Rainmachine integration?

Is anyone using any external moisture sensors on their Rainmachine? Thinking about adding something like that to my setup (Rainmachine Touch HD-12) to monitor a few different planting areas and water automagically when they are dry.

Actually, not yet. My property is pretty simple. mostly grass with a couple of low maintenance tree/shrub areas. If anything, I am opting, at some point, to go the weather station route. Rainmachine has done a very good job with their algorithms, I really haven't been in to much of a hurry to change/add anything to it. The only reason I wanted to add it to HE was to pause the system when certain doors were open(ed).

My application would just be for my planting areas. Rainmachine does OK on general watering, but the garden areas need more attention that I have proven I should not be trusted to provide... :slight_smile:

I'm not sure how you would connect a moisture sensor into RainmachineI All I am seeing for ours (I have the Touch HD-12 as well), is the Rain sensor input.

But I hear you with gardens! I would probably want to look into the moisture sensors as well...

I just stumbled onto these: Order | Spruce – The Smart Irrigation Controller? A little pricey... But they're Zigbee and they look really cool!! DANG IT! Now, look at what you've done!!! Now my gears are turning... I may have to put in a garden... :rofl:

I'm not sure if there is anything in the API that would let us inject the data into Rainmachine's mixer or not. But I am sure you could create some decent rules within RM ...

Edit: A little additional research on the board here, it looks like a couple of members have tried to create a driver for these... I wonder if the supplied HE, Generic Zigbee Moisture Sensor driver would work?

Sorry to infect you with new ideas...I saw those Spruce as well. :slight_smile:

I think I read that the generic zigbeen moisture sensor driver was more about sensing water (binary), rather than moisture levels, but I may be confusing what I read when I was looking at this late at night recently...

Yeah, I was thinking a rule that would turn on a zone when the Spruce readings indicated a need for water. I have the blood of too many parched tomato plans on my hands...

Another option...this looks really interesting.

https://community.hubitat.com/t/release-ecowitt-gw1000-wi-fi-gateway/38983/1

Features
  • LAN communication only, no cloud/weather service needed.
  • One Hubitat device for each Ecowitt sensor for easy dashboard tiles and RM rules handling.
  • On-the-fly Imperial <-> Metric conversion.
  • Tile HTML templates , which allows endless tiles customization, including displaying multiple attributes with dynamic weather icons in a single tile.

Wi-Fi Gateway:
https://www.amazon.com/ECOWITT-Gateway-Temperature-Humidity-Pressure/dp/B07JLRFG24/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=GW1000+gateway&qid=1598222695&sr=8-3

Sensor:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JM621R3/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A13RMNHJJ617OY&psc=1

Example Rule:
https://community.hubitat.com/t/release-ecowitt-gw1000-wi-fi-gateway/38983/350?u=danabw

This could be the promised land. :smiley:

Embarassed, but I could not resist...I have the gateway and two sensors on the way. Thinking I'll mount the gateway on an outside wall under my eaves (and maybe inside a plastic bag to protect it) to increase it's range to the sensors. My Wi-Fi AP is in the middle of the house about 15' from the rear wall where I'd mount the Gateway, so the Wi-Fi connectivity to the gateway should be fine.

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And it all looks very inexpensive! Please report back to this thread on how it all goes.. With pictures :slight_smile:

Pics or it didn't happen!! :wink:

I did the same ( I.e. installed the GW1000) but missed reading the indoor temperature. Finally installed it inside and no difference apart of being more protected and easy to inspect/replace if need it.

Thanks for the info. Just to confirm when you said:

You mean that it made no difference in the gateway's range and ability to connect to the moisture sensors? What kind of range did you see in your use, from the gateway to the sensor, that could be reliably maintained?

Yes, the furthest sensor is about 25m away.
I suggest looking to a power point in your house as close to your external sensor and as close to the window if you can, If still not working try to change the outlet where you plug the gateway ( via the USB).

Thanks much for confirming...if I can get 25m then I think I'm going to be pretty close to good.

I have a sliding glass door directly opposite the farthest away area that I want to monitor, so I will have the option of having it by the window, or outside the window. I'll start inside since that's easier overall, and there won't be the issue of morning dew and condensation in general ruining the gateway.

Excited about trying this out...arrives Tuesday.

There's official support from Spruce: Spruce Gen2 + Hubitat Connect - Spruce Support

Unfortunately, it seems they don't ship to Europe so I'm stuck.

Brad, thanks so much for this, I was waiting for someone to port it. And you also added it to HPM, so that is more I could've hoped for. :slight_smile:

Questions:

  • can I label the auto-generated zones and programs? this is so they appear in sequence in the device list. Usually I don't rename device, I just use the label and it works great.

  • is it possible to create a parent/child relationship in the device list like I see for other drivers? They create child devices so the parent comes first and the created devices uppear under it in the list.

  • does the driver sync the names of the programs/zones if I change them in RM? If not, can I update manually in some way?

Thanks again for what you've done. :slight_smile:

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Blockquote
can I label the auto-generated zones and programs? this is so they appear in sequence in the device list. Usually I don't rename device, I just use the label and it works great.

You can certainly label them by changing the Device Label on any of the Zones or
Programs. I am going to look at updating the code at some point to automatically set this when creating them and potentially including a prefix. That said, just type "Rain" in the search box and it filters the list to just find these devices.

Blockquote
is it possible to create a parent/child relationship in the device list like I see for other drivers? They create child devices so the parent comes first and the created devices uppear under it in the list.

Yes I will revisit the code and look at making these proper child components. I have to think about adding a parent device to gather these which does not exist right now. Its a shift from the SmartThings approach., At this stage, I am content to not worry about back porting compatibility to SmartThings so I think it is Ok to adjust this to be more Hubitat-centric. The Groovy model is leaving SmartThings soon anyway.

Blockquote
does the driver sync the names of the programs/zones if I change them in RM? If not, can I update manually in some way?

We do update the names if you rerun the setup in the App, if the "Re-sync names with RainMachine?" option is turned on.

I think that when you'll implement the parent/child relationship, it won't be a problem anymore, because once you set the name of the parent with something like RainMachine-xxxxxx, the names of the childs can be also the same as the ones on the RM itself. Anyway, using the labels is perfectly fine now, I've renamed them so Alexa picks up the label names and I don't need to define Routines with specific names, everything straight and simple. :slight_smile:

Now the only thing I need to understand, for integration with Alexa, is how to use the other commands (suspend, resume, etc.). Alexa sees the zones and the programs as switches, so it's on/off. I guess in order to use the other commands RuleMachine Connectors with virtual switches for each command need to be created.

Thanks again for all your work on this, it's greatly appreciated.

Every downstream platform is its own world for how to access the "commands" that exist on a given device. I use SharpTools for dashboards and that platform has a way i can access all these custom commands and turn them into tiles to trigger the action. I am hesitant to auto create all these virtual devices since they are only needed in certain contexts for a given set of users, so I think its better to let the user create them on their own.

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Sorry Brad, I didn't even thought to ask you to implement all those virtual connectors, this is up to the user, absolutely agree with you.

You know, I love it when there's a driver for a system I use that maybe does not provide an official Alexa skill and I can make it "Alexa enabled" through the Hubitat skill. What is missing though, is that once that device is available on Alexa, the Commands of the device managed by the driver, should be exposed to Alexa automatically. I don't know if that's even possible...I don't know if it's some layer missing between the driver and the Amazon Echo Skill app, or something missing between HE skill on Alexa and the Amazon Echo Skill app....or both...:slight_smile:

See here on the Ecowitt integration...I'm up and running on two moisture sensors in my back yard. One sensor is 80 to 90 feet away! Setup is easy even when you're like me and completely distracted by family and too many open windows on my laptop at the same time. I've already ordered another sensor and a temperature guage, and am looking forward to working out watering driven by the info provided by the sensors. The Ecowitt integration and @brad2's RainMachine integration are a match made in heaven. :smiley:

https://community.hubitat.com/t/release-ecowitt-gw1000-wi-fi-gateway/38983/456?u=danabw

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Cool! Thanks, @danabw for the update!... Sounds like a project for next spring!