Hi,
I’m new to Home Assistant and am trying to use it to manage a bunch of irrigation zones using Sonoff Sprinkler Zigbee Timers.
I’ve got my timers connected using ZHA and have started experimenting with automations, but I haven’t figured out a satisfactory way to do this.
If I use the Schedule Helper then I can create a schedule for a specific irrigation timer then create an automation to turn on that zone when the schedule switches to On and turn off the zone when it switches to Off. This means I would need two automations per timer/zone.
If use a Calendar then I can have a single calendar for all my timers where the event summary contains a keyword associated with a zone. Then I can do a Choose action with a bunch of conditions like:
{{ 'Cactus Fence' in trigger.calendar_event.summary }}
That trigger each respective zone. This allows me to have just two automations (one to activate and one to deactivate) that trigger for all my zones. The trade off is I have to do this weird conditional logic using the event summaries.
In both cases I don’t have a nice unified way to view and modify the irrigation schedule.
I’ve seen quite a few threads on this very topic where people have setup dashboards that give you an overview of all your zones with the ability to modify their schedules and trigger them manually.
Some of these threads have been going for years and it is really hard to figure out how the described systems are actually setup. Some also are tied to specific irrigation equipment and most all are done via yaml config files which I have not learned how to use.
Can anyone point me to an up to date guide on how to build this kind of irrigation controller in HA? If that doesn’t exist any advice or recommendations on where to start learning to build one would be appreciated.