MAIT system used for flood irrigation automation
With the upgrading of the irrigation infrastructure within the Goulburn Valley region of Victoria, and the increased implementation of fast flow irrigation, dairy farmers are looking at ways to cost effectively automate the operation of their irrigation systems in order to capitalise on their improved water delivery systems. With the wider adoption of fast flow irrigation, bays are now able to be watered within 3 hours, and with improved water delivery infrastructure and the installation of actuated bay outlets or pipe and riser systems, farmers are looking at ways to automate the process to improve their on farm water use efficiency and reduce their labour.
The MAIT iNTELLiTROL system has been installed on a Northern Victoria dairy to automate the control of the newly installed pipe and riser system. The outlets have actuators fitted that open and close the risers, with MAIT radio control boards fitted. Each board can control up to 4 actuators, or where linking multiple actuators via cable is not practical or cost effective, individual radios and boards can be fitted to each actuator.
Each actuator is remotely controlled from the farmers office, where iNTELLiPUMP software is installed onto a PC. Each site can be manually controlled for operation, or multiple schedules can be programmed to automate the irrigation schedule. What would normally take the farmer two or three hours to initiate manually, can now be programmed at the PC within a matter of a few minutes.
The automation of the system has been the priority, however the farmer will be connecting soil moisture probes. The data from the probes will assist the farmer with the scheduling of his irrigations based on the information collected and presented within the software on his PC. Each individual control board has the capacity to read one multi depth capacitance profiling probe. All that will be required is to install the probes in the desired locations and run cable back to the control boards.
Other sensors will likely be installed at a later date, including soil EC, flow meters and weather sensors.
