Publication

Abstract : The technological and scientific advancement in the field of agriculture has opened a new era for design and development of modern devices for plant health monitoring. The analysis of various parameters, which affects the plant health such as soil temperature, moisture level and pH are easier with the use of advanced devices like Raspberry Pi and Arduino integrated with different types of sensors. The development of infragram technology has created new possibilities to capture infragram images, where both infrared and visible reflectance are obtained in a single image. The rationale of this paper is to monitor the health of a small scale aquaponics vegetation using Infragram technology and Raspberry Pi. The proposed experimental setup captures infragram images using a low cost modified web camera containing infra-blue filter. These images are post-processed to calculate normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which is a good indicator of photosynthetic activity in plants. The study also assesses and monitors the influence of various parameters in the aquaponics system such as nitrogen usage by plants and pH change in the system under different illumination conditions. The study shows that the change in pH and health condition of the plant due to the variation in photosynthesis are the major factors that affects the balance of nitrogen cycle in the aquaponics system. © Springer India 2016.