Automating things helps us excel in other aspects of our goals. Our goal to grow organic food and healthy people has been made easier after automating our drip irrigation system, narrowing our focus to other aspects of the job like preparing organic manure and checking if the trees are growing well. Many of our trees have died due to the lack of proper water management. We have already automated our coconut farm with the help of a company called Niagara. Now, the water in that farm will cycle through each set of plants without needing to be manually changed. Here in the Main farm, we have nearly completed the setup and are working on some final adjustments. We got the help of a company called Mobitech to do this. Our experience with using automation in the coconut farm has shown us better results. We can clearly see that the trees adapt to the timing of when they are watered and grow better.
These automatic valves that we used are called solenoid valves. Solenoid valves are often used to control a flow of either fluid or gas by electricity. These work by having a small electromagnet being pulled up using the electricity provided and opens up a small gateway allowing the water to pass to he other side and pressurize it so that the diaphragm opens letting the whole water passage open. When the electricity is turned of the solenoid springs back up and the diaphragm slowly sits back into place.
Along with the automatic valves, we have also added two more systems – Fertigation and Backwash. The drip systems people use can easily stop working when there is too much dust getting clogged in the holes. This is why we have a filter to reduce the dust particles that go into the field, but we still have to clean the filter a few times a day. So, Mobitech provided us with a system called backwash, which reverses the flow of the water and discharges it. This reduces the number of times we need to wash the filter per day. The other system is called Fertigation. It is used to mix fertilizers into the water flow so they go into the field. We had a different method before, where the fertilizers were sucked in because of the pressure and speed of the water flow through the pipe. However, now we have a pump to suck the fertilizers in and dilute them into the water. With the new system, we will be able to let the motor run so that the set amount of liters would be given to the respective plant. We very much think that these systems are going to give us better results in the farm and make sure no tree dies or is affected in any way because of the loss of water management. Although I am very excited to see the results of this I am not proud that this was purely made by us because all the devices are from Mobitech. Right now this system is installed in both farms which is two motors but we also have some bore wells that would need tracking of the voltage that it is taking. I am looking forward to make my own web app and a device to track the voltage and sense if it is on!