A Low-power Wireless Sensing Unit for Hydro-System Automation

Farms, greenhouses, orchards, ranches, and vineyards are all dependent on irrigation systems. Modern irrigation systems are equipped with an assortment of water reserves, sheds, and tanks to store water for later use or to manage the flow, time, or quality of the water delivered to the crops. In comparison to expensive, huge, complex, proprietary, cloud dependent, often manual, and very energy hungry industrial solutions out on the market, Hydro-System Automation (HA) is a cheaper, smaller, simpler, modular, smart, and sustainable Hydro-System. The design entails sensing and actuating units as well as a wireless communications subsystem between said units. The Sensing Units (SU)s are composed of cheaper, smaller, simpler, and more sustainable sensors, micro-controllers, electronics, solar panels, and batteries than those used in current industrial solutions available. Future SUs will be packaged in 3D-printed casings which are cheaper to produce, can be custom fabricated to incorporate specific designs, fit in tight spots, and meet a variety of environments, installation requirements, and quality standards. The Actuating Units (AU)s are composed of automated pumping and/or valve stations which are powered via solar panels. The wireless communications sub-system is responsible for maintaining the overall cohesion of the system via a custom routing protocol atop a transport layer such as LoRa and a wireless physical layer utilizing RFM95 Radio Modules in the 915/916 MHz frequency band. Prototypes of the SUs have proven the cost effectiveness, simplicity, and energy efficiency of their design.