Hi all! I’m a market gardener and need to be able to turn an irrigation pump on or off whist in the field or at the shed. The pump is a 240volt electric and runs from a solar system at the shed. I was thinking of installing a switch at the field, running that to a controller or some such and then that running a relay. Then having a second switch in the shed. Both with LED indicators reminding me to turn it off. Would this be an easy project? Ive not done any of this before but am happy to learn.
If you’ve got any Wi-Fi connectivity you could use smart plugs, pretty much available from anywhere. And if you use ‘their’ software or cloud offerings, no programming required. I think I got mine from K-Hub for under $15 each.
We have at least a dozen which control 5 garden light zones, 3 pumps and 6 sprinkler zones. You can use them as they are, but in my case I’ve reprogrammed the esp8266 or w600 processors in Python to use my own MQTT infrastructure, mainly because I don’t trust ‘them’. So with an app like IT-ON-OFF on our phones we can turn them on and off manually. It’s also set up to be fully automatic.
I agree with Mark. If you have WiFi covering the shed and field then a smart plug is the easy solution. The phone app will always turn the appliance on or off. For your application check it has a scheduler to make it all programable. Some smart plugs do energy measurement but probably of no help for your application.
For safety reasons I prefer not to switch AC appliances using self wired relays.
For TP-Link Kasa and some Tapo (P100, P110, P125M, P135, TP15) smart plugs there is an open source Python library which means you could control everything from a raspberry pi. The P100 is available everywhere. This is a project on my ‘to do’ list so I cannot report on how easy it is to implement.
And don’t forget you can then integrate many of these systems with your personal assistant eg. Google Home for maximum automation!
This could be a really affordable and scalable, zero-coding solution if you need a solution fast.
Ok cool, I don’t have wifi at the shed, but if I were to set something up, if I used the wifi switches is it still accessible in the field ? As I wouldn’t have access to that network in the field only my mobile.
Most smart switches I’m familiar with offer cloud control. basically means if its on an internet connected network you will be able to control it from anywhere in the world over the internet.
If you have access to the internet on your mobile then you should be able to control the smart switch.
