They sent me one of those as a warranty replacement for a failed version 1 which was itself a warranty replacement of another version 1 of their smart switch which died. It’s working fine but I’ve not had it operating long enough (1 month so far) to test reliability.
Yes it is large form factor so it will prevent anything being plugged in next to it.
I wrote these to handle WA’s watering restrictions and collect and use weather data. It doesn’t use BOM weather but i have an integration to open weather map that allows some flexible calculations to affect the volume of water. OWM sources the data from the BOM I believe.
I tried this get Open Weather map but was not playing the game. I have got my dashboard running how I want now, has rain delay and date picker etc. All automation run from Node Red. Feel free to grab any of it, if it is useful. Does an actual volume based reading on local rain gauge.
A few versions ahead of what was posted above now.
Thanks for the recommendations guys, I’ll check them out. In the meantime, I created a helper 'rain chance max for the next 2 days" and using that. Really basic I know haha
alias: Garden Bed Irrigation
description: ""
trigger:
- platform: time
at: "09:00:00"
condition:
- condition: or
conditions:
- condition: template
value_template: >
{{ states.sensor.campbelltown_temp_max_0.state | int >= 30 and
states.sensor.soil_moisture_green_garden.state | int <= 30 }}
- condition: template
value_template: >-
{{ states.sensor.soil_moisture_green_garden.state | int <= 20 and
states.sensor.rain_chance_forecast_2_days.state | int <= 60 }}
action:
- service: rainbird.start_irrigation
metadata: {}
data:
duration: 10
target:
entity_id: switch.rainbird_gardenbeds
mode: single
If you want to vary your irrigation duration based on the forecast temperature, you might want to try something like the below too.
I can’t rely on soil moisture measurements, so aside from some conditions (don’t irrigate if there’s been sufficient rain in the past few days (or it’s forecast), don’t irrigate in cold weather etc) I instead vary on a logarithmic scale based on termpature.
The HA sensor itself (configuration.yaml) looks like this:
‘28’ results in a runtime multiplier of ‘1’ if there’s a forecast max of 28 degrees.
‘6’ is the exponent - how aggressively the multiplier curve moves up or down either side of 28 degrees.
Pop this into your template editor under developer tools if you want to get a sense of how the numbers work
{{ float(log(28, 28) ** 6) |round(2) }}
Then my irrigation action calls the duration with the multiplier applied:
I’ve messed around with the resistive ones (they corrode really easily) and the capacitive ones (which seem better, albeit more expensive).
The issue for me is the sheer size of area I’m irrigating and the number of sensors I’d need to get a representative sample/average. My irrigation controllers are also quite a distance from the solenoids and the irrigated areas, so getting sensor readings over such distances is problematic.
These are fairly cheap and have been working for me but you are right the costs do go up quickly if you need a heap. I am just planning on 3 for each garden bed in 3 different areas of the yard, 1500m2. Between 9 sensors in 3 different areas I think I should be able to get a good representative sample.
I used to use the GiEX branded zigbee water devices (TS0601) but they just burnt through batteries in a couple of days. I’m using the ones similar to what you posted - or at least ones that are physically identical - EcoWitt branded https://www.amazon.com.au/Ecowitt-Moisture-Sensor-Humidity-Tester
They work really well. The dongle is located right in the centre of the house, but is able to read the sensors in the back yard as well as the front garden.
My batteries have been holding pretty well. Mine were not GiEX Branded when I bought them. I also have zigbee repeaters one wall away from my soil moisture meters.
I bought the first batch, they apparently fixed it in a later batch, but you can’t upgrade the firmward so they’re bricks. So rather than buy them again (and they’re pretty bloody big tbh) I went with the 433Mhz ones.
