Topic Type:
Question
What do you think would be realistic timing for the base unit to be ready to start testing new monitoring modules? I had a conversation a fellow farm hacker today- there is land that we are considering grazing, but it is a bit far for either of us to monitor as closely as we would like, but not too far if we knew to check on any alerts. The primary two concerns are electric fence voltage/continuity and water level in the watering tank. I think we could use an off the shelf fence monitor and wire into the LED indicator light for an on/off signal. The water tank level indicator should be off the shelf too. We checked and there is good cellular signal at the site.
If you have wiring for LED indicators then tapping into that with an Arduino would be a breeze and there wouldn't need to be much repurposing of Fido software for this. It wouldn't take too much time for me to hack something together for you...
Just a few questions: what's the power situation out there? I take it that the power for the fence could also power this alert system. Also, how many miles is it from your internet? I'm antsy to start building Zigbee nodes rather than making different permutations of the Fido design although the remoteness and the generality of the on/off signal could still merit an independent cell phone node design.