The system helps to save labor costs and time to

work.

3. The system will improve the straw mushroom

output rate and quality standards in production.

4 MATERIALS AND METHODS

4.1 Tools and Equipment Used

1. Node MCU ESP8266 board

2. DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor

3. Relay turning on and off the water and light bolt

4. Jumper

5. PCB board

6. Arduino program

7. C/C++and PHP languages of Programming

5 LITERATURE REVIEW

5.1 Theory and Factors Affecting

Straw Mushroom Growth

Straw mushroom life cycle mushroom is a low class

plant. Seed spore falling on relative good humidity,

temperature, and food, will grow into mushrooms. It

grows to a fin and a flower. When factors affecting

the growth of mushroom were studies, it was found

that besides, the materials used, factors affecting

growth were also appropriate acidity, light,

temperature, humidity, climate and environment. The

size of each straw mushroom farm is 4x5 m, which is

divided into two sides, there were 3 layers on each

side. Each layer is 80 cm high, with a distance of no

longer 1 m from the wall of the farm. The temperature

has a direct impact on the growth of each mushroom

species starting from spore growing, the growth of the

fiber to the point of being mushroom right

temperature in each range. Material humidity and

relative humidity in the air must be taken into

account, which means the amount of water vapor in

the air at that time. The relative humidity of

mushrooms is 60%. The relative humidity creation in

the air is done spraying the water system or fog

system to increase the relative humidity.

Additionally, the light is something is needed to be

controlled especially light from the sun because it will

directly affect the temperature and humidity.

However, mushrooms need light to act as a catalyst

for the fusion and develop into a complete mushroom.

(See at Figure 1.)

Development of Temperature and Humidity Control System in Straw Mushroom Growing Farms with the Concept of Internet of Things

(IoT)

Figure 1. Life Cycle of the Mushroom

Weather is another factor that enables mushrooms

to grow well and Oxygen is needed for mushroom to

breathe. Good ventilation will effectively help the

growth of the fiber and the development of

mushroom. (Stamets,1993) This is because of the

accumulation of carbon dioxide can cause fibers to

suddenly stop growing causing mushroom to be

rotten. Wind is another factor that impacts the

humidity temperature of the seeding material, air

humidity, and mushroom pests.

5.2 Internet of Thing (IoT) Concept

The Internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical

devices, vehicles, home appliances and other items

embedded with electronics, software, sensors,

actuators, and network connectivity which enables

these objects to connect and exchange data (Brown,

2016) Each thing is uniquely identifiable through its

embedded computing system but is able to inter-

operate within the existing Internet infrastructure.

The IoT allows objects to be sensed or controlled

remotely across existing network infrastructure,

[6]

creating opportunities for more direct integration of

the physical world into computer-based systems, and

resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and

economic benefit in addition to reduced human

intervention. (Vermesan and Peter ,2013). When the

IoT is augmented with sensors and actuators, the

technology becomes an instance of the more general

class of cyber-physical systems, which also

encompasses technologies such as smart grids, virtual

power plants, smart homes, intelligent transportation

and smart cities. Santucci, Gérald, 2016) "Things", in

the IoT sense, can refer to a wide variety of devices

such as heart monitoring implants, biochip

transponders on farm animals, cameras streaming live

feeds of wild animals in coastal waters, automobiles

with built-in sensors.Legal scholars suggest regarding

"things" as an "inextricable mixture of hardware,

software, data and service" (Wigmore, 2014).

5.3 Electronic Equipment Used for

System Development

NodeMCU

ESP

8266

Board Development

NodeMCU is a platform that helps build the Internet

of Things (IoT) project consisting of a development

kit comprised of a circuit board. The circuit board that

is open source software can be developed manually

with the Lau language, making it easier to use. It

comes with Wi-Fi ESP 8266 module. This is the key

to the Internet connection. NodeMCU is similar to

Arduino with built-in input-output port to be able to

program controlling input / output devices without

having to go through any other device. C / C ++

programming language can be used.

5.4 Node MCU Development Kit

Studies were conducted on the operation of the

temperature and humidity control system by using

Node MCU ESP8266 to control the sensors and

hardware used for the Mushroom farms’ climate

control system by developing the Node MCU kit, or

Node MCU Devkit. This kit is based on the Wi-Fi

module named ESP 8266 With GPIO PWM, I 2 C, 1-

Wire and ADC to be coupled on one board with a

built-in USB-TTL. There is no need to be separately

purchased similar to using ESP. it usually makes it

easier to be used with PCB antenna for wireless

transmission. The researcher used a micro-USB

connector for power supply voltage or the equivalent

+5 V. and for downloading the firmware.

