Guide · pump and generator alerts
Get an alert when your pump or generator stops.
The pump that fills the troughs, the genset that keeps the cool room going, the bore that waters the far paddock: when one of those quietly stops, the first you often hear of it is the damage. Run-status, pressure and fuel alerts tell you the moment it happens, even where there is no mobile signal.
Last updated 4 July 2026 · by Alien IT Solutions
The quiet failure you find out about too late
A pump does not announce itself when it stops. A generator trips at 2am and the shed sits dark until morning. A fuel tank runs down over a week you were flat out and nobody thought to check the gauge. None of it makes a sound you can hear from the house, so you find out when the troughs are empty, the cool room is warm, or the stock are standing at a dry trough.
Remote monitoring closes that gap. A sensor watches the thing that matters, run-status, pressure or fuel, and sends you an alert the moment it goes wrong, so you are dealing with a stopped pump and not with what a stopped pump leaves behind.
What you can watch
The pumps, gensets and pressure your property runs on, all on the one dashboard.
Pump run-status
Know whether a pump is running or has stopped, by flow through the line or by pressure downstream, with an alert the moment it drops out.
Generator run and trip
See whether the genset is running, stopped or has tripped, so a shed, cool room or pump does not sit without power for hours.
Fuel level
A level sensor on the diesel or fuel tank, with a low-fuel alert before a generator or pump runs itself dry.
Pressure and flow
Watch line pressure and flow so you catch a burst, a blocked line or a pump that is running but not delivering.
How it works
A sensor on the pump or genset
A run-status, pressure or fuel sensor sits on the equipment and runs for a long time on its own power, sealed against the weather, dust and vibration.
Readings over the mesh
The readings hop over a low-power radio mesh to a gateway, reaching the sheds, bores and back-paddock pumps a mobile signal cannot.
One dashboard, with alerts
Every pump and generator on one dashboard, with stopped, low-pressure and low-fuel alerts by SMS, email or push, and full history so you can see how often it happens.
Why run-status changes the maths
Most of the cost of a pump or generator failure is not the repair. It is what fails downstream while nobody knows. Stock standing at a dry trough on a hot day. A cool room warming past the point the produce is safe to sell. A bore pump that has been dry-running for hours because the water level dropped and nothing told it to stop. By the time you notice, the small problem has become the expensive one.
A run-status alert turns that around. You get a message the minute the pump stops or the genset trips, while it is still just a pump that needs a look. You drive out once, with the tools you need, instead of finding out the hard way and then dealing with the aftermath as well as the fault. On a spread-out property, that difference is worth more than the sensor several times over in a single season.
It also gives you the record. Full history means you can see a pump that has started tripping more often, or a generator that keeps stopping under load, and get ahead of it before it fails for good. A pattern on the dashboard is a repair you can plan. A pattern you never saw is a breakdown at the worst possible time.
Pump 'off' and the troughs it feeds
A stopped pump and a falling trough are usually the same story told twice. The pump that fills the trough quits, the trough level starts dropping, and the stock are the ones who find out first. That is why the pump run-status and the water level sit on the one dashboard, not in two separate systems that never talk to each other.
If you are here from trough monitoring, this is the other half of it: not just watching the trough drop, but knowing the pump behind it has stopped so you can act on the cause. The water side of the property is covered in more depth in the remote tank and water monitoring guide, and the two work together, run-status telling you why a level is falling, level telling you how much time you have.
What it takes to fit
Most pumps and generators can be watched without pulling anything apart. Run-status can come from a simple sense of flow in the line, from pressure downstream, or from a signal the equipment already gives when it is running. Fuel level is a sensor on the tank. Nothing needs mains power at the sensor, so a bore pump on the far boundary is as easy to watch as one next to the shed.
Because the sensors are sealed and run on their own power for a long time, there is no cabling to trench across the property and no reason to be near a power point. The one thing that matters is the radio path back to a gateway, and the mesh is built to hop across the distances a rural block throws at it. Alien IT walks the property, works out where the gateway goes and which sites need a relay, and sets the whole thing up so it just works.
You do not have to watch everything on day one either. Plenty of properties start with the one pump or genset that has caught them out before, see the alerts working, and add the rest over time onto the same dashboard. The system grows with the property rather than asking for one big commitment up front.
Who builds it
Tank Monitoring is the water and run-status monitoring service of Alien IT Solutions, an Australian IT, networks and connectivity company with more than 18 years of experience. It is part of a family of rural services, all Alien IT: Rural IoT for other sensors like gates and frost, Paddock Networks for whole-property wifi, Long Range WiFi for long links, and Starlink Rural for satellite internet.
Questions people ask
How do I get an alert when a pump stops?
A small run-status sensor watches the pump for you, either the flow through the line or the pressure downstream, and sends the reading back to one dashboard over a low-power radio. When the pump stops or pressure drops below the level you set, you get an SMS, email or push alert, so you know in minutes instead of on the next drive around.
Can it tell me my generator has tripped or run low on fuel?
Yes. A run-status input tells you whether the genset is running or has stopped, and a fuel level sensor on the tank tells you how much is left. You set a low-fuel threshold and a stopped alert, so you hear about a trip or an empty tank before the shed, cool room or pump it feeds goes without power.
Does it work where there is no mobile signal?
Yes. The sensors use a low-power radio mesh that reaches the bores, sheds and back-paddock pumps a mobile signal does not, hopping the readings back to a gateway and then to the dashboard. No-signal sites are exactly what it is built for.
Does the pump 'off' alert connect to trough monitoring?
It does. A stopped pump and a falling trough often mean the same thing, so the trough level and the pump run-status sit on the one dashboard. If a trough starts dropping when the pump should be filling it, you can see both at once and act before stock run out of water.
What alerts do I get?
SMS, email or push alerts when a pump stops, pressure drops, a generator trips or fuel runs low, plus full history so you can see how often it happens and when. The point is to know the moment something stops, not on the next drive around the property.
Who installs and supports it?
Tank Monitoring is the water and run-status monitoring service of Alien IT Solutions, an Australian IT and networks company with more than 18 years of experience. Alien IT designs, installs and monitors the sensors, the radio mesh and the dashboard.
Know the moment it stops.
Tell us the pumps, generators and pressure you want to watch. Alien IT will design the monitoring and price it.
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