Hi everyone,
I’ve been running the official Hunter Hydrawise integration in Home Assistant for a while. It works well for schedules, sensors, and the usual dashboard stuff, but zone commands go through the cloud and often take a few seconds to show up. For quick manual runs or testing, that delay is noticeable.
There is a local HTTP API on many older Hydrawise controllers (firmware below 3.0), but Home Assistant Core only ships the cloud integration. openHAB has had a local binding for years; I couldn’t find a maintained HA integration that talks to the controller on the LAN.
So I built one: Hydrawise Local.
It connects directly to your controller on the network (Basic Auth, usually admin plus the local password from the controller settings, not your Hydrawise account password). It is a separate integration (hydrawise_local) and is meant to run in parallel with the built-in hydrawise integration. You can keep the cloud setup for planning and dashboards, and use the local one when you want fast start/stop.
What you get per zone
Each active zone becomes its own device, with (Local) in the name so it’s easy to tell apart from cloud entities. Per zone there is a run switch, watering/suspended binary sensors, and sensors for next run, time until next run, last watered, and remaining run time while a zone is active.
Install
Add the repo as a HACS custom integration: https://github.com/TommiG1/hydrawise_local, install Hydrawise Local, restart HA, then add the integration under Settings → Devices & services. You’ll need the controller IP and the local password from the controller menu (Settings → Config → Local Password).
Manual install works too: copy custom_components/hydrawise_local/ into your config folder and restart.
First release is v0.1.0. I’m running it on an HC 12 with firmware 2.01 on my own setup.
Good to know
Local commands are fast, but they are not synced back to the Hydrawise app. For automations, pick either cloud or local entities for a given action; mixing both for the same zone in one automation can get confusing.
Local API support depends on controller hardware and firmware. Hunter removed or limited local access on many newer units, so if your controller doesn’t expose the local password option, this integration won’t help. The README has a bit more detail on what the local API can and can’t do.
Feedback welcome
This is early days. If you try it, I’d love to hear which controller model and firmware you’re on, and whether install and zone control work for you. Issues on GitHub are fine too: TommiG1/hydrawise_local.
Thanks for taking a look.
Tommi