Mixed grazing

Farmo IoT Switch linking your Grundfos pump to your header tank

Stephen


Amby Queensland 4462

Customer has a solar bore pump installed with a Grundfos CiU 903 SQFLEX controller that he wants to start/stop based on a tank level 2 km away.

Farmo Deviced Deployed

Farmo IoT Switch

Farmo Tank Level Monitor

1hr

Time saved each day

Automatically switch the pump off when the tank is full, so you don’t have to drive to the tank and then back down to the pump every day.

1

Site call outs saved

The customer was able to self-install the system without the need for any site call-outs.

The Challenge

The challenge is that the header tank used to control the pump is located 2 km away, making a wired sensor impractical. A point-to-point setup would also be complicated and prone to failure.
There is already a high-quality pump controller on site, but it does not have remote control capability. A weak but usable mobile signal, around 1–2 bars, is available at both the pump and tank locations.

The Solution

The Farmo IoT Switch is wired into the digital input terminal on the Grundfos CIU 903 SQFlex control board.
A Farmo tank level sensor is installed on the header tank and reports tank levels to the cloud. Using the Farmo App, the customer can link the tank level reading to the pump start/stop control.
In this case, the pump has been configured to stop automatically when the tank reaches 95% full and start again when the level drops below 75%.

Key Takeaways

Make the best use of what you already have.

In this case, there was already a high-quality pump controller on site with digital inputs available for use.

The Grundfos support team provided excellent guidance on how to correctly wire the Farmo IoT Switch into the controller. They also advised that a DIP switch setting change was required so that “Stop” on the pump matched “Stop” in the Farmo App.

By using the existing low-voltage inputs, the customer was able to avoid an electrician call-out to modify or control the mains power supply.

Distance to the tank doesnt matter.

The Farmo IoT Switch and Farmo Tank Level Sensor both send their data directly to the cloud, so the physical distance between the two devices does not matter.

The Farmo App recognises both devices and applies the start/stop rules configured by the user.