Hydro-System Automation (HA) is an energy efficient system for automation of water systems including water tanks, pumps, etc. To learn more about how and why we are doing this, keep reading!

Agriculture is dependent on water. Farms, greenhouses, orchards, ranches, and vineyards are all in need of irrigation systems. Modern irrigation systems are equipped with an assortment of water reserves, sheds, and tanks to store water for later use or to manage the flow, time, or quality of the water delivered to the crops. In comparison to expensive, huge, complex, proprietary, often manual, and very energy hungry industrial solutions out on the market, HA is a cheaper, smaller, simpler, modular, smart, and sustainable Hydro-System.

Research team analyzing reading from sensors (from left to right: Yuya Yabe, Prof. Navid Shaghaghi, Andres Calle, Peter Ferguson, Prof. Mike McElfresh).

Jesse Mayer and Prof. Navid Shaghaghi presented a paper on HA at IEEE CCWC.

At the bird's eye level, the project design entails sensing and actuating units as well as wireless communications between said units. The Sensing Units (SU)s are composed of cheaper, smaller, simpler, and more sustainable sensors, micro-controllers, electronics, solar panels, and batteries than those used in current industrial solutions available. The SUs are also packaged in 3D printed casings which are cheaper to produce, can be custom fabricated to incorporate specific designs, fit in tight spots, and meet a variety of environments, installation requirements, and quality standards. The Actuating Units (AU)s are composed of automated pumping and/or valve stations which are powered via solar panels. The wireless communications sub-system is responsible for maintaining the overall cohesion of the system via a custom routing protocol atop a transport layer such as LoRa and a wireless physical layer utilizing RFM95 Radio Modules in the 915 MHz frequency band. 

Currently Graduate students:

• Peter Ferguson
• Jesse Mayer
• Qiuguo Li

Current Undergraduate Students:

• Will Tuttle

Past Students:

• Zach Cameron
• Nicholas Kniveton