Hi, as part of my HA project ‘core requirements’ I need to monitor the incoming water flow from 800 meters away from my homestead at regular (<5mins) intervals. I am keen to base my device around a G3/4 Water Flow Sensor (Seeed Studio) as they seem great bang for bucks and suit my flow rates and pipe diameter. The site will have power and is line of site, however, again will be out of normal WiFi range. My question is, has anyone built a device (Seeeduino/Arduino/ESP32 etc) with long range WiFi or GSM/SIM onboard?
There is work being done to support LoRa in ESPHome, no idea how long this will take though:
Have you considered wifi p2p bridge installation? You say you have line of sight and power so the harder part is covered.
Here is a system that has a maximum distance of 10 miles,
[Bridge]
I have no affiliation with the company. This system is US$400 so its not cheap.
1 Like
I’m a big fan of the HC-12 modules. You can buy them for a few USD/EUR on Ali or Amazon. They’re based on the very powerful long range SiLabs Si4463/38 RF transceiver chips and they work in the 433MHz band on multiple configurable channels. They expose a simple interface over serial and can be easily interfaced with an Arduino, ESPs, etc. They’re not LoRa though and support up to 115200 Baud links.
I’ve built an entire DIY long range mesh network on top of those. I use them mostly for remote electric fence monitoring, controlling solar powered well pumps on our horse pastures and some outside lighting. I can get distances up to 1.5km line of sight on some solar powered nodes with a good antenna. They’re extremely reliable. And no need to engineer an entire RF stack either. If you’re only looking to do a simple point to point link, they behave just like an over-the-air half duplex serial connection. Super easy.
These guys here get over 2km line of sight with the modules and they’re not even using the maximum tx power.
1 Like
Sounds like a perfect use case for LoRa.
You could search PowerX Water - there was (or is) a crowdfunding event for flow monitoring, if you are looking for something less DIY-ish.
1 Like
@HeyImAlex, horse farmer as well. fence monitoring, controlling water are all things i need to implement at some point. …we have built a new homestead 800m from the horse infrastructure. I wanting to be able to see if there is abnormal water flow indicating a leak as we pay domestic retail $ on the water as a priority, however, down the track I want to be able to control a valve or two in the same location, perhaps monitor a pump, perhaps control lights (the building is our stable block).
These little RF modules (also applicable to LoRa) are most useful when you’re in either an energy constrained situation (battery, solar) or in a point-multipoint setup with lots of physically disjoint sensors or controlled devices and one single central gateway.
I think in your case it might be better to use a Wifi point-to-point system, linking both buildings together. That would give full internet access to your outbuilding and you could even have high bandwidth devices like an IP camera in the stables (which is nice). 800m should be attainable with budget gear like some of the 5GHz directional antenna stuff from tplink.
Just don’t dig a cable ditch… We went through this and it was much less than 800m… Never again lol
1 Like
Sounds like a much more sensible option.
Just another thought - Do you power the site 800m away from your home? And is it under the same meter / circuit? If yes to both, would a pair of powerline networking adapters an option at all?
Don’t know much about of powerline in general, though. Maybe the technology would not be good for 800m? Maybe noise from other devices on the same circuit would make powerline not feasible?
Again, just an idea.
different supplies and I would be certain not allowed where i live (nanny state)