Safe remote irrigation system setup

[zbertalan (Bertalan Zacher)]

Hello everyone,

I have a project in my mind for a while and I just started to look into the details a few days ago. I have a plot of land 1 hour’s drive from my house where I planted 22 small trees last year. As i don’t want to go there every two days in the summer just to water them I was thinking about to automate the whole process with some sensory feedback. I have a water outlet 1 metre deep underground. I don’t know the exact pressure, it can depend on many things.

I think the inner diameter of the main water pipe should be around 25-32mm so the connectors should be 3/4" or 1". I’d prefer 1" system leaving room for future expansion. The main water pipe would be 100-150m long, from which the thinner pipes would branch off and go directly to the trees.

What I want to achive is something like this:

• water the trees 2-3 times/week for an hour with 10-20 liter/tree
• use some kind of dripping system to achive the 20 liter/tree/hour
• measure the water pressure and/or the water flow to control the watering by the volume and check that the solenoid valve is not leaking any water

I have a home assistant OS installed on a raspberry pi at home and I want to connect to that from an esp32 via wireguard and a 4G router. I already tested that out, it’s working fine.

What I have found so far while researching the topic:

• a SONOFF Zigbee Smart SWV-BSP could work but only with the 3/4" version. In this case I’d have a built in water flow sensor (if the manual is correct) and I wouldn’t have to wire anything. The downside is that if you want to implement a larger system, this sonoff product is not big enough

• if I want to go for a bigger system and use 1" pipes I have to implement my own separated stuff. I’ve found these products:

• water pressure sensors: Gravity: Analog Water Pressure Sensor - DFRobot or Pressure Transducer Sensor 5V 0-1.2Mpa Oil Fuel For Gas Water Air S6T33493 | eBay

• water flow sensor: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33005318602.html or DN25 Flow Sensor Turbine Flow Meter Water Flow Sensor Industrial3137 | eBay or G1 Water Flow Sensor [FS400A-G1] - US $7.50 : HAOYU Electronics : Make Engineers Job Easier

• with these I could measure the water flow and the pressure and I could infer possible leaks.

• these sensors could be precise enough for me

• maybe in the future I could implement also a YL-83 rain sensor

So this is my first concept but I still couldn’t decide which option is better for me. Do you have similar project or did you use any of the items I linked here? If you have any recommendations regarding this, don’t hesitate to share with me

[sri4iot (Sri R)]

My Friend had similar requirements. His farm is 500Km away from his house. I helped him to setup something similar in which he could power on his Water Pump from his home and monitor the water flow status using Home Assistant companion app on his phone. Instead of esp32 with wireguard we have deployed the HA installed on a Dell Micro Desktop that we have purchased from used market. Since the irrigation was happening via 1.25" pipes we have used DN32 Flow sensor. We are using Zero Tier setup at HA and his mobile phone. It is working fine so far. The flow sensor can turn off the pump if the water flow is less than 40 Liters per second. I am using esp32 devkit with 30A relays to control the pump power on and power off functions.
So logically what you are planning should work. You may require proper leak proof setup if you are planning to use those Pressure Transducers. Good Luck with your setup.