farmo Water Monitoring

The Water Rat was designed by founder Nick due his worries about ensuring had cattle water when away from the farm. The first attempt involved fixing a sensor to the trough with dyna bolts but this took too much time and was always vulnerable to damage from the cattle pushing on it. The breakthrough came when Nick's brother-in-law suggested it would be heaps better if he could just "throw it in and walk away", and so the team made a new prototype based on that theory and have refined it to the farmo sensor product now available.

The key is simplicity. It floats in the water until the level drops and then it tilts over and sends a message to a phone or laptop wherever you are in the world. The tank version has a tether attached so it tilts over at whatever depth you set it to. Because it's so easy to install, you don't need one for every trough, just where you have mobs of cattle and then when you move the mob, you move the Water Rat. The new version has GPS inside so you can see your mob locations updated as well, just by seeing where your Water Rats are on the map.

The current version has NB-IoT communication and next year we will introduce the satellite version to cover the more remote cattle stations.

NB-IoT coverage is through Telstra 4g towers but about extra 30km from the tower because it's a different frequency. Check your location on Telstra's loT map here. Or a quick easy way to check if you have NB-IoT coverage is just check your 4G signal on your phone.

But many cattle producers do not have 4G coverage so we are doing a satellite version. Satellite works "wherever you can see the sky" as they say, but only transmits data 2 or 3 times a day when the satellite passes overhead.
We live in such a big country, there is not one size fits all when it comes to telecommunications!

Find more information here and follow farmo on Facebook here.