Design and Modeling of an Automated Solar Powered Irrigation and Water Pumping System with Time Regulation

Abstract

The automatic solar powered time regulated water pumping and irrigation system was designed in such a way that the system function as a source of artificial irrigation mechanism for a farm land and also to pump water from the ground into a storage tank. The system was designed to operate using solar power and it was also be time based. In order to achieve this feat, a microcontroller was programmed to receive signal from input switches and respond by collecting data from a real time clocking integrated circuit, the data t sent by the input switches to the microcontroller was digital. Using pull up resistors, the state of the switch to the microcontroller is a high state. However when the switch is pressed, the signal turns to low, this signifies to the controller that a valid signal is sent. The program written into the ROM of the microcontroller set the screen in such a way that the user will make sense out of the data. The content of the data is basically to set time. Time for pump operation, time for pump in-operation duration and time for deactivation of the pump, meanwhile, the data displayed on the screen was sent by the microcontroller, into a real time clock integrated circuit, DS1307. This real time clock has the ability to store time in a format that corresponds to seconds, hours, minutes, days, months, years. It stored these data in its ROM and it ready to output this stored data upon command. The pump was controlled by the use of an electromechanical relay which is driven by a transistor with resistor biased. When the system desires the pump to start to work, it will send a high signal to the transistor to switch on the relay and when it desires the pump to stop, it will send a low signal to the transistor to shut down the relay. The circuit is powered by a solar panel which also doubles as charger for a rechargeable battery. This battery is necessary for power storage when the sun is set.