DefinePK

Abstract

Low temperature, high humidity and good ventilation are the important components towards developing mushroom house and produce a healthy mushroom growth. For conventional mushroom house, exhaust fans and humidifier or also known as mist spray were normally used in the mushroom’s house and being manually switched on or off by users. The objectives of this project are to control the mushroom house temperature at below 30°C and humidity above 60% by developing an automated control system using Arduino Uno with solar system for power source. Researchers had designed an automated control system with additional custom cooling pad added to the existing exhaust fan and humidifier systems. This is to further reduce the mushroom house temperature and increase the humidity which the overall system will be monitored and controlled through mobile phone application. Data logger had been used to monitor daily performance and results showed from 12.00 p.m to 5.00 p.m the temperature and humidity had entered the critical condition oyster mushroom in Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka whereby it reached high temperature (>30°C) and lower humidity percentage (<60%) and this may cause the mushroom dry and subduing the mushroom growth. The implementation of automated control system with combination of custom cooling pad, exhaust fan including humidifier had given significant lower mushroom house temperature and higher humidity level which control to ideal mushroom growth environment automatically. Results showed with automated control system the average temperature had been successfully reduced from max 38.7°C to min 29.4°C while the humidity average performance had been significantly increased from min 52.7% to 79.4%. The mushroom house had been successfully developed towards ideal mushroom growth condition with the assist of automated control system.