Waterman Irrigation Trusts Intuitive AirLink Raven XE For Park Watering System

A subsidiary of Western Australia’s Industrial Automation Group, Waterman Irrigation designs and develops modular irrigation systems.

Challenges

Western Australia’s arid conditions dictate water usage restrictions and conservation. The average local government in Western Australia controls and maintains between 100 and 500 parks, all of which pump groundwater to irrigate park vegetation. Waterman Irrigation developed a wireless system that enables remote monitoring and control of all city park watering automation from a central location to enable local governments to make instantaneous, universal changes to irrigation in all parks spread across their city boundaries without having to travel to each location.

Solution

The Waterman Irrigation System consists of the Waterman Controller and Waterman Central software package and is connected by the Sierra Wireless AirLink® Raven XE intelligent 3G Ethernet gateway. The gateway’s reliable, high-speed, two-way broadband communication provides park administrators the ability to detect environmental factors that might dictate changes to pre-set park irrigation functions.

With Waterman Irrigation’s centralized irrigation control, every park has a 3G AirLink Raven XE device networked through a central SCADA system that allows administrators to monitor and control everything that happens in their parks. From any location with internet access, a park manager can set watering start and stop times, determine and implement the proper length of watering time, and reduce watering during wet weather.

The rugged design of the Raven XE, as well as the wide temperature ranges in which it can operate, ensures the gateway is strong enough to perform in the harsh environments of Western Australia. The Raven XE gateway is powered by ALEOS™ embedded intelligence for reliable and feature-rich operation, and the device features AirLink management software to simplify the provisioning, managing, and troubleshooting of remote equipment and provide monitoring and control of widely dispersed equipment from one central location.

Remote management and control of park irrigation systems eliminates the need to travel to each city park to make irrigation system adjustments, which saves on employee time and travel costs. The system also allows for quicker adjustments to irrigation controls, which reduces unnecessary irrigation expenditures and the potential for wasting precious water resources. According to Waterman Irrigation, a single installation will pay for itself in nine months.

“Western Australia is still waiting for our drought to break. Two minutes less watering time across 150 parks can save incredible amounts of water, but this will only happen with centralized irrigation control,” said de Graaf. “We’re finding new customers almost every week; the AirLink product is a winner.”

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