The story
A field that waters itself on schedule and writes down every run.
A sealed cabinet at the edge of an 8,000 m² blueberry field opens three valves on a schedule, waters 2,400 bushes section by section and logs everything it did.
Worth noting
The client runs a plant nursery and keeps an experimental field to find the right amount of water for a crop. This one is blueberries: 8,000 m², 24 rows of 100 m, 2,400 bushes, two drip lines per row with 499 emitters, about 1,100 litres an hour to water one row properly. The client wanted the field to water itself as a proof of concept, with the groundwork laid for collecting data later.
The field watered itself through the 2026 season. The log holds 211 runs, and a representative week is 25 waterings and 42 hours 32 minutes of valve-open time across the three sections, all started by the schedule. Each run is a record: which section, scheduled or manual, when it started, when it should have ended, when it did and why. Fifteen event types cover the rest.
A small computer in a sealed cabinet at the edge of the field drives three valves, one per section of eight rows, over 50 m of outdoor cable. A schedule per section sets the days, start time and duration; when two fall due at once the lower section runs and the other is written down as skipped. The client watches live status on a panel, cancels or extends a run, waters a section by hand, edits the schedule and reads the history with charts. Losing power closes the valves.
What it covers
Control cabinet, three valves in three sections, per-section schedule, operator panel with live status, manual watering, history and charts, audit log, restart recovery.
Water has to turn on and off reliably before anything clever goes on top, so phase one is control and valves; soil sensors wait for phase two. The valve count came last: one per row was far too expensive, and once the client confirmed the pump carries a full eight-row section, three was enough. Any uncertainty closes every valve: boot, a failed write, a stalled controller or an error anywhere lands in the same state with every valve shut, and watering never resumes on its own after a restart.
Tell us how your operation works today. We'll tell you what we'd build.
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