Smart Aquaponics System for Urban Farming

Food security and sustainability is a major concern for Singapore due to its rapid urbanization, land scarcity, and low local food productions of fish and leafy vegetables. This paper attempts to design and develop a smart aquaponics system that can synergize fish farming and plant growing. Various sensors, actuators, microcontroller, and microprocessor were employed in the system to monitor and control water quality, light intensity, and fish feed. To ensure healthy growing environment for fish and plant, early warnings in form of email, short message service, and push notification are automatically sent to the user when the sensor detects any abnormal condition. Concurrently, the respective actuator will intervene and rectify the abnormal condition without human interference. Moreover, fish feed is dispensed at the user preset timings of the day. All system activities and live sensor measurements are securely stored in a cloud storage for data analysis. User-friendly web and mobile applications were also created to provide graphical user interfaces between the aquaponics system and the user. Additionally, the user can monitor the aquaponics facilities live from web application through a camera module of the system. As such, the proposed smart aquaponics system has demonstrated to be a self-sustainable, cost-effective, and eco-friendly urban farming that can attract commercial farmers and home gardeners.