Case Study
Irritek
Irritek is an Irrigation business that serves cotton growers in New South Wales and Queensland. Part of their business manufacture's and installs pump sites for pumping water from rivers into storage dams.
The problem
Irritek customers typically turn on their pumps during rain events when the river is running. Conveniently during these rain events access to pumpsites often times difficult or unsafe due to damaged or flooded roads. Irritek wanted to provide their customers with a remote control solution for their pump sites so customers could turn on there pumps without having to visit them during these events.
The scope
Irritek contacted Doover to develope an Irritek 'app' that would allow customers to control their pump sites remotely. They contacted the Doover team to develope them a controller that could turn pumps on and off manually, change the rpm and set automated shutdowns based on either litres pumped or time duration. Irritek also wanted to be able to provide customers with reports of fuel consumption and water pumped for each cotton season. They wanted all this to be able to be done from Apple and Android smarts phones or via a computer.
The solution
The pumps stations themselves are a deisel engine controlled by a Kensho K27 Panel driving a pump. The Kensho K27 Engine controller they use is 'telemetry-enabled', supporting Modbus RTU via RS-485 serial port. The Doover team was able to provide Irritek with a Linux PC based control box running a tailor made Doover driver for the pumpsites. The lLinux PC controls the state of the entrie pump station via the Modbus interface on the Kensho Panel locally and communicates directly with the user interface on the customers phone. Irritek customers now can control there pump stations from there phone.
Extras...
After success with their pump sites, Irritek moved on to powering their water meters with Doover as well. Using Doovers data transfer capabilities Irritek customers are able to control their pumps based on data reported from the water meters on their farm. Customers with both flow meters and pump stations are able to shutdown there pumps onced they have pumped an amount of litres designated from the phone app.