ESTRON

Smart park irrigation system for municipalities

A smart irrigation system for municipalities waters parks, public gardens and road medians from one panel. Existing valves stay in place; water and labour savings start in the first season.

• Why
• How it works
• Savings
• Integration
• Technical summary
• Pilot

Why is urban irrigation hard?

A city's green space is spread over hundreds of points. Neighborhood parks, public gardens, junctions, boulevard medians, cemeteries, sports fields. Each point has its own valve and its own timer.

A fixed-schedule timer ignores the weather. It waters in the rain and runs the same minutes in a heat wave. If a valve sticks open, a resident reports it days later. Crews drive to every point to change a schedule.

The result: wasted water, wasted working hours and green areas that look neglected.

The area type changes; the need is the same. A neighbourhood park wants a few lines, a public garden dozens. A boulevard median runs for kilometres; the valves line the road. In a cemetery or on a sports field, watering must not coincide with visiting hours. All of them are managed in the same panel, line by line.

How ESTRON works

ESTRON has three parts: a battery-powered controller fitted to the valve, a LoRaWAN gateway that links the field to the cloud, and software that makes the decisions. The full picture is on the smart irrigation system page.

Fits the existing valve, no new infrastructure

The LRK 1-2 valve controller attaches to the solenoid valve you already have. Pipes, valve boxes and solenoids stay as they are. No cables are laid; the unit runs for years on 2 × 9 V batteries. One unit controls two solenoids.

AI decides every day, for every line

The software makes a separate decision for every irrigation line every day. Inputs: satellite data (NDVI plant health and soil moisture from Sentinel-2 and MODIS), the weather forecast, water demand calculated with FAO-56, and irrigation history. If rain is expected or soil moisture is sufficient, that line is not watered that day. Details: weather-based irrigation.

Your team writes its own rules in plain sentences: "Postpone if wind exceeds 6 m/s", "No irrigation on weekends". The system works within safety limits for frost and wind. Manual mode is available whenever you want it. The decision logic and worked examples: AI irrigation.

Remote control from one panel

The whole field appears on a map in the web panel and the mobile app. One schedule is sent to hundreds of valves at once. A valve is opened, closed or postponed without sending a crew.

See faults before residents do

On lines with a flow sensor, the system watches the flow. Flow while the valve is closed, or flow that is lower or higher than expected, raises an alarm. Low battery, unreachable devices and undelivered commands are reported too. Alerts arrive by mobile push, e-mail or SMS. Details: fault and leak detection with flow data.

Water and labour savings

Compared with fixed-schedule irrigation, the system uses up to 40% less water. The source of the saving is simple: no watering on rainy days, no watering when the soil is already moist, and only as much as the plants need. How this is calculated is explained in the water savings article.

Labour savings come from fewer site visits. Schedule changes are made in the panel. Faults are seen remotely, so the crew is guided to the faulty valve on the map and goes with the right part. At the change of season, one schedule is sent instead of adjusting hundreds of timers by hand.

Your own server, SCADA and an audit trail

Every irrigation decision is logged with its reason: which day, which line, how long, and why. Reports are produced in the panel and exported to Excel. This log is a ready answer for water bills and internal audits. Details: detailed reporting.

If the municipality prefers, the software is hosted on its own server. Integration with an existing SCADA or city information system is possible. Details: SCADA and on-premise hosting.

Permissions are role based. The parks department, field crews and contractors see only their own areas. The hierarchy is company → area → water line, so every district, park and line is defined separately.

Technical summary for tenders

The values below can be used directly in a specification.

Water use is metered and recorded per line. For what the xeriscape decree and the Water Efficiency Regulation ask of irrigation, see what the xeriscape decree changes in park irrigation. Communication is the open LoRaWAN standard; there is no lock-in to a single vendor. See LoRaWAN open standard.

More on hardware durability and battery life: industrial-grade hardware, low power consumption. Why we chose an open standard: LoRaWAN open standard.

Start step by step: a pilot first

You do not have to convert the whole city at once. We recommend starting with one park or one boulevard.

1. One area is chosen; controllers are fitted to the existing valves and one gateway is installed.
2. Water use and site visits are recorded for one irrigation season.
3. A report is produced and the next phase is planned on the results.

Because the existing valves and pipes are used, the pilot is installed quickly. The same gateway and the same panel serve the later phases; nothing from the pilot is thrown away.

Examples of our projects are on the references page. Common questions are answered in the FAQ. Request a quote for your pilot area.