Problem / Challenge
Small terrace farms in Jaipur lose 30–40% of irrigation water because schedules are manual and rainfall is unpredictable. Youth farmers needed an affordable way to monitor soil moisture without expensive IoT kits.
What I Did
I built a sensor-assisted drip controller using a NodeMCU board, capacitive soil probes, and a solenoid valve salvaged from an old washing machine. The controller sends moisture alerts to a simple mobile dashboard built with MIT App Inventor.
Results
Over six weeks we reduced water use by 28% on a 200 sq ft terrace plot while maintaining tomato yield. Three neighbouring households adopted the open-source wiring diagram.
Advice for Others
Start with one crop and one sensor zone. Document every failure — our first prototype fried two relays before we added proper flyback diodes. Share your BOM publicly so rural youth can replicate without vendor lock-in.