As an important part of agriculture development, greenhouse provides fertility and increased yields for plants during seasons when they are not suitable for production in some extreme climate areas. However, with the economy development, traditional greenhouse sheds often served the purpose of insulation in the past and did not fully meet the environmental needs of the crops in the greenhouse, so the yield and quality would be restricted. With the development and application of internet technology and soilless cultivation technology, they have achieved high efficiency and precision control in greenhouse’s cultivation and broken the limitation of cultivation, intelligent greenhouses have became the answer.

The intelligent greenhouse is equipped with computer-controlled systems of movable skylights, shading, insulation, heating, wet curtain/fan cooling and spray drip irrigation/irrigation systems, also with mobile seedbeds and other automated facilities. Through the environmental remote monitoring system, the greenhouse achieves full monitoring and management of the soil, air, moisture, temperature, light and other environmental parameters to create the best environment for plant growth and meet growth needs.

What are the advantages?

1.Almost zero crop losses

The indoor environment is stable, it is monitored and managed by modern technology to prevents production losses caused by human factors.

2.Improve product yield and quality

The application of IOT and soilless cultivation technology not only monitor changes indoor environment in real time, but also provide a better understanding of the crop needs, giving the plant a steady nutrients supply, the suitable light, temperature and humidity. They provide the most suitable growing environment for the crop and precious control to improve yield and quality.

3.Cost saving and efficiency

The application of intelligent greenhouse control system can greatly improve the greenhouse efficiency and reduce the labor cost of greenhouse production at the same time. More importantly, the economic benefit of intelligent greenhouse control system is long-term benefit, the longer the use, the lower the labor cost will be.

4.Water and fertilizer integration

The biggest benefit of water and fertilizer integration is to save water and fertilizer, today environment are heavily affected by pesticide residues and serious soil pollution. It is particularly important to improve the water and fertilizer utilization. Water and fertilizer integration can not only ensure the greenhouse crops healthy growth, but also achieve the purposes of yields and efficiency increase of green planting.

5.Green and safe

The use of soilless cultivation techniques and modern scientific monitor and management can effectively reduce pests and diseases to reduce the use or even eliminate the use of pesticides. They ensure that crops are grown green to protect human health. (Portal: What makes you different if you are both "green"?)

Intelligent greenhouse component modules

1.Intelligent greenhouse information acquisition module:to achieve the detection, transmission and reception of environmental signals in the greenhouse.

2.Intelligent video monitoring module: realizes the video monitoring and provides security functions for the greenhouse at the same time.

3.Intelligent equipment control module: combined with the information collection and remote manual or automatic control of the equipment in the greenhouse.

4.Intelligent greenhouse platform management module: to achieve the storage, analysis and information management collected from the greenhouse in various ways.

Intelligent greenhouse main structure

1.Foundation civil construction: greenhouse is surrounded by strip-shaped foundation and concrete pouring (according to the depth of the local permafrost layer, the foundation depth should be not less than 1.5m underground, while the foundation must be located above the supporting layer, the depth of the supporting layer needs to refer to the local geological survey report). The interior of the greenhouse is a dot-matrix foundation, with 0.5m high brick walls around the greenhouse. The cement mortars are plaster finished and apron is 0.5m wide.

2.Main frame: The main body of the greenhouse is mainly composed of steel structure, and the main skeleton of the greenhouse is made of Chinese hot-dip galvanized steel pipes and steel plates. The normal service life is 20 years. The roof drainage adopts double-end drainage and the slope of the rain gutter is 0.25%.

3.Inner shading and insulation system: In summer, the shading curtain can reflect part of the sunlight and diffuse the sunlight into the greenhouse, evenly irradiating the plants to protect the crops from light burns, at the same time the indoor temperature drops by 4-6℃. The internal shading and insulation system can effectively organize infrared overflow to reduce ground radiation heat loss, reduce heating energy consumption, and greatly reduce the greenhouse running costs. It is mainly composed of control box and motor, rack and pinion vice, transmission part, curtain line and curtain cloth.

4.External shading system: In hot summer weather, it is not enough to rely only on a layer of internal shading. The external shading system can keep excess sunlight outside, forming shade and ensuring the best crop growing environment. It is mainly formed by the external shading frame, transmission mechanism, curtain line, control part and curtain.

5.Natural ventilation system: The difference in temperature is used to achieve indoor and outdoor air exchange to reduce the temperature and humidity of the greenhouse. The top of the greenhouse is equipped with a rack and pinion electric window opening and ventilation mechanism to achieve the top window opening, which is an economic and effective method of cooling.

6.Power distribution system: The main electrical control of all electrical equipment of the greenhouse and external shading system is composed of distribution boxes and electric wires. The power distribution box panel should be equipped with various indicators and buttons, switches which are clearly marked and installed orderly.

7.Intelligent greenhouse control system

Information acquisition system: through five types of sensor modules which are air temperature sensor, humidity sensor, light sensor, substrate nutrient sensor and CO2 sensor, the system realizes the real-time monitoring of environmental indices in the greenhouse with functions such as data storage, query, network status monitoring, dynamic display of network topology, sampling interval parameters and real-time query settings, and displaying data processing results in a graphical manner.

Information processing system: Information processing is the core part of the whole construction program, mainly consisting of an upper computer and a lower computer. The upper computer is a PC, the main function is to save and process the data that returned from the lower computer to analyze, make settings orders and control the lower computer to realize system detection, data management and historical data statistics. The lower computer is a microcontroller or a special greenhouse controller, which communicates with the upper computer through RS485 interface, converts the data collected by various sensors (humidity, temperature, light intensity, CO2 concentration, etc.) into digital information and sends it to the upper computer. It also controls various execution systems according to the data transmitted from the upper computer and the pre-set parameters to confirm the operation status of each execution system and realizes the intelligent control of the greenhouse.

Control execution system: through wireless transmission, connecting the control room and the control cabinet, operating the control room central console, you can control the greenhouse fan, external and internal shading, spray drip irrigation, side windows, wet curtains, etc., to achieve remote management. At present, the level of Chinese  greenhouse agriculture automation and intelligent technology is still fall behind the developed countries, However, with the development of IOT and soilless cultivation technology, Chinese intelligent greenhouse is also developing in the direction of intelligence, informatization, high quality and efficiency with low consumption. UPuper rock wool will also escort the modern agriculture development.