The Index → Proven
◆Proven
Maple sap on sensors
A vacuum gauge and two float switches turn a season of driving around into a season of boiling.
What it is
A vacuum gauge on the tubing system and float switches in the collection tanks, both reporting back over long-range radio from the sugarbush.
The numbers
- Sugaring is a three to six week season where most of the labor is driving around checking things that are usually fine.
- A vacuum leak — a chewed line, a loose spout, a squirrel — costs sap all day, silently, and vacuum is worth a large fraction of total yield.
- An overflowing tank costs you the same sap, plus the drive.
- Radio nodes run $25–45 each and the sugarbush almost never has power, which is exactly what long-range radio is for.
Why it's here
This is one of the cleanest wins on the whole site for anybody tapping more than a dozen trees, and it's the textbook case for radio over Wi-Fi: no power, long distance, a few bytes an hour.
The automation angle
Vacuum below setpoint → alarm. Tank above 80% → go pump it. That's the whole rule set, and it replaces every speculative drive you'd otherwise make.
The catch
Honestly, not much of one — which is rare here. Cold batteries are the only real nuisance, so size the node for February, not for the day you installed it.