My Garden Irrigation

itajackass · April 4, 2020, 11:19am

Me too. Here in Italy, hot is coming… I’d like to see a preview

klogg · April 4, 2020, 1:55pm

Thanks for the encouragement!
I actually have a new package written and have been considering making it available.

I am more than happy to share it but because of the current situation I’ve had too much time to fiddle with it and it seems to have grown organically rather than through good design!!

It is definitely more flexible and configurable and it has quite a feature rich UI. The downside is that I wonder if the UI will be quite demanding if you run HA on a RPi. I don’t know, as I run my HA on a NUC.

Also due to it’s organic growth I didn’t live up to the promise of it being leaner

Finally, it is not fully tested except on my desk where it seems to work perfectly.

If you want me to, I will put it ion GitHub but certainly for the time being it will be as a beta version with no assurances from me

Features of the new system are

2 scheduled cycles
1 manually controlled cycle
Scheduled cycles can be scheduled for any time and can be set to run on specific days of the week
Scheduled cycles can both be used with or without rain adjustment and/or temperature adjustments independently
Weather adjustment routines are more efficient and have been slightly improved (I think)
It can cope with a variable number of zones. It will only need more code if you have more than 8
Zones and Cycles can be given user friendly names from with the UI

I think that is about it. I am using SmartWeather for my rainfall data and DarkSky for temperature. If you want to use something else it will need some changes.

One more thing, I designed it to use an 8 relay board and an ESP32 to control them but there is no reason at all why it wouldn’t work fine with any switches (eg Sonoff). I did decide to include a single Sonoff Basic which powers the entire system. This way I still have the fail safe where I can make use of the PulseTime. If you don’t need that because you are staying with Sonoffs it should be easy to adapt it to include the PulseTime setting for each individual valve. I hope that makes sense…

Let me know if you want it on a ‘preview’ basis.

This is what it looks like

heartkingz · April 4, 2020, 2:27pm

This looks great!! Just built my own “smart” irrigation system. Love to check your package!

dapuzz · April 4, 2020, 2:34pm

Awesome! Please share lovelace configuration too!
I have actually a sonoff 4ch with stock firmare so I am going to implement my own “pulsetime” script …the “good” side of corona lockdown, we have lot of free time :-/

itajackass · April 4, 2020, 3:07pm

Amazing UI!!!
I hope it will work without pain on a Raspbi!
Yes actually i have 2 sonoff 4ch pro… I need to implement pulsetime for each channel then.
Will be difficult for me tocimplement a 3th cycle? Because i have 2 zones with strawberry and i’d like to irrigate 3 times a day with drop irrigation

Last question: is it possible to implement a checkbox for disable/enable a commercial sensor rain? Because i’ve wrote a tutorial (sorry in italian but very easy with images) to use a commercial rain sensor with a zigbee hack device: https://www.domoticadiy.it/2020/04/sensore-di-pioggia-commerciale-zigbee2mqtt-home-assistant/

itajackass · April 4, 2020, 3:11pm

Another idea for all: separate translation? https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/internationalization_custom_component_localization/

In this case i can partecipate to translate menus in italian if it is a good idea for you

klogg · April 4, 2020, 5:13pm

