Center Pivot Simulator

Here's a quick preview of a little project I'm working on. It's a software simulation of a center pivot irrigation machine. I'm using Python and PyQt to build this in a flexible and fairly rapid way, and to allow this simulation to run on other platforms easily.

The purpose of this simulation is to provide a platform for experimenting with my remote pivot control system. The simulation has two parts, which I detail below.

Simulation of pivot's physical characteristics

The first part of the simulator simulates the physical characteristics of the pivot. This includes analogs of the control wires that go down the length of the pivot, the end tower's movement, the over-watering timer on the 2nd-last tower, the end gun solenoid, the lights on the center and end tower,and the water in the pipe. Also simulated is the safety return line, and the ability to simulate faults in the towers. The simulator drives itself around the virtual field and has a virtual GPS receiver on the end tower, and also an adjustable resolver that simulates the position ring found on the neck of some pivots.

This part of the simulation does not contain any control panel. The GUI component, shown above, does include buttons to manually activate various circuits, which I used to test the pivot simulator. Thing such as the GPS receive or the resolver ring have no effect on the simulator. They are for use in higher levels of the simulator, such as a simulated computer panel.

Simulated basic pivot control panel

All pivots have at least a basic control panel mounted to them that let you set a direction for the pivot to go, set the duty cycle (speed) of the end tower, detect water, handle faults, etc. All this is simulated in a panel simulation, shown in the screenshot above. I have simulated a basic, analog pivot control panel here, not unlike the Zimmatic Basic panel. The reason I went to the work of implementing this is because I think the easiest way to control a pivot from a fancy remote internet-connected thing is to use the existing panel which already has a safety system, contactors, etc.

Yet to implement is the end gun control system, the end tower timer, and the autostop/autoreverse whiskers.

My goal is to simulate the basic panel with enough fidelity that a real pivot could be controlled by interfacing with the panel in the same way. Using relays to control the on/off switch, the forward/reverse buttons, etc.