Hacker farmer security

Hi HN,

So we have a piece of land (4 acres) that we are leasing to try out some small scale farming here in Zambia.

For context, the farm has a small house where 2 people currently live to take care of the farm.

The current issue we are facing is thieves. Not dangerous thieves, but small scale - wait for you to sleep and sneak in to steal anything not cemented down. I kid you not, they have stolen an unsecured submersible pump, later came for an electric cable delivering power from the house to the pump and also some Poly Pipes. Same MO - wait for the rainy day when now one can hear them, jump over the wire fence around the property and steal. Discovered only in the morning.

This is greatly limiting what we can do - I had a dream of undertaking a drip based irrigation and having some free range chickens that sleep in a little house, but of course this is failing.

Being a programmer in my day job, I have been trying to come up with some motion sensor based security that can work with our constraints. Please help with suggested components Constraints: 1. Unstable power supply - hoping for solar possible solution.

  2. Limited ability to run power cables from power source (house) to for example motion sensor

  3. Need a sensor that can work in heavy rain - and maybe "see" through crops such as maize.

  4. Easy to operate (can be complex to setup)

  5. $1000 budget

  6. Can be bought online

Just for full information, I have strongly considered security dogs, but there is some taboo here when people see dogs going walking through vegetables that people have to buy probably the same day so when we tried it, our customers who come to the farm shunned it.