Smart phone means smart irrigation
Russell Jordan is never too out of touch
with his farm - thanks to his automated
irrigation system.
Even if he’s hundreds of kilometres
away, he can turn the water on and off
with a few taps on his phone and his
cane blocks can tell him when they
need a drink.
Russell has had automation on his Giru
property, in the Burdekin region south
of Townsville, since 2009.
“That trial was only on the first two
blocks of the farm, but it worked so well
I’ve now made it fit this whole farm,”
Russell says.
Through a Rural Water Use Efficiency
funding round, he’s spent $4,000 adding
more in-ground AquaSpy sensors.
Via a transmission post, the sensors
relay radio signals to a control box
which talks to AquaLink software on
his home computer. Then using the
TeamViewer app, Russell connects to
his home computer and accesses the
information on his smartphone.
All the signals bouncing around mean
that very little water is wasted in run
off from the farm, no unnecessary
electricity is used in pumping and no
time or fuel is wasted driving around
checking water.
“The most important part of this whole
system is the sensors down the bottom
end of the paddock telling the system
that it’s time to either change valves or
turn the pump off and send me an SMS,”
Russell explains.
The other big advantage Russell says
is that the automatic shutdown can
happen in the early hours of the
morning..
“If at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning it
detects water, it will shut down or it will
switch to the next set without me! That’s
another saving I can see,” Russell smiles.
Early on in the trial, Russell had a
SIRMOD model run to work out how
fast the irrigation was seeping into his
soil.
In addition, lysimeters (which look like
cups with a vacuum tube) are buried
in the soil at 1.5 metres to monitor how
“I used to drive around and watch for
the water to be visible at the bottom end.
Now the sensors will shut the system off
before I’ve seen water.
“At first I was worried, but if I come back
in two hours the flow’s made it through.”
Russell irrigates his cane by sending
water along the ground. Sensors
detect when the flow reaches a certain
point in the paddock and the valve is
closed meaning nothing runs off.
much water seeps past the root zone of
his sugarcane plants.
The results help guide him in knowing
how much irrigation to schedule to
ensure it just gets to the cane’s root zone
and no further.
The moisture probes and sensors are
gathered up before harvest so they don’t
get damaged and then re-installed
afterwards.
Russell’s phone receives alerts when the
flow rate through his pump drops and it
loses efficiency allowing him to shut it
down and investigate. Often it’s weeds
from the channel choking the inlet.
“While a lot of it is automated, I still
maintain control so if it starts raining at
home, or rain is forecast, I can turn the
pump off and stop irrigating,” he says.
“We’ve got three farms so I could be
doing water on one of the other farms
while this one is changing sets without
me or turning itself off.”
The 65 hectare farm running on the
automated system represents a quarter
of the cane area that Russell farms.
The other farms are set up to collect and
fully recycle any water that runs off the
paddocks, preventing it from running
out and into the water table.
Together the three farms produce
25,000 – 27,000 tonnes of cane each
season with the main varieties being
Q183, Q228 and Q208.
Eventually, Russell plans to automate
another of the farms from the same
software.
Russell with Aaron, Kaydee and Emma at the nerve-centre of the automated irrigation system, messages from sensors in the
paddock relay back to his home computer and phone and control the pump.