r/homeassistant • u/Over_Ideal_6707 • 9h ago
Making dumb irrigation smart?
My irrigation system is dumb. Any ideas on how to know if it runs properly when I'm away?
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u/fart_huffer- 8h ago
I used orbit hyve, soil moisture sensors and local weather api. When the grass dropped below a moisture percentage and there was no rain probability over 80% in 2 days then the water would turn on at 4am and run until the moisture sensors read at higher levels. I didn’t once have to water my crops or lawn. I also built an above ground sprinkler system, which was thousands cheaper than a professional install
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u/thegiantgummybear 8h ago
What do you mean above ground? You have pipes running above ground everywhere?
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u/fart_huffer- 7h ago
I just ran small PVC pipes along the edges of my fence and tied in to sprinkler heads. Some were 360° heads and others were rotary. You just gotta measure your PSI and gallons per min so you don’t overload it. I ran my sprinklers in 4 zones to avoid over loading and losing too much water pressure. It all ran from normal water faucets outside. It didn’t look tacky because the pipes were by the fence and I painted them
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u/Ok-Explanation-3414 7h ago
Can you go into more detail about this above ground sprinkler system?
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u/fart_huffer- 7h ago
I just ran small PVC pipes along the edges of my fence and tied in to sprinkler heads. Some were 360° heads and others were rotary. You just gotta measure your PSI and gallons per min so you don’t overload it. I ran my sprinklers in 4 zones to avoid over loading and losing too much water pressure. It all ran from normal water faucets outside. It didn’t look tacky because the pipes were by the fence and I painted them
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u/FlatusSurprise 9h ago
Get a Rachio controller for the irrigation system and then use the integration to pull it into HA.
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u/6SpeedBlues 8h ago
I can't oppose this enough. I absolutely HATE my Rachio controller and the are a lot of other people being frustrated with their system as well.
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u/wivaca2 4h ago edited 4h ago
I have a Rachio and so far, I've had a few problems:
- it failed to run programs that a properly set and are not involved in a rain skip. I wouldn't have even known it, but I keep history bars of when my irrigation programs from Rachio run.
- The programming interface is overly complicated and a bad UX. It's not rocket science but they wanted so much to make it pretty, they forgot to make it concise and easy.
- They have a nice feature like finish by a given time or by sunrise for lawns, but oddly it will only support one program that does that and I have no idea why that limitation would exist. I have programs run on odd/even days (we're not irrigation day limited but do have a well so I want it spread out).
- You can get into crazy amounts of detail, like soil types, irrigation sprinkler types, and number of drip heads and rates of flow. The only problem is, just because you have a particular head doesn't mean your actually getting the water through they're assuming. It's all estimates. Also, it's hard to know if you have sandy loam or loamy clay or sandy clay loam.
- They require cloud and are trying to expand into landscape lighting and other outdoor accessories, have some gimmicks saying they can detect how your valves are working through a 24V solenoid to which the device only supplies voltage passed through from a transformer. I suspect it is only a matter of time before they start introducing subscriptions or some other revenue stream.
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u/Over_Ideal_6707 9h ago
How difficult is it to retrofit? Are they expensive?
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u/Intelligent-Dot-8969 8h ago
Swapping controllers is easy for the most part. You just need to connect the wires for each zone, plus a common wire, connecting them to the new controller just like they were connected to the old one. If you have a pump that needs to be triggered it’s slightly more complicated, but not much.
With Rachio everything is controlled via an app. Once you’re finished wiring up the controller you shouldn’t ever need to touch it again.
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u/WannaBMonkey 8h ago
I use Zigbee hose controllers and Zigbee moisture sensors and currently manual automations.
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u/meoverhere 7h ago
I was sousing open sprinkler in my last house and plan to reinstate that in my new home.
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u/Eclipsed830 6h ago
I'm also looking into this now but I want something with a pump so I don't have to leave my outdoor water running. I wanna pump from a box or bin when I am away.
Kind of shocked there isn't really much of a diy solution I could find.
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u/Tanner234567 5h ago
I recently started selling this sprinkler controller I designed and built myself. It works with home assistant via MQTT and doesn't need an app. Check it out if you want!
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u/wivaca2 4h ago
I used to have a old RainBird that had no home automation or remote interface. A lot of them have an extra solenoid output for a pump or main valve. Connect that up to a 24v relay that closes a dry contact, then use pull-up with that dry contact on an ESP32 GPIO or some other dry contact sensor compatible with a protocol you use.
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u/Competitive_Owl_2096 9h ago
A camera if you just want to know if it runs