According to the monitoring and management needs of the modern greenhouse, a modern greenhouse intelligent monitoring system was designed based on the internet of things. The system was consisted of local monitoring subsystem, remote monitoring subsystem and database. The local monitoring subsystem was developed under the construction of Client/Server, but the remote monitoring subsystem with the construction of Browser/Server, and the database is the bridge between them. The hardware system based on distributed CAN bus was applied to realize the real time greenhouse environment data acquisition and equipment control. Also, the error data of the data acquisition system was on-line checked by distributing diagram. In order to improve the response and interactivity of the remote monitoring subsystem, the Ajax based Web data interactive way was applied. Combing the devices’ features, the temperature system intelligent control based on hybrid automata was applied to realize the automatic control of the greenhouse environment. The image recognition technology based on Zernike moments was applied to realize the automatic calibration. The infrared network camera was used to acquire the real-time images of the ventilation, and Zernike moments were utilized to extract the image features, identifying the current state of ventilation by comparing with the pre-set states of the system. Then the runtime could be calculated from the current state to full closed state of the ventilation. The tests showed that the system could provide stable data transmission and reliable control, satisfying the intelligent monitoring of the modern greenhouse.