Case of a LoRa network for remote reading of consumption and water pressure in the network

MiDo has been selected for the development of the LoRa network as part of the Hydro Control project for the city of Catanzaro

In Italy, in the Calabria region, the Pithagora Consortium, managing body of the ICT Hub has decided to implement the Hydro Control project. This is a Research and Development project, aimed at the design and implementation of a platform for:

The project aimed to create a network of IoT sensors installed on water users, and on the network through monitoring pressure and flow rates along the network, as well as the development of a cloud-based platform for storage and processing of Big Data.
The experimentation has been applied to the water network of the Municipality of Catanzaro since the end of October 2020 and is currently underway.

MiDo's solution for the project was an architecture based on LoRaWan technology. The final nodes represented by the pulse emitters were connected to the LoraWan 868Mhz radio transmitter: the MiDoMet Radio Pulse Transmitter. The MiDoMet Radio Pulse Transmitter sends the meter consumption to a LoRa/LTE MiDoMet LoRaWan Gateway RAK7249 area gateway concentrator installed in the the area of the common object to which the meters send the reading data via LTE modem interface to the remote management system. The Lora Server and Lora App Server server services necessary for the recognition and interpretation of data coming from remote meters have been installed on a server machine made available by the customer. The network is bi-directional, each node sends information to the server, and is able to receive responses.
The novelty of this experimental phase was to implement an autonomous infrastructure from an energy point of view. The installation site, in fact, is a pole made available to the Municipality which however is not powered and this required a double necessity for the assembly of the concentrator:

The MiDoMet LoRaWan Gateway RAK7249 gateway responded very well to the project's needs. In fact, it is a device suitable for installation outdoors, complete with all accessories and with fairly low consumption, robust, high-performance and highly reliable.
The photovoltaic system to power the gateway was organized as follows:

Photovoltaic Solar Panel 100W 12V Polycrystalline.
IP66 wall box, Grey, Polycarbonate, 400 x 300 x 210mm.
N.2 25Ah 12V AGM Super Cycle Energy Photovoltaic batteries.
Adjustable solar panel mounting brackets designed for off-grid solar systems.
POE/Solar battery charge controller with dual 12V input

The MiDoMet LoRaWan Gateway based on RAK7249 is equipped with:

From the calculations carried out considering the absorption of the installed device, the geographical area of installation, the variation in solar radiation over the course of the year, and conditioned by weather conditions it was concluded that a 100w panel for charging two 25Ah batteries, for a total power of 50Ah it may be sufficient to meet the request energy of the gateway and an autonomy in the total absence of radiation equal to 8 days.
The nodes initially connected for the project are approximately:

100 domestic users equipped with DN15 and DN20 meters to which the LoraWan 868Mhz radio transmitter was connected via the pulse emitter: the MiDoMet Lora Pulse Transmitter
The main and intermediate line that supplies the district under analysis in order to generate the water balance through the comparison between the water introduced into the network and the water released.
On these two points, large-caliber Woltmann meters were installed, connected via their pulse emitter to the LoraWan 868Mhz radio transmitter: the MiDoMet Lora Pulse Transmitter
Two pressure measurement points, one upstream and one at an intermediate point of the water network being tested. In these points, MiDoMet Pressure pressure transducers were installed which were connected to the LoraWan 868Mhz radio transmitter: the MiDoMet Lora Analog, the extended version of the MiDoMet LoRa Pulse which in addition to remote reading of meters or digital inputs provides an analog input for monitoring sensors such as pressure, level and quality.