A low cost architecture for remote control and monitoring of greenhouse fields

A low cost architecture is proposed for remote monitoring and control of a greenhouse field. The components needed for such a system are identified by examining the needs and trends of the environmental control systems as well as looking for the appropriate technologies that would offer a low cost. The key features of the proposed platform are remote operation, flexibility, ease of deployment, scalability and low cost. A sensing system, a communication system and a data processing system are components needed in order to monitor greenhouse fields placed in remote locations. Wired and wireless sensors are developed for collecting environmental data that characterize the operation of a greenhouse. A family of controllers and smart actuators is used next to the mentioned components in order to set up a control system whose behavior can be remotely programmed. A series of C++ applications running on Linux and Windows platforms were developed for experimenting and testing the complete telematic system.