Abstract
<jats:p>Modern agriculture faces increasing pressure from climate change, scarcity of water and arable land, and growing environmental pollution, which limits the effectiveness of traditional soil-based farming. Hydroponic cultivation offers a promising alternative but requires precise, adaptive control of nonlinear processes under varying external disturbances. This paper presents an intelligent control system for hydroponic complexes based on a hybrid Fuzzy–PID strategy integrated with an IoT architecture using the ESP8266 microcontroller. The experimental setup employs a nutrient film technique (NFT) configuration with a distributed sensor network for pH, electrical conductivity (EC), air and solution temperature, humidity, and light intensity. The fuzzy logic module continuously tunes the PID gains in real time according to error and error variation, enhancing robustness and adaptability. Experimental and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed controller maintains pH in the optimal range of 5.8–6.5, improves settling time by approximately 25–30%, and reduces overshoot by about 20% compared with conventional PID control. Moreover, water and nutrient consumption decrease by 10–15% due to more stable regulation of process variables. The IoT-based monitoring subsystem enables reliable real-time supervision and remote management, making the solution suitable for sustainable, resource-efficient agriculture.</jats:p>