Leppington Pastoral Company, a family owned and operated dairy farm based at Bringelly, NSW, has a reputation for innovation and takes a leading role in the use of technology in its industry.

As everyone knows, water is absolutely vital for growing the grass which leads to the production of high quality dairy products. It is no surprise, then, that making sure water is applied in just the right amount is of paramount importance to LPC.

Irrigation pivots are widely used by LPC and others in agriculture and being able to monitor their performance remotely is of great advantage, particularly when you can get an alarm by SMS when pumping stops. While Leppington Pastoral Company has being using the Halytech Spider for this purpose for a few years, they have recently switched to using the microSpider.

The pivots at LPC have a system which monitors various aspects of their operation including parameters such as alignment, low water supply, end of travel and engine faults like over-temperature and oil pressure. If any one of these parameters deviates from normal, the system shuts down and pumping stops. This is when the microSpider comes into play.

Halytech microSpider monitors the automatic shutdown output on the pivot and, when activated, sends a text message by SMS and/or email to one or more mobile phones. This raises the alarm and action can be taken to rectify the fault quickly and get the water flowing again.

Key aspects to the choice of microSpider were its IP68 enclosure, on-board battery with up to 7 years life for this type of application, reliability and ease of installation. To install the device, all that was required was to bolt the microSpider to the pivot’s frame and connect the output from the automatic shutdown. Configuring the microSpider was also very easy: A web browser was all it took to set up two alarms (one for the automatic shutdown and one for battery status) and type in the mobile phone numbers to which the alarms would be sent. It couldn’t be easier!