Published in Scientific Papers. Series B, Horticulture, Volume LXII
Written by Adrian ZĂRNESCU, Răzvan UNGURELU, Marius – Ionuţ MACOVEI, Gaudenţiu VĂRZARU
The paper presents a device for soil pH determination on-site and remote transmission of the result. Soil pH is an indicator of the soil quality because it affects plant growing. Normally, soil samples are taken from the field and tested in-door in aqueous solutions using ISO 10390: 2005 specification. However, it was an increasing demand for on-site measurements materialized in a plethora of stand-alone devices. Most of them offer a narrow range of pH values, e.g. 3 to 8, because the majority of plants has an optimum range between 5.5 and 7.5. The Internet of Things exigencies have led to design a node of multiple sensors including soil pH measurement with an increased precision. Therefore, it was used a sensor for hydrogen ion activity measurement based on glass membrane as a junction between the soil solution and a reference solution. The probe was calibrated using pH known solutions and then tested on different soil samples - all data being remotely collected. The results emphasized the capability of the device to measure the soil pH on-site and to send it to remote.
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