Water Sensors

• 1: Water Trough Level
• 2: Tank level
• 3: Water Pump
• 4: Water Flow & Pressure
• 5: Soil Moisture
• 6: Water Quality

1 - Water Trough Level

The OGLAS Water Trough Level sensor is purpose-built for stock water — the troughs scattered across paddocks where animals depend on a working float valve and a charged pump. If a trough goes dry, you find out before the animals do.

What it does

• Reports level periodically — default interval an hour; configurable down to minutes when you’re commissioning, back up to once a day when you trust it.
• Raises an immediate out-of-water alert when level drops below a configured threshold — independent of the reporting interval. This is the message that matters and it doesn’t wait.
• Includes GPS coordinates with each reading, so the hub knows which trough this is without you having to track node-id-to-paddock mappings by hand.
• Reports battery voltage so you can replace the battery on schedule, not on failure.

Why GPS

A property with twenty troughs is a labelling nightmare. Without GPS:

• Every trough needs a unique node name and a written record of where each name lives.
• Move a trough and you have to remember to update the spreadsheet.
• Six months in, nobody can remember if trough-7 is the one in the south paddock or the back fence.

With GPS, the trough self-reports its location every cycle. The hub plots them on a map, and “trough-7 has dropped to 80 mm” becomes “the trough at -38.51, 145.20 has dropped to 80 mm” — actionable without a paper map.

GPS is only powered when needed (once per reporting cycle, briefly), so the power cost is modest.

Long battery life

Stock troughs are usually a long way from anything you can plug into. The Water Trough sensor is built around battery life as the dominant design constraint:

• Ultra-low deep-sleep current — full power-down of the GPS, the radio, and the level sensor between samples.
• Wake, read, send, sleep — wake, read level, get a GPS fix if it’s been long enough, send, wait briefly for confirmation, sleep. The whole cycle is under 30 seconds of activity per hour.
• Single LiPo + small solar panel — designed to run year-round on a single small panel. Without solar, a single 2000 mAh cell will run for months on hourly reports.

Level sensing

A handful of options depending on the install:

• Submerged pressure transducer — most accurate, works through algae and floating debris, but needs a wired probe in the water.
• Ultrasonic range finder mounted above the water surface — non-contact, easy to retrofit, but sensitive to spray and condensation.
• Float-and-magnet stick — cheapest, no electronics in the water, only good for “above/below threshold”.

The sensor publishes raw millimetres; the hub does the per-trough calibration (“at this trough, 200 mm = full, 50 mm = critical”).

Pairs well with

• Bell — out-of-water alert rings the homestead bell instantly.
• Smart Switch — trough drops below threshold, Smart Switch turns on the pump that fills it.
• Electric Fence — same long-battery, alert-priority, scattered-across-paddocks family.

Building this into a larger site? That’s exactly what we do — start a custom build or email us.

2 - Tank level

The OGLAS tank level sensor reports how much water you’ve got, in millimetres, on whatever schedule you set — from once a minute to once a day.

Why it matters

If you run on tank water, the difference between “fine until next month” and “the pump’s run dry overnight” is the level of the tank you forgot to check. OGLAS makes it the hub’s job to remember instead.

• Periodic readings sent to the hub, logged locally.
• Configurable thresholds — drop below a set level, the bell rings or your dashboard lights up. See Monitoring and alerts.
• Battery friendly — deep-sleep between readings, runs for a season on a single LiPo with a small solar trickle.

Deploy it today

Tank monitoring works right now with an OGLAS analog node paired with an off-the-shelf level transducer (4–20 mA loop or 0–3.3 V output). That’s a complete, battery-friendly tank monitor — readings to your hub, thresholds, alerts, and season-long battery life — built from parts we already ship.

A dedicated tank node

For sites that want a single purpose-built unit rather than an analog node plus a transducer, we build a dedicated tank node:

• IP-rated enclosure with a single level-sensor input — one job, sealed and mounted.
• Local LCD showing current level, so you can read it at the tank.
• Configurable alert thresholds without reprogramming.

It’s the same idea as everything else on this site — if the off-the-shelf path doesn’t fit your tanks, the purpose-built one is a custom build. Tell us about your tanks and we’ll spec it.

3 - Water Pump

The OGLAS Water Pump controller starts and stops a pump on the conditions you set — a tank dropping, a trough low, solar surplus available — and, crucially, confirms the pump actually ran by measuring its current. It’s the Smart Switch tuned for the one job that matters most on a dry site.

What it does

• Drives the pump on a rule — start when a tank or trough drops below a threshold; stop when it’s full. Combine with solar surplus so the pump runs when there’s sun to spare.
• Confirms it ran — current sensing tells you the motor actually drew power, not that a relay merely clicked. “Pump on, no current” is a real failure you’ll hear about.
• Dry-run protection — no flow or a current signature that says the pump is cavitating? Shut it down before it burns out.
• Logs every cycle — run time, current, and starts-per-day to your hub, so a pump heading for failure shows up as a trend.

Pairs well with

• Tank level and Water Trough — the level that drives the pump.
• Water Flow & Pressure — confirms water is actually moving, not just that the motor spun.
• Power Management — run on solar surplus instead of grid or generator.
• Bell — a failed pump rings the homestead.

Building this into a larger site? That’s exactly what we do — start a custom build or email us.

4 - Water Flow & Pressure

Level tells you how much water you have; flow and pressure tell you what it’s doing. The OGLAS Water Flow & Pressure sensor sits inline and watches the things that go wrong between the source and the tap.

What it does

• Measures flow rate — litres per minute through a line, totalised over time so you know exactly how much moved.
• Measures line pressure — at the pump or anywhere on the line.
• Catches leaks — flow when nothing should be running is a burst pipe or a stuck valve, and it raises an alert straight away.
• Catches blockages and a tiring pump — pressure climbing or falling outside its normal band points to a filter, a kink, or a pump losing its prime.

Hardware

An inline flow meter (pulse or analog) and a pressure transducer, read by an OGLAS node and reported to your hub. Runs from the same supply as a nearby pump, or battery + solar for a remote line.

Pairs well with

• Water Pump — pressure and flow confirm the pump is doing real work, and trigger dry-run shutdown.
• Tank level — flow into the tank should match the level rising; a mismatch is a leak.
• Smart Switch — shut a line down automatically when flow says “leak”.

Building this into a larger site? That’s exactly what we do — start a custom build or email us.

5 - Soil Moisture

Irrigating on a timer waters the calendar, not the crop. The OGLAS Soil Moisture sensor reads what the ground actually holds — at root depth — so water goes on when it’s needed and stays off when it isn’t.

What it does

• Reads soil moisture — volumetric water content from a probe in the root zone; one or several depths.
• Reads soil temperature — the other half of the germination and growth picture.
• Reports on a schedule — hourly is plenty; deep-sleep between reads keeps it running a season on battery.
• Drives irrigation — feed the reading to a Smart Switch: water only when moisture is below threshold and the weather isn’t about to do it for you.

Hardware

A capacitive soil probe (no corroding exposed electrodes) on an OGLAS analog node, battery-powered with a small solar trickle — see Off-grid power.

Pairs well with

• Smart Switch — moisture below threshold turns on the irrigation.
• Weather — “dry soil and no rain forecast” is the rule that saves the most water.
• Water Pump — the thing the moisture reading ultimately drives.

Building this into a larger site? That’s exactly what we do — start a custom build or email us.

6 - Water Quality

Plenty of water is no good if it’s the wrong water. The OGLAS Water Quality sensor monitors the condition of what’s in your tanks, troughs, dams, and tanks for stock, irrigation, or aquaculture.

What it does

• pH — drift outside the safe band for stock, crops, or fish.
• Salinity / EC / TDS — dissolved solids creeping up in a bore or dam.
• Temperature — drives dissolved-oxygen levels in aquaculture and dam health generally.
• Turbidity — cloudiness from algae, runoff, or a disturbed dam.
• Dissolved oxygen (option) — the one that matters most for fish.

Readings go to your hub on a schedule, with alerts when any value leaves its safe range.

Hardware

Industry-standard probes (pH, EC, turbidity, DO) on an OGLAS node, sealed for permanent immersion, battery + solar for remote dams and tanks.

Pairs well with

• Tank level and Water Trough — quality alongside quantity in the same dataset.
• Smart Switch — run an aerator or dosing pump when a value drifts.
• [Water Quality monitoring for aquaculture] is a common custom build — tell us your species and thresholds.

Building this into a larger site? That’s exactly what we do — start a custom build or email us.