I have a few weeks to tear out my old front yard garden and build a new one. Basically I’ll be landscaping the front yard and starting with the flower beds. Before I start digging into the earth and dropping in stone/new earth/pathways/lights/electricity etc. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to an automated irrigation system. I was in a new corporate building one time and they had what they called “a living wall”. I’m wondering if i could do something similar, but for outdoors while having it be something that I can monitor via SmartThings. Another “side” idea I was thinking was to use an IP camera to do a time lapse of the garden.
If you are looking for the best integration out there right now, the Rachiro Iro offers it, however they don’t have any ST compatibility yet. I have a Rain Machine and someone on here wrote code for it, but until the weather cooperates in NY, I can’t do much testing.
The Rain Machine is coming out with a new version this month (that is what they are telling me) no more port forwarding. I have already had it approve for a rebate with my water company… I am almost getting it for free
I’m totally down to dig trenches and run wire. Might as well figure out all the lighting etc. while I’m at it. I’ll post all work that I do to the garden on this thread, technology wise that is.
Really? No good even basic hose spigot connected solutions available yet? Eve going into kick starter means no help for the upcoming season. Sad state of things.
Same state of affairs here…I am digging for some solution. I already ran mini-irrigation for planting bed and trees etc in my front yard and back yard. I have Mr Mister (i think) mini-timers on the hose that operates that so it kind of does a schedule…but I truly would appreciate something that I can control and see a history of run times … one time the irrigation controller went out in mid-july and I was gone…had no idea and came home to crispy planters and flower beds. I love drip irrigation systems, but give me something to monitor!!!
We use Rachio for our lawn sprinkler system and it’s awesome. Not integrated with ST and sounds like that might be a long time off unfortunately.
Not sure if this may be of help to all of you but this is what I use.
I have a rain barrel that has a submersible pump, similar to this one mounted in it:
This connects to a drip and low-flow system from Lee Valley that is hidden in my fence and reaches raised beds and planters, I don’t currently have it setup to cover my lawn area because it generally doesn’t require it. http://www.leevalley.com/en/Garden/page.aspx?cat=2,2280&p=49657
It is connected to a GE Z-wave outdoor plug:
One of the nice things is that I can re-purpose the z-wave plug in the winter to control my Christmas lights!
I am working on PlantLink integration into ST with RainMachine. It is not easy but considering PL is only $30 / sensor it makes a lot of sense to try to do it.
Question on you rain barrel setup. For background I have a barrel currently. It has a spigot already drilled in the bottom side for garden house and about a 6 by 6 inch opening in the top for my storm drain pipe. I could see placing that submersible pump through the top opening of the barrel and just running a garden hose through the opening in the top as well. Of course the pump would have to fight gravity then. Did you drill a hole in the lower side of the barrel to fit the pump nozzle through it?
