Has anybody shown him these things? http://www.electronicplus.com/images/products/TN811C.jpg
For that matter, is it so hard to run a mile of wire across a field?
The article did mention a simple timer. I'm going to guess there is some additional complexity in turning on the water that a multi-mode timer cannot handle. Timer comes on at 2am and shuts off at 3am automatically but what happens when there is a power failure between 2.10am and 2.50am? That happens in India ALL the time. Now you missed 40 minutes of watering. A human might be able to take that into account by turning it off at 3.30am instead remotely.
> For that matter, is it so hard to run a mile of wire across a field?
Not hard, just expensive. The Indian farmers he's aiming to help are the ones making $1-$5/day. They might understand the long-term ROI on such an investment but they might not be able to afford it.
Of course the pumps will not be able to run when there is no power but it might be less than ideal to run the pumps at the wrong time.
That said, you could solve that fairly easily by running the timer circuitry off a rechargeable battery and drive the pumps through a relay. When there's power the battery recharges from the grid, when the power has failed for a while the timer hasn't lost track of the time of day.
I wonder how much an SMS message costs an indian farmer (it also requires an extra cell phone), it might very well be a substantial part of the cost of operation. In the end it's a convenience thing (you don't have to walk) which is worth some $ or it would have to save money or create a better yield.
500 messages a day costs < $0.07 total. It's cheaper than that in Europe?
The key idea for SMS was to use this telephony-optimized system, and to transport messages on the signaling paths needed to control the telephony traffic during time periods when no signaling traffic existed. In this way, unused resources in the system could be used to transport messages at minimal cost.
So, in a sense sending SMS doesn't have to be so costly.
Indian mobile networks are fairly well connected. And sending local SMS messages are, for all practical purposes, free. Cell phones can be had for US$30. Possibly less.
If you want to build technology-related services that are accessible to the largest possible part of the Indian population, using SMS as a protocol is probably the right way to go.
(Edit: But from what I understood, this device involves phoning a number and using a keypad to issue commands. )
I was assuming the timer was battery-powered and not prone to power failure, while the pumps were. This could cause the timer to turn on the pumps, not detect that the pumps were off for 40 minutes during the cycle because of power failures, and then shut off the pumps after a predetermined duration. So the timer would start/stop a one hour cycle but during those times, the pumps would only work for 20 minutes. That could cause crops to fail because the pumps didn't irrigate sufficient water.
To fix this, you'd need a timer that would also detect the duration the pumps were working and adjust accordingly, increasing the cost of the system. Plus how does the timer deal with the next cycle schedule to start at 4am-5am when it has been pumping 30-40mins extra before the cycle before it took longer? I was just trying to say that setting up a workable schedule on such a device could be a lot more complex/expensive than a human texting "pump 2 on", "pump 2 off".
So it was meant as being the exact equivalent of what they have now. (I didn't see any evidence of a feedback mechanism in the article but I may have overlooked that).
I am making a comment based on the irrigation needs of an Indian farmer in Indian scenario. I think, the mobile based solution is best for the Indian farmers who want to monitor and switch on off their pumpset from wherever they are, maybe in the farms, residence, market or on travel. In the timers, there is no monitoring of whether a pump is on or off, whether a power is available or not at the pump.But, the mobile connectivity makes it is possible to check the status. Plus , in the agriculture, there might be needs of so many times of on/off of the pumps in the irrigation processes depending on the actual physical status in the farms activities. Hence, it needs a perfect engineering solution based on closed loop system rather than an open loop systems like timers.A perfect engineering solves the problems in an emerging market very much effectively, but for that someone must undestand the needs of an emerging market and for which there is only a way - to be among them and to understand their needs. No question of blaming anybody's situation or no question of contraversy about Indian or Non Indian should arise, but a real attitude to help a human being in the problems is a must.
It's hard to keep that mile of wire from being pinched.
I remember how the highway authority here in Punjab had embedded blinking lights into the road's surface, over some stretches of road, to help drivers during our foggy winters. A few days after the lights went in, they were dug out and stolen. So new ones were put in. Gone again. New lights. Gone again. Finally the highway authority gave up and left the citizenry to its fate.
In the beginning, they had metal guards but they kept getting stolen. Then they had concrete guards with a metal wire skeleton. Those covers got smashed and the metal wires taken out of them. Now they just have concrete guards but people smash them anyway.
The police and highway patrol have bigger problems and you'd need to stake out long stretches of road indefinitely, pretty much.
Also, making an example of convicted criminals doesn't work. I'd assume thieves risking life and limb to yank LEDs and cable from the middle of a highway in the dark are desperate (and probably poor) enough not to care about precedents.