5.5 DHT22 Temperature & Relative

Humidity Sensor Module

It is a device that can be applied to the various

embedded system design such as temperature and

humidity measurements, room temperature, and

humidity recorders. These devices vary by

manufacturer, price, accuracy, measurement details,

digital or analog values, etc. The experiment on the

cheap DHT22 AM 2302 module provides a digital

value and uses a single digital pin to be connected to

Serial Data, Bi-Rirectional by connecting it to the

Arduino to read from the DHT22 AM sensor device.

(See at Figure2.)

ICEST 2018 - 3rd International Conference of Computer, Environment, Agriculture, Social Science, Health Science, Engineering and

Technology

Figure 2. DHT22 AM sensor

5.6 Wireless Sensor Network

It is using a number of small sensor devices to

measure environmental characteristics and the

information was processed to create new knowledge

about the environment around us or automatically

respond to changes in the environment. Examples of

the use of this wireless sensor network are the

insertion of sensors into certain rare birds to detect the

temperature changes that affect the relocation of these

birds, the installation of sensors in large chemical

mixers or chemical pipelines in industrial plants for

chemical leakage, using many movement sensor

devices to detect the abnormalities of those

instruments so the abnormalities can take care of it

before it causes damage. Sensors are installed around

the airport to detect intruders in unauthorized areas.

From these examples, it can be seen that using a

number of different types of wireless sensor networks

is a very small sensor called a mote, developed by

Intel and University of California (UC) at Berkeley.

The mote is a small computer for measuring humidity

and temperature or other environment. It works by

using conventional batteries and communicating with

other nearby mote by adhoc wireless network for data

to be transmitted between the motes until it reaches

the destination that may be a computer or other

instruments that is used for measured data collection.

The wireless network causes a new computing

paradigm to be created called “proactive computing”,

which replaces the usual computer waiting for human

instruction but proactive computing will forecast the

environment that is needed by human needs and the

environment is able to operate in advance of human.

If necessary, proactive computing can occur due to

the wireless sensor enables the computer to

thoroughly and quickly receive information from the

real world without the need for human input.

Therefore, humans can proactively program the

computer to operate as soon as the environment is as

forecasted without having to wait for the instruction

from the computer similar to an interactive system.

5.7 Research Related to the

Development of Electronic Device

for Automatic Control

Kittisak Saengprasit, et.al. (2017) has conducted a

study and developed automatic control system for

Angel mushroom farms with the water level sensor to

control water level by using the resistance, high, and

low value to indicate the amount of water. The

measured values are then sent to the control board and

processed to send signals to the pump control for

controlling the water turning on – off in mushroom

farm. Additionally, humidity control with humidity

sensor then would send the value to the control board

and the signal is also sent to control the fog builder to

create the humidity. The information obtained from

the control board would be displayed on the LCD

screen. The dominant point of the system is it can be

used to automatically water level control and

humidity control. However, there are also

disadvantages in the aspect of the display system

would be the information being displayed on the LCD

monitor only. Additionally, the research conducted

by Kittiphong Niamnok, et al. (2009), has developed

a climate control system to be used inside straw

mushroom farm. The system would be able to

automatically control temperature and humidity and

ventilation. There is also system controlling water

turning on and off the water pump to reduce the

temperature inside the greenhouse.

Piyada Thonsungnoen (2017) Majoring in

Medical Devices, King Mongkut's University of

Technology North Bangkok has developed

temperature testing and sensor device that is able to

set the temperature through monitor and LCD

monitor. The displayed is on the LCD monitor. The

temperature is measured and stored in the SD

memory card with alarm being through light signaling

when the temperature inside the medicine cabinet is

abnormal.

Sirodom Ramang (2011), a student in Business

Information Technology Faculty of Information and

Communication Technology, Silpakorn University

has developed a climate control system with a case

study on Ban Het Sung Men by designing the system

to be able display the temperature and humidity

through the systemม display alerts when temperature

and humidity changes. The system can control the

operation of mushroom greenhouse equipment such

as ventilation fan, and water sprayer or turn off and

on the device to stop or work to control temperature

and humidity. The annual temperature and humidity

reports can be viewed daily in the form of

comparative graphs. Moreover, Thirayot Wangthong

Development of Temperature and Humidity Control System in Straw Mushroom Growing Farms with the Concept of Internet of Things

(IoT)

and Prayun Chongchan ( 2015), Electrical

Engineering Program, Faculty of Engineering,

Mahanakorn University has developed an automatic

humidity control system in a closed mushroom farm

to control temperature and humidity inside the farm

with the LCD to display the results such as date, time,

temperature, humidity on the control board.

Additionally, temperature in the farm can be

controlled in the high or low range as set. The

temperature and humidity is also stored such as the

date, time, temperature, and humidity on the control

box to have temperature and humidity inside the farm

to be in the set range. The temperature and humidity

can be stored as desired such as every minute, every

10 minutes, every hour, etc.

The system is able to record temperature and

humidity values. There were temperature and a port

board instructing the fan to work inside to

automatically function control box .Ventilation works

automatically when the temperature is high in the

greenhouse.

5.8 System Process and Development

The researcher has conducted studies on the

development of the system according to the schedule

and the operational plan to achieve the set scope and

objectives as follows:

1) Study on mushrooms and going onsite to

mushroom growing areas to collect data and prepare

a plan for the design of the equipment

2) Data collection and analysis to guide the

Development of the system

3) Defining the scope of system control

4) The system design and analysis

5) Preparing the system development tools

6) Starting the system development

7) The system was tested after the system

development and improvement.

8) The performance of the system was then

summarized

9) Documents and manuals were prepared

Development of the system

6 SAMPLING

This research were use the sampling for collecting

data from The 2 Muchroom Farms:-

1. Straw Muchroom Cottage Farm, Bangbuathong

District Nonthaburi Province, Thailand.

2. Khunyi Straw muchroom Farm, Cholburi

Province, Thailand.

6.1 Analysis and Systems Design

Process

Analysis and design were conducted by the developer

to demonstrate patterns and procedures to develop a

system composing of:

6.1.1 System Flowchart

Designing flowchart system by controlling

temperature and humidity system. There are users

involved in the system, such as the administrator, who

will oversee and manage the temperature control

system of mushroom farms and request see the results

of the system in The Muchroom Cottage Farm and

Khunyi straw mushroom farm. After collocating data

from the operator.

The Researcher can be to designing a System

flowchart (see figure 3.), Flowchart of User system

(see figure 4.) Flowchart Alert System and

Temperature Control (see figure 5.) and ER-Diagram

(see figure 6.)

Data

studies

Design

-Studies were

conducted on

the preliminary

information

-Going onsite to

collect data

-Analyzing

problems and

solution

guideline

The ways

to design

were

analyzed.

-The design

process

Check

Temp

-The ways

to design

were

analyzed.

-The design

process

ICEST 2018 - 3rd International Conference of Computer, Environment, Agriculture, Social Science, Health Science, Engineering and

Technology

Figure 3. System Flowchart

Figure 4. Flowchart of Users system

Figure 5. Flowchart Alert System and Temperature Control

Figure 6. ER Diagram

7 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The electronic temperature and humidity sensor were

connect with the application to control temperature

and humidity in the straw mushroom growing farms

by connecting to electronic devices to check for the

straw mushroom farms to have the right temperature

and humidity. This is done by using the Internet

system coupled with software development tools

under the concept of Internet of Things (IoT). In this

study, the researcher developed a sensor for

Development of Temperature and Humidity Control System in Straw Mushroom Growing Farms with the Concept of Internet of Things

(IoT)

managing temperature and humidity through a web

application to turn on and off the water system,

lighting and ventilation fan to control the temperature

in the straw mushroom growing farms. All devices

were developed to be integrated with Arduino

software. C / C ++ and PHP were used for the

development.

After to design and developed the system function

process results of the temperature and humidity

control system would be divided into two phases:

(See the model at Figure 7)

The first phase is to control the temperature and

humidity for mushrooms formation with control on

turning on and off the light in this period. This is

because during this period, the fiber of the mushroom

will grow well in light blue lighting.In the second

phase, the temperature and humidity would be

controlled for the mushroom formation. In this

period, if the temperature is too high, the mushroom

will form. However, users can turn on the system or

automatically activate the water system to reduce the

temperature or increase moisture in the mushroom

farm through the web application. This included light

bulbs or ventilation.

Additionally, temperature and humidity

everywhere can be monitored or controlled without

having to walk around each mushroom farm. This

will save labor costs and time. It will also increase

productivity, and contributes to increasing revenue

for mushroom growers.

7.1 The Operation of the System

1. DHT22sensor can be used to monitor the

temperature and humidity of the mushroom farm.

2. Temperature and humidity can be displayed in real

time through web application.

3. Water, lamps and fans can be turned on and off

through the relay device.

7.2 The System User Operation

1. Temperature and moisture can be displayed in real

time through web application.

2. Water, lamps and fans can be turned on and off

through web application.

3. Past temperature, humidity and the system working

condition can be monitored through the system.

Figure7. The temperature and humidity control system

model.

After the system has been developed, the equipment

and software were tested in sampling (The Muchroom

Cottage Farm and Khunyi straw mushroom farm) The

straw mushroom growing farms. The system

performance and problems encountered by system

testing were analyzed. The system was also updated

from problems encountered. The system performance

was also summarized the before being used as a

model for further development in the future.

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Development of Temperature and Humidity Control System in Straw Mushroom Growing Farms with the Concept of Internet of Things

(IoT)