This article is a translation of the german article IOTAqua – Reduce consumption with smart water meter systems by Ralph Scheyer.
IOTAqua – Reduce consumption with smart water meter systems
Resource-saving use of water and energy is becoming increasingly important in view of advancing climate change. New, intelligent technologies are needed to make water use in agriculture and horticulture as efficient as possible.
As part of the “IOTAqua” project, the Landesbetrieb Landwirtschaft Hessen (LLH) is developing and testing a new water metering system. While in existing irrigation systems the amount of water consumed is often only an estimate over the irrigation period, the new water meter can be used to collect the exact irrigation amount in real time. The accurate documentation makes it possible to analyze the different needs of different crops and thus to target irrigation more precisely. With the documentation of the area-related water consumption over time, statements can also be made about the effects of climatic changes and the resulting changing water requirements of the individual crops. The project is funded by the Integrated Climate Protection Plan Hessen 2025 (IKSP).
The new water meter system is based on existing products. The ultrasonic water meter “Octave” from the company Lorenz, the control valve “1000 Series” from the company Nelson and the LoRa radio module from the company peerOS. The development and construction of the housing of the new system is done in cooperation with the company Lorenz, in order to adapt it in the best possible way to the requirements of agricultural practice. With the support of the company peerOS, the water meters will be installed at three locations in Hesse: in the Griesheim association area, on a horticultural farm in Frankfurt / Main and on the campus of the Geisenheim University of Applied Sciences.
With regard to data transmission, experience from the still ongoing cooperation project “IOTAgrar” can be used, in which new, secure ways of transmitting and processing sensor data are being tested. In order to ensure tamper-proof and cost-free data transfer, the IOTA data protocol is used within the framework of “IOTAqua” in addition to the energy-efficient radio standard “LoRa”. The distributed ledger technology (DLT) used by IOTA, which was already convincing in the previous project “IOTAgrar”, creates a decentralized data interface. The acquired data can thus be connected to the GEObox viewer for visualization. Once the LoRa radio infrastructure is set up, this opens up the integration of further sensors into the system. An important step towards complete documentation in the cultivation of sustainably produced food.
Original source
Last Updated on 16. February 2021