I’m about to plant some trees, and ordered some soaker hoses. Are there any recommended smart home outdoor faucet controllers available? I love my rachio and how it cancels watering if the forecast that day calls for rain. Not sure if this functionality would be available without a service elsewhere.
Thanks much!
EDIT: Orrr… Since I still have at least one zone left on my sprinkler system, better to install it there and just have Rachio control it…
Orbit has some wifi ones, but you can only monitor, not control them through ST yet.
My use case is similar to yours, but with new grass seed. I’ve oped to use Obit’s older Zigbee timer valve from Iris. I got two on eBay for super cheap that were brand new. They are battery operated, but I don’t know yet how long they’ll last. So far I’m very happy with them. One is currently being used, while the other is a backup waiting for another patch of seed to be spread where in ground sprinklers can’t reach.
It joined as a Zigbee switch, and it actually works pretty well that way. I wrote my own DTH for it, but it was more of a hassle, plus it’s super duper basic in what it reports.
This timer is hard coded to run for only 10 minutes if you control it via ST, but if you manually use it you can adjust the time up or down. I was never able to figure out how to change that through any parameters through ST with my DTH…
The way I use it is with my Spruce controller smartapp. Each Spruce zone is a device in ST, so I’ve been able to turn on the Obit timer after certain zone switches turn off/on via Automations or another smartapp I’m in process of writing. If the Spruce controller schedule doesn’t run because of weather conditions or the rain sensor tripped, neither will the Orbit timer valve.
When I need to run the timer valve for longer than the default 10 minutes, I have a couple Automations that kick it on back to back, but with a 20 minute wait time to let the water soak in to the ground and not wash the seed away. The Spruce controller does the same thing, but within their app, and it can be configured like crazy.
I haven’t gotten all the parts yet, but plan on using my old in-line hose watering timer with a swtichbot and a moisture sensor to activate when watering is needed.
I figure I’m going to need to water these things for 2 seasons, so I may get fancy with it. The moisture sensor is interesting. I’ll also take a look at iris controllers out there.