Farm Pump and Irrigation Telemetry to the Cloud with R1520 and Edge2Cloud
A Robustel Application Example
Application Example – Fast Facts
Industry
Agriculture, Environmental Monitoring, Smart Farming
Product(s)
R1520 4G/LTE Router, RCMS, Edge2Cloud
Challenges
Distributed pumps, bores, and pivots are hard to monitor and control across large properties. Operators need live flow, pressure, run-state, and alarms without constant site visits, and they must integrate with existing PLCs and drives at low cost.
Expected Outcomes
Reliable telemetry to a chosen cloud or SCADA, event alerts that reach the right people fast, and optional controlled remote actions. Fewer truck rolls, better water and energy use, and clear records for audits and allocation compliance.
Keep water moving and prove it
Irrigation assets live far from offices and often out of fixed-line reach. A bore may sit 30 km from the headworks; a pump shed may run on a dusty back road; a pivot controller may only speak Modbus over RS-485. Yet managers still need to see flow, pressure, run hours, and faults in near real time, and they need evidence when regulators ask where water went.
This deployment pairs a cost-effective 4G/LTE router with an on-device data path that speaks the language of pumps and meters. Edge2Cloud reads values from drives, transducers, and totalizers, converts them into clean JSON, buffers during outages, and publishes through a single outbound connection to your MQTT broker or cloud service. The result is a simple architecture that fits brownfield sites and scales across an estate.
Business Challenges
Day-to-day operations face a mix of distance, protocol friction, and staffing pressure. Here is the reality this solution is designed to address.
- Patchy backhaul: Cellular is often the only viable path. Links must be stable, secure, and friendly to existing firewalls.
- Protocol diversity on site: VSDs, flow meters, and pressure sensors typically speak Modbus RTU/TCP. Data needs to be normalized for the cloud.
- Blind spots and slow fault discovery: Leaks, dry-run, or a tripped drive can sit unnoticed until a patrol arrives.
- Cost of access: Every site visit costs time, fuel, and crop risk. Remote checks and controlled adjustments reduce exposure.
- Evidence and accountability: Water allocations, run-hour limits, and environmental obligations require tamper-evident logs and totals that are easy to extract.
- Install without rebuild: Panels are tight. The solution must fit existing cabinets and wiring practices.
Solution Overview
How the solution was delivered: the R1520 provides the cellular backhaul and secure network edge. Edge2Cloud runs on the router, polls defined Modbus registers from drives and instruments, and publishes normalized telemetry to your cloud over MQTT. During link loss, data is buffered and replayed in order when service returns. Operations at scale are handled in RCMS, where you can onboard devices, template configurations, and monitor health.
- R1520 4G/LTE backhaul: Primary or failover connectivity with firewall-friendly outbound sessions; optional dual-SIM for carrier diversity.
- Edge2Cloud southbound (Modbus): Poll drives, flow meters, and pressure transducers over RS-485/RTU or Ethernet/TCP. Point tables define addresses, scaling, and intervals.
- Broker (normalize and buffer): Convert readings to compact JSON with timestamps and device identity. Store-and-forward preserves data through outages.
- Northbound MQTT: Publish to Azure, AWS, or your own MQTT endpoint using TLS. One clean path per site keeps networking simple.
- Alarming and control paths: Expose selected registers for start/stop or setpoint changes under strict role-based access. Generate thresholds and alerts in your cloud tools using the normalized feed.
- Fleet operations in RCMS (optional): Zero-Touch onboarding, group templates, firmware rollouts in rings, and live views of uptime, data use, and signal—so you can see issues before they become downtime.
- Targeted remote access (optional): Use RobustVPN to grant time-boxed, least-privilege access for specialists when a drive needs a surgical change, with an audit trail for IT.
Expected Customer Outcomes
A successful deployment should feel calm, observable, and accountable. Data arrives when it should. People are called only when they are needed. Records stand up to scrutiny.
- Irrigation or Farm Operations Manager: Fewer site visits; clear dashboards of run-state, flow, and pressure by block; faster response to leaks or dry-run events.
- Water Compliance Officer: Daily totals, run hours, and traceable logs that support allocation reporting and audits.
- SCADA/IT Owner: A single outbound MQTT feed, TLS security, and role-based access for any remote actions; no inbound holes in the firewall.
- Installer or Panel Builder: Minimal footprint in the cabinet; standard RS-485 and Ethernet wiring; repeatable templates that cut commissioning time.
- Service Contractor: Remote diagnostics first, on-site only when required; time-boxed access and an audit trail that reduces risk.
Featured Products
Robustel R1520 4G/LTE Router
RCMS Cloud Device Management
Edge2Cloud
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Planning telemetry for bores, pumps, and pivots across one property or many? Let’s map a simple build you can deploy quickly and expand with confidence.