VIA Tools
Empowering irrigators through simple technology and people-centred learning
Where to start?
The VIA has three systems that can be used independently or in combination
1. Chameleon Card System
The Chameleon Card is our most simple system to use.
The Chameleon Card System consists of three or six Chameleon sensors together with a credit card-sized reader. The sensors are permanently buried, with the wires attached to a stake in the ground. To measure the soil water status, the wires are placed into the slots in the card reader. The LED on the card will turn blue (wet), green (moist) or red (dry) to show the soil water status at each location.
Sensors can be placed to measure at one depth in different locations or at several depths in one location.
The reader does not store data or have any wireless communications.
2. Chameleon Wi-Fi System
The Chameleon Wi-Fi System reads, stores and sends data to the VIA website platform. It is connected to a Chameleon sensor array. The sensor array consists of three soil water sensors placed in the top, middle and bottom of the rootzone plus a temperature sensor, which gives the array a unique digital identifier. The Reader has three LEDs, one for each Chameleon sensor.
The Chameleon Wi-Fi Reader can be permanently connected to a sensor array. In this case, it will log a reading every two hours. The Wi-Fi Reader can be paired to a Wi-Fi access point for continuous data delivery, or to a mobile phone for upload when visiting the crop.
A Wi-Fi Reader can also be used to manually take and store data from many sensor arrays. This is an economical option for when data is required less frequently (daily or weekly) from many different locations.
3. WFD Solute Monitoring System
The Wetting Front Detector (WFD) records the depth of infiltration of irrigation water. The WFD is buried in the root zone. When the infiltrating water goes past the WFD, it captures a water sample and pops up a magnetically latched indicator.
The WFD stores this soil water sample for later analysis. The water sample is removed using a syringe. All dissolved salts are measured using a VIA Electrical Conductivity (EC) meter. Nitrate, which is the most difficult nutrient to manage in irrigation, is measured with colour strips.
WFDs are used as irrigation management tools, particularly to identify over-irrigation and water logging. However, their main use is for solute monitoring in conjunction with the VIA EC meter and nitrate test strips.