Apps for Irrigation?

I know of Simple Irrigation but are there any others? Here's what I'm looking for - I have an Orbit Bhyve. I just setup a Weatherflow Tempest as a weather station and got some soil moisture sensors. I want to use this info to determine when to water my plants. Are there any apps to do this? When I looked at Simple Irrigation it seemed promising, but it seems like it relies on me to build stuff to decide what to do for soil moisture and weather using virtual switches (read: RM) and it's more of the scheduler for opening/closing the valves. Any thoughts or do I need to write something myself?

Been looking for months myself and pretty much no one is sharing anything great. All I've found are "Simple Sprinklers" and "Simple Irrigation" available. Simple irrigation has the ability to stop watering if certain switches are on (for like recent rain or the similar) but you have to make your own apps/rules to control the switches (which you have the set up to do it sounds like). SS is just a timer to turn on zones for X minutes X times a day.

There are a few random threads about irrigation/watering apps but no one is posting any links and just privately sharing the code via PM. There is a thread by @Cobra that's now defunct because he removed all his apps/drivers code and locked them behind his own website that I have requested to join multiple times for 2+ years and never been allowed in, so I have no clue if the apps are still available anywhere.

Rachio

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Yeah I use a weatherflow tempest in combination with Rachio and it works well.

I build a nodered logic flow to turn on/off based on rain prediction, last water date, soil moisture

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With all the drought and water supply issues around the world. I'm surprised that very granular water management hasn't been a huge topic. Rachio seems to be the go-to app here but I like more direct control without any outside services.

I put in a large-ish hummingbird garden this year without ever having any gardening experience. I had figured --rightfully, as it turned out-- that HE, an Orbit zigbee valve, & Simple Irrigation would handle the regular watering chore. Using a virtual button to manually skip a day or two worked for most of the summer but it was ripe (pun) for automation. Enter EcoWitt and AcuRite Blog - Soil Moisture Guide

So now I set Simple Irrigation to run daily for 30 minutes just before dawn. A rule checks (1) that it is not winter and (2) if-not-then if the moisture sensor is <38%. If conditons are met, it opens the virtual switch for a 40 minute window. I'm cuurently fine-tuning the moisture range by logging the sensor data every 3 hours using Bryan's local text file child app in Quick Chart. Garden looks great. Hummingbirds are happy. WAF is off the charts.

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Ya same problem. Our area went to.odd even days. And rachio supported that but not in conjunction with certain week days as well. I just had to set odd and lower the times as i was only doing 3 days a week. Unfortunately . They
now added in conjunction with certain days as well.

There also is a time restriction which rachio handles as i set the start time to 4 am.

Ill be damned if i am getting up at 4 am to manually start the watering to meet the additonal.day restriction. Haven't seen ticket yet.

I will try to set a rule to turn off at 4:05 am via hubitat after watering starts on the days i am not supposed to water.

Not sure that will work.

Because now it restricts to only 1 day a week i unfortunately am adding a early morn and night watering on same day. I would prefer not to water twice the same day but there limits have forced this.

i now have a start of 4 am and another at 8 pm..

here are the restrictions.

and here is the rule i am testing to turn off (rachio starts automatically on odd days) if the day is not correct.


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Does Rachio not let you disable their scheduling? So, you could write a rule to just run the watering cycle on those two day.

Andyโ€™s website is still up (I just checked), so Iโ€™m not sure why your requests to join got no response. Itโ€™s not that exclusive a club :slight_smile:.

Tagging @Cobra and @Royski to see if either of them can clarify.

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The rule would be even more complicated then the one i wrote as it is not just the days but also needs to be odd.

Oh...the notice just mentioned odd number addresses getting assigned those two days. Thought it would be a simple "on Monday and Thursday, water for XX time"

ya there was a previous level one notification that said only odd/vs even days.. they never said it was rescinded.. i guess i should call and confirm.. you may be right.. it makes more sense.. if so i can do this totaly in rachio.. its just a combo i cannot.

@hakarune We dont have any registrations outstanding, could you please try again?

Cheers @marktheknife too :+1:

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@Royski after this post agent out it seems someone finally approved my request to join, but it won't let me login. I get "access denied" guy time I try and I've done the forgotten pass and activate email twice and still no access.

Hey, I sent you a mail should be all good now.
Sorry bank holiday weekend here :+1:

RainMachine also offers completely granular control, set the hour(s) and day(s) for watering by station, length of watering, integrate external personal weather stations and weather sevices (actuals and forecast) to automatically adjust watering, etc.

They've recently started charging for remote access via their servers, but local access is still supported, so you can access everything via local connection when you're not at home if you run a VPN.