News Letter

REMOTE VOLTAGE MONITORING FOR ELECTRIC FENCE


In areas which are located at the foot of the mountains, the wild monkeys are entering farms and harming crops. We also have such problems in our neighborhood. In some areas, electric fences have been built to keep them out. People regularly go and measure the voltage to make sure the fences are working properly.


Sometimes it is inconvenient for people to have to travel all the way out there on a hot summer day or even in times of heavy snow. They cannot determine if the fence voltage is ok or not until they actually measure it, which cannot be performed so often. It is down to the voluntary work of local residents. It would be very convenient and helpful if they had a system to constantly monitor the voltage remotely without having to go there.


Circuit Design voluntarily designed the electric fence monitoring system using our radio modems called "Dokodemodem".


You can see the current fence voltage. Click here.

Dokodemodem series is designed for industrial applications, which is programmable with Arduino and capable of LoRa®/FSK communication. Any sensor can be attached easily since it has various interfaces such as GPIO, AD converter, UART, and I2C.
“Dokodemodem” incorporates Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functions so the data can be uploaded to the cloud network. “Dokodemodem mini” specialises in power saving, making it suitable as a sending device.
In this case, the Dokodemodem mini is installed on the electric fence, while the Dokodemodem is situated on the company's 2nd floor balcony. The distance between the two is 5.0 km (3.11 miles).

The configuration is very simple with the sensor to measure voltage, connection cable, RF modem, antenna and four C batteries, being all that is required.
We programmed it to turn itself on using the built-in RTC (Real Time Clock) and to send the data every hour. Once the transmission is completed, it is turned off automatically. Only the RTC is working while the power is off. The device runs for one year with four C batteries.
The voltage of the fence is 5000 volts, so the sensor converts it to 5 volts. The data is converted to a digital signal by the modem and then sent to the RF modem at the company.
The device at the company side is also simple, with only a RF modem and antenna. The received data is uploaded to the Internet using the Wi-Fi in the modem linked to the Wi-Fi router in the company.

 

The Dokodemodem series is designed to be ready-to-use :

(1) Completed hardware containing radio modem with waterproof housing
(2) Programmable FW with Arduino
(3) Simple connector interface
(4) Long range radio communication over several kilometres
If you'd like to know more about this solution or products, please contact info@circuitdesign.jp
The LoRa® Mark and LoRa Logo are trademarks of Semtech Corporation.