[OBSOLETE] RainMachine

The polling interval on the smartapp isn’t coded yet as of now.

The status updates are based on the polling capabilities of each devices. It’s about every 10 minutes. However there were reports a couple months ago that it is not reliable. Polling not working for custom Device Type

I’ll continue to improve upon it as time goes by. Right now I build more device types like Lennox iComfort.

Thanks! For now I will use my polling smartapp. I am trying to think of use cases where SmartThings can take advantage of RainMachine. Anyone have any ideas?

I have rainmachine as well. It does such a great job at adjusting the watering schedule I wasn’t sure how having Smartthings talking to it could help. I’m excited the two can talk to each other, if it was summer time and my sprinklers were working I’m sure I’d come up with something. Maybe motion in the yard at night could turn on that zone? To keep pest away? I’m not sure but I know eventually I’ll think of something. Thanks @copyninja for making this possible.

I think SmartThings can help with notifications. If the SmartApp can notify us when zone or program starts, that is an imnprovement over the native RainMachine app. Also, we can get real time stats from SmartThings logs as opposed to the poor RainMachine iOS app.

@Mbhforum good ideas already! One of the things in my house for Smartthing and the wife approval factor was everything Smartthing can control also has to be also controlled manually. Exact reason I choose rainmachine was it has an excellent touchscreen interface to make adjustments if needed (no need for a phone) . I think rainmachine does an excellent job by itself but diffently looking forward on using Smartthings to make enhancements. My watering needs are very simple… Keep the grass green. I know others have special garden/trees that will benefit from this.

My whole idea of integrating SmartThings with my sprinklers is to pause it when I hit the showers :wink:

I have at least 2 programs set up in my RainMachine. So when it’s on super hot, I’d like to kick off the second program to water the lawn before dusk.

Also, I bought my RainMachine before Eve Irrigation was kickstarted. http://www.eveirrigation.com/. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/208981761/eve-smart-home-meet-your-smart-yard/posts
Although the kickstarter didn’t get fully funded, you may have chance to buy Adam moisture sensor for your yard. I have an area that’s sloped and gets a lot of sun. So, that area tends to dry out quickly when it’s sunny, but can easily get soaked up when it’s cloudy. if you can throw in moisture sensor into the mix, You can make it smart enough to know how much and how often to water

And the crappy part of the app is there’s none for Windows Phone. So, rather than building an app for the phone, I let a machine talk to it.

SmartThings actually won me over Wink because they have app for Windows Phone and an open platform. I know at the moment WP app for SmartThings is crappy too, but functional. just FYI @Ben

Pausing with showers is a GREAT idea! How do you accomplish this? Water sensor in the shower? Currently the smart app wouldn’t be able to do this though correct?

It’s going to be separate smartapp. Either humidity sensor or water sensor in the shower.

I’m waiting to see if there’s going to be standard capabilities defined for irrigation first before this happens. Iro might come up with some. Rachio Iro Smart Irrigation Controller Integration

I looked at iro however it’s lack of local control (needs a phone) made rainmachine a good choice for me. However with more integration of these irrigation system the more cool ideas and apps will appear.

Hello,
There is new public API for RainMachine.
Documentation is “work in progress” here:

http://docs.rainmachine.apiary.io/

For now, only functions marked with “hardware version 1” would work.

Thank you,
Dragos

Sounds good. I would imagine you would need to add pause capability to the RainMachine which we don’t currently have, correct? Or can we do that now?

yup, I’m actually using this API. You can access the same api info from https:///api4.html :wink:

I have added polling functionality now.

RainMachine has no “pause” functionality itself, or any of the current API supports that. In order to implement this, i have to built the sprinkler controller as a device-type instead of the current style of one device-type per zone/program. This is a complete re-write. for now I’ll leave this be, since there’s no rush of using sprinklers until spring time!

Thanks! I set the polling for every minute but it doesn’t seem to work. If I manually hit refresh, it does work though. Looking at the IDE logs, it seems to poll once when I set the app settings, but not every X minutes. I did update the device type code and smart app.

Great stuff - works awesome

Fantastic job - works beautifully! I have been extremely happy with my Rainmachine, and particularly like that it has both local control (and a beautiful interface!) on the device itself as well as remote control. With the Rainmachine being available right now, I am not sure why there is so much interest in rachio and eve and other ‘Smart Home’ options which are lacking many of the rRainmachine features.

Thanks. Just to let everyone know, I’m working on rewriting this piece to be a truly LAN to LAN application so that you don’t have to go through port forwarding and expose RainMachine externally.

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We built “PASUE” and “SKIP ZONE” into the latest Rachio Code

Rachio has significantly more intelligence then that of “an irrigation controller”… It is taking into consideration the types of soils, types of nozzles, root depths, and watering conditions to combine that with local weather data to make per “zone” adjustments on a regular basis (should you enable these options) We are also working to integrate local sensors for each zone now that will be available inside of ST and will provide soil moisture, temperature, fertilizer level, and light quantities per zone… That is the small series of differences…