Smart greenhouse climate control with real-time fault detection and energy-aware automation

In response to increasing global climate variability and the environmental sensitivity of crop production, greenhouse cultivation has become an essential agricultural strategy. This study proposes a low-cost, modular intelligent temperature control system designed specifically for greenhouses. The system integrates ZigBee-based environmental sensing, ESP32-based edge computing, and the Home Assistant platform. Leveraging DHT11 temperature sensors, Tuya smart plugs, and low-code configuration via ESPHome, the architecture enables real-time climate monitoring and automated environmental regulation. A prototype greenhouse was constructed to experimentally evaluate system performance across five key dimensions: sensor placement, response time, energy efficiency, fault tolerance, and ZigBee communication range. Results show that sensors positioned at crop canopy height provided the most representative environmental data. The system maintained a total control latency under 90 s, balancing responsiveness with optimized energy use. A comparative analysis of two temperature control strategies, with ranges of 32 to 35 °C and 33 to 34 °C, respectively, revealed that the stricter range led to 2.2 times greater energy consumption, underscoring the inherent balance between temperature regulation precision and energy efficiency. ZigBee communication achieved over 140 m of line-of-sight range and demonstrated rapid self-healing capability under network disruption. The proposed approach supports the development of intelligent, data-driven environmental control systems for future smart farming applications and precision agriculture.