SMAC: System for monitoring and automatic control of water, nutrients, and pH in hydroponic nutrient film technique

Abstract

Manual regulation of nutrient solution parameters in hydroponic systems often causes instability and delayed corrective actions. This study presents an Internet of Things (IoT) based system monitoring and automatic control (SMAC) for a nutrient film technique (NFT) hydroponic system to automatically regulate pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), and temperature. The proposed system integrates real-time sensors, automatic actuators, and dual-microcontroller architecture, in which an Arduino Uno performs local control while an ESP32 enables wireless IoT monitoring. An experimental systems engineering approach was applied for system design and performance evaluation. Automatic temperature compensation (ATC) was incorporated into pH and TDS measurements to improve reliability under varying thermal conditions. Experimental results indicate that the temperature sensor achieved an average error of 0.13 °C. The control algorithm corrected pH deviations gradually by approximately ±0.31 pH units (pH Up) and ±0.38 pH units (pH Down) per cycle without overshoot. Nutrient concentration control increased TDS by about 75 ppm per cycle under low-TDS conditions. Stability testing confirmed that pH and TDS remained within optimal ranges after disturbances, while safety mechanisms operated reliably under abnormal temperatures. The results demonstrate that the proposed SMAC system provides accurate, stable, and adaptive control suitable for precision and sustainable hydroponic applications.