Forest fire detection on a budget

1

Hi again…
First off… My apologies to all but I wasn’t trying to bait or troll in my last post, so I’m sorry if I came across like that.

Anyway, I’ve resolved my problem regarding price vs admin at least for what I want to do… When I was setting up my test app, I bought a 20 euro Dragino water leak sensor to test with.
The payload says water_leak_status On/Off, but it could say Wax On/Wax Off for all I care. Long story short I can use it (without any modification whatsoever) as a LoRa forest fire detector. It even comes with a 2 pin plug…err 2 pin sensor head.

I’ve already built a test set up and it works fine. I have a 100m long detector, basically a 2 x 23awg wire cable with an intumescent strip in it and strung between trees. Absolutely nothing sophisticated and dead cheap. The sensor plugs into that at the centre.

Fire at any point on the line > Intumescent strip heats up > expands > closes the wire airgap > sensor > gateway > LoraWan > my server > Telegram. Works great, no paperwork, replicable and replaceable dumbness and not worth the stealing. I want to see just how long I can get this. If I can get 250m at 23awg or less (say 40), I’ll be happy.

Must think up more ideas!

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I’ve edited the title so it’s less of your previous manifesto and more about your actual solution which seems pretty cute.

Just to make it up to the rest of us that you abandoned on your previous world-order-changing thread, perhaps you could show us a diagram of how you get the intumescent strip to push the wires together.

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May-be even some photos?

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So low cost sensors (assuming £17 pound is low cost) are available and I doubt you could get lower than that for an approved\certified sensor.

Presumably the same ‘2 pin’ connector could be adapted for other stuff, gate open\close, motion detector etc.

Are you able to change the program on that sensor so that it could do other stuff ?

Do tell.