Turn any electrical irrigation valve into a smart-valve.. or run your pumps on a smart schedule based on your climate! This homebridge plugin exposes a multi-zone irrigation sprinkler dummy control system to Apple's HomeKit. Although a dummy, it brings smarts of an evapotranspiration based climate and plant adaptive irrigation controller with the use of OpenWeatherMap API. The plugin can optionally email you, and/or send you push notifications through Pushover or Pushcut, with the watering schedule it has calculated, or when a watering run is completed, along with the next 7-day weather forecast. Added option to expose system controls to Homekit allowing a user to enable/disable irrigation, rechecks, push and email notifications from within the Home App. Associated WaterLevel Characteristic shows the % of watering cycle remaining.
First, this is a fantastic plugin -- what a perfect application of "smart home" capabilities! I really appreciate the care & attention that went into this coding.
I picked up a Sonoff 4CH, loaded HAA onto it, and modified the board slightly to let me control irrigation voltage instead of switching AC line (which is where the 4CHPRO version would have been nicer). I'm using it to control a 4-zone irrigation system that uses pop-up rotary heads to water a grass lawn, and trying to think of things that might make this an easier setup for those of us who aren't irrigation-science-savvy.
It would be handy to have a "nozzle type" selector for each zone. Spray head output is typically measured in liters per minute, and the efficiency depends on whether it's fixed-spray (65-70%) or rotary-spray (80-85%). Maybe have a set of default basic nozzle types that are independently configurable but have sane presets for each different type of nozzle.
Along those same lines, it might be nice to have predefined "zone types" that would preset the crop coefficient, plant density, etc., e.g. "Grass lawn," "Planting bed," "Vegetable Garden," with sane (and configurable) defaults.
I do wish the plugin could gather the mean solar radiation values based on the lat/lon, so add my vote to the Solcast option. It would add to the overall accuracy & efficiency of the system anyway, since it's using actual/forecast data instead of averages.
On the HomeKit side of things, setting up the automation between the plugin and the Sonoff accessories is much more involved than it should be. I had to create a Scene for both states (on/off) of each valve, and an Automation for both states of each zone control in the plugin. And it was all too advanced for the Home app; I had to use a third-party app to create the Automations. The basic problem there is that the Home app doesn't "see" the plugin's zone control switches as discrete accessories, so they're not selectable as Automation triggers. I'm not sure how to fix that, other than maybe having a config option to make the plugin zone controls appear as basic switch accessories rather than irrigation zones. At the very least, it's probably worth mentioning in the "Notes & Suggestions" section.
Thank you for your kind words and sharing of resources with ideas! Will spend some time with this and revert what could be possible.. unfortunately am a little short on time at the moment.
MTry
commented
1 year ago
First, this is a fantastic plugin -- what a perfect application of "smart home" capabilities! I really appreciate the care & attention that went into this coding.
I picked up a Sonoff 4CH, loaded HAA onto it, and modified the board slightly to let me control irrigation voltage instead of switching AC line (which is where the 4CHPRO version would have been nicer). I'm using it to control a 4-zone irrigation system that uses pop-up rotary heads to water a grass lawn, and trying to think of things that might make this an easier setup for those of us who aren't irrigation-science-savvy.
It would be handy to have a "nozzle type" selector for each zone. Spray head output is typically measured in liters per minute, and the efficiency depends on whether it's fixed-spray (65-70%) or rotary-spray (80-85%). Maybe have a set of default basic nozzle types that are independently configurable but have sane presets for each different type of nozzle.
https://agfuse.com/article/comparison-between-pivot-and-drip-irrigation-in-corn-cultivation https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/irrigation-efficiency
Along those same lines, it might be nice to have predefined "zone types" that would preset the crop coefficient, plant density, etc., e.g. "Grass lawn," "Planting bed," "Vegetable Garden," with sane (and configurable) defaults.
I do wish the plugin could gather the mean solar radiation values based on the lat/lon, so add my vote to the Solcast option. It would add to the overall accuracy & efficiency of the system anyway, since it's using actual/forecast data instead of averages.
On the HomeKit side of things, setting up the automation between the plugin and the Sonoff accessories is much more involved than it should be. I had to create a Scene for both states (on/off) of each valve, and an Automation for both states of each zone control in the plugin. And it was all too advanced for the Home app; I had to use a third-party app to create the Automations. The basic problem there is that the Home app doesn't "see" the plugin's zone control switches as discrete accessories, so they're not selectable as Automation triggers. I'm not sure how to fix that, other than maybe having a config option to make the plugin zone controls appear as basic switch accessories rather than irrigation zones. At the very least, it's probably worth mentioning in the "Notes & Suggestions" section.