Cloudmaster® gives councils:
- Centralised control and monitoring
- User activated floodlighting with automatic billing
- Timeclock and date based activation for casual once off bookings
- Control of irrigation, hot water systems, gate & door access
- SMS Control and real time alarm notification
Centralised Control
The Cloudmaster® system gives Council staff total control of floodlighting, security lighting, irrigation, BBQs, hot water heaters etc. at all the parks, reserves, playing fields, tennis courts and golf courses scattered around the municipality. From a PC at a central depot or a laptop from your car you have complete control at your fingertips.
See more info on the technical specification for centralised control.
User Activated Floodlighting
Sporting clubs who regularly use the floodlights can be issued with uniquely encoded keytag transmitters or be given a PIN number which they can SMS from any (or only nominated) mobile phone to control the floodlights. From the central PC the Council sets up ‘time windows’ for each club, specifying time of day, day of week etc. Within these time windows the club can turn on and off what they want and when they want it–half lights for training or full lights for a night game. It is their choice. If training is cancelled due to rain then the lights don’t come on and they don’t pay. The lights will turn off automatically at the end of their time window if the club has not turned them off beforehand. Casual bookings can be handled on a on-off time clock basis, which eliminates the need to issue a keytag or SMS access code.
The keytag reader operates through a brick wall, so all hardware is safely mounted out of harms way. In its memory the Cloudmaster unit logs all activity such as floodlight usage, irrigation, wiring problems, power fails etc. This history log is automatically retrieved by the central PC and usage reports and club accounts can be easily generated.
The Cloudmaster can optionally SMS the club with advisory messages such as ‘Invalid PIN nr’, ‘Out of hours’, ‘Park is closed’, ‘Invalid Phone nr’ or ‘Cool-Warm period’.
The life of discharge type floodlight lamps is maximised by the minimum warm up and cool down periods that can be set for each floodlighting channel. These periods, typically 10 to 15 minutes, prevent the clubs from power cycling the lights too quickly. If not turned off by the user beforehand, the lights will extinguish at the end of the users time slot so they can never be on when they are not supposed to be.
Total run time reports can be generated to assist in lamp replacement scheduling. The result is a much fairer user-pays system for the club. It also eliminates many problems for the council, such as floodlights left burning overnight or on unused playing fields, lost keys to switch boxes, vandalised switch gear and coin-operated machines, arguments over floodlight usage and wasted man hours in cost accounting and visits to the site to change timers, empty coin machines etc. The system has been installed extensively throughout Sydney and many councils around Australia.
See our case study from the Northern District Hockey Association.
Irrigation Control
The unit also controls irrigation so that significant water savings can be achieved through central control.
Six distinct water programming methods allows simple or complex irrigation programs to be set up. Sensors such as flow, pressure, rain, frost and soil moisture can be utilised and detailed water consumption and run time reports and graphs can be generated at the central PC. Having central control means changes can easily be made to allow for daily weather and seasonal changes without the need for a site visit. This can result in significant water and man hour savings.
SMS Control
Communications between PC and remote parks can be via dedicated radio telemetry link, telephone land line or local area network (LAN). However, we are finding the power of SMS makes the cellular CDMA network the communications medium of choice. Council staff can send control commands to any of their control units to override the irrigation or floodlighting program, disable the controller during rain or get a report of faults from any (or only authorised) mobile phone using SMS messaging from anywhere in the world.
Alarm Notification
Cloudmaster® can be set up to send an alarm SMS message to a mobile phone if a problem occurs, such as a fault in the wiring or a burst or blocked irrigation pipe.
Sporting Club Letter
The software can easily generate a letter which designed to explain the club activated food lighting system to the sporting club and give them all the information they need to know to be up and running with a minimum of fuss. This letter is in the form of a text file and is generated from a template which can easily be customised by the Council with their own information or to fit their letterhead.
Automated Sporting Club Invoicing
A bill for each clubs actual light usage is then automatically generated at the central computer. This reduces council workload and provides a much fairer ‘user pays’ service to the club. It also eliminates many problems such as vandalised switchboxes or coin in slot machines or lost keys. The accounts can cover any accounting period, include GST and can be printed directly to council letterhead and enclosed in a standard DL window envelope (see sample account). For security, the account also lists the phone number of the mobile phone used to activate the lights by SMS.
Other Features
- Up to 500 start times per day
- 1 second to 250 hour run times
- Clock and program backed up by internal 10-year battery
- Volumetric or timeclock scheduling
- Repeat cycle from 1 to 28 days
- Water any number of stations simultaneously
- Inbuilt lightning protection
- PC link ready (Windows® PC software is optional extra)
- Detailed historical log of all system activity
- Optional password protection on keypad access
- Flow meter input with realtime total and flowrate monitor
- Rain and frost sensor inputs
Reference Sites and Case Studies
Northern District Hockey Association Case Study