Power supply for farm monitoring application

Farms consist of various elements which are constantly changing state, such as opening and closing gates, water trough levels, and feed levels. Monitoring the status of these elements automatically reduces the workload of a typical farmer, as well as providing benefits such as real-time monitoring, alerts and statistical analysis. A vital component of the farm monitoring architecture is a power supply unit for the monitoring devices. Being able to utilise the power from the electric fence energiser is of great interest as it would allow integration of this system into any electrically fenced farms. This paper presents a novel approach which uses the high voltage pulse of a radio frequency interference (RFI) suppressed electric fence energiser to power the monitoring devices. Since a small amount of the available energy may be drawn as not to affect the primary operation of the electric fence, the power supply presented in this paper should be as efficient as possible.