Acacia Irrigation Software (2015)

Acacia Irrigation is a batteryless solar irrigation project by the Sustainable Engineering Lab.

The project supports 21 farmers in Senegal through three system. Each system is controlled using a Raspberry Pi and can operate 7 pumps.

The Raspberry Pi handles these external inputs:

• Pyranometer: measures light to estimate available power
• Smart meters: measures pump power consumption
• Temperature sensor: used to estimate panel efficiency
• Relays: to control individual pumps

The software was built using:

• Python 3.4, running an asyncio event loop
• Tornado for the web interface
• Peewee and SQLite to store data
• Minimal Modbus to interface with the smart meters
• Rpi.GPIO to control the relays

Screenshots

Main screen showing the 7 customers and their pumping status:

Pump scheduling and configuration screen:

Pump usage history:

System usage history (light readings):

System configuration:

More info

Unfortunately, the software is not available as open source. However, you can find out more details about the architecture in the slideshow below: