Monitoring an electric fence

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

Hi,

I have an electric fence for my animals at the farm. Both to keep my sheep/cows/horses inside the fence and to keep wolves outside. The energizer for the fence sends out a high-energy pulse for an extremely short time period. Typically, the pulse is only for 1/10,000 second and the energizer can output 5-15 Joules. This energy is needed to maintain a high voltage between the electical wires on the fence and the ground, even if the fence is many km long (high resistance) and there is some vegetation touching the fence (“leaking”).

The voltage between the fence’s wires and the ground should typically be between 4000V and 8000V so that this short energy pulse is able to go through the skin/coat of the animals that stand on the ground and touch the fence. I want to be able to monitor this potential using some sort of Z-wave device and need an alarm-signal if the potential drops below, say 3500 V.

Any ideas on how this could be implemented?

#2

There is no ready made Z-Wave device that will do this.

There are fence monitoring systems like the Eagle Eye Fence monitor or the Fence Hawk that you could attach a Z-Wave sensor like a door/window sensor to.

#3

[quote=“Ankurt, post:1, topic:186729”]Hi,

I have an electric fence for my animals at the farm. Both to keep my sheep/cows/horses inside the fence and to keep wolves outside. The energizer for the fence sends out a high-energy pulse for an extremely short time period. Typically, the pulse is only for 1/10,000 second and the energizer can output 5-15 Joules. This energy is needed to maintain a high voltage between the electical wires on the fence and the ground, even if the fence is many km long (high resistance) and there is some vegetation touching the fence (“leaking”).

The voltage between the fence’s wires and the ground should typically be between 4000V and 8000V so that this short energy pulse is able to go through the skin/coat of the animals that stand on the ground and touch the fence. I want to be able to monitor this potential using some sort of Z-wave device and need an alarm-signal if the potential drops below, say 3500 V.

Any ideas on how this could be implemented?[/quote]

I don’t know about the sensor, but you could use a Spark Core or the Photon if you can reach the fence with WiFi. You would have to wait for the Electron if you wanted to use 2G or 3G. You just need way to sense the voltage drop and convert to a 3V3 signal.

Notification of the event over the internet to your Vera controller (or IFTTT to your mobile).