Every week we hear the same problem from farms, orchards and holiday-property owners: the pump is 200 metres from the house, or 20 kilometres from the nearest router, and somebody has to physically drive over to switch it. Radio remotes work only in line of sight, SMS controllers have no feedback and no scheduling, and running network cable is not economic.
A 4G remote control switch solves this by using the same cellular network as your phone. It needs no broadband, no router and no range limit — the pump can be on another continent and still respond in about two seconds. The unit powers itself from the control circuit it is switching, so installation is a two-wire job.
How the wiring works
The 4G switch sits in the pump's control circuit — either directly for loads up to its rated current, or in the coil circuit of a contactor for larger motors. A 1.1–5 kW single-phase pump is comfortably handled by a 30 A unit such as the AT-SY4 30 A; larger or three-phase pumps take the 63 A single-phase unit or the AT-SY7 three-phase smart switch.
What the app gives you
Beyond simple on/off, the app shows live status (so you know if a breaker upstream has tripped), schedules (irrigation windows at 5:00 and 19:00, automatically adjusted for daylight saving), countdown timers and hour-counting. Multiple users can share control with permission levels — the farm owner, the agronomist and the electrician each hold their own rights, and every operation is logged.
Data cost and coverage
A switch uses a few megabytes per month — far less than one photo. Our 4G models ship with an IoT data card included for five years, which covers the practical life of many installations. Coverage is the only real prerequisite: a 4G signal of one bar at the pump site is enough, because telemetry needs a fraction of the bandwidth of a phone call.
Practical protection tips
- Mount the switch in a sealed, suitably rated enclosure if the site floods or washes down, and keep terminals protected from ingress.
- Use the schedule to enforce dry-run recovery pauses rather than letting the pump run unattended 24/7.
- For billing or shared irrigation districts, choose a metering model so every switching event is tied to measured consumption — the way the 600-hectare Chile irrigation project is operated.
If your pump site has no Wi-Fi and no budget for cabling, send us the pump nameplate and a photo of the panel. We will come back with a wiring sketch and the right model within 24 hours — start here.