Smart Homestead - Add a remote switch to your electric fence for less than $10
Smart fence chargers are expensive, but you can add a remote switch to your existing charger easily and cheaply.
Some electric fence chargers come with a smart tester that will let you turn off the fence from somewhere down the field.
To get an electric fence charger that is compatible with these smart testers you have to shop at the top end of most company's product range.
For example on the Gallagher website, you will be spending almost $1000 USD for the lowest priced charger in their i-series that has this capability.
That is a lot of money.
Also, what if you didn't need such a big charger in the first place.
We have a couple of Gallagher M360s on our homestead and even those are a bit overkill for what we need at the moment.
Now, being a tech geek, I had already purchased some smart plugs to do things like turn on our Christmas tree using Google Home.
There are cheaper ones out there, but we got these before and we like them and the app that comes with them, so we decided to get more of the same. They are less than $10 CAD each if you buy a multi-pack.
Here is a link to them on Amazon.
We had the animals out on pasture and I was sick of being zapped after one of the kids said that they had turned the fence off... but hadn't.
So I combined the ideas, electric fencing, and smart plugs
Something that you might be thinking is: "My wifi won't reach far enough for me to use it to turn it on and off".
The cool thing about these plugs is that once they are set up, only the plugs need wifi access.
If you have at least mobile data access on your phone, you can toggle them from the middle of a field.
For convenience, I integrated the app that the plugs came with into Google Home. The Google Home app is nicer to use and it enables voice commands which is helpful sometimes, like asking Google: "Is the electric fence on", when you are back inside and can't remember if you left it on or off.
So that's all there is to it.
If your fence chargers are within range of your wifi and you get decent mobile network coverage on your homestead, then save yourself hundreds of dollars by adding remote switching to your electric fence for less than $10 per plug.
