Soil moisture is the amount of water in the soil. It
plays a crucial role for efficient photosynthesis, respiration,
transpiration and transportation of minerals and other
nutrients through the plant. Proper irrigation schedule is
very critical to plant growth. This paper presents a soil
moisture monitoring system which comprises of commercially
available soil moisture sensor Decagon EC-5, low power
nRF24L01 wireless transceiver, and MPC82G516A
microcontroller. The sensed soil moisture content from the
EC-5 sensor node will be transmitted to the coordinator via
2.5GHZ wireless signal. The coordinator will transmit the data
to the computer using RS232 interface. The key components
used in the proposed system are low cost and more flexible. The
locally developed MPC82G516A microcontroller consumes low
power due to its 1-T instruction time. In addition, the EC-5
sensing electrode also has advantages of easy installation and
replacement in the farm. The developed system provides a
better data transmitted and processed wirelessly and it can
serve as a basis for efficient irrigation scheduling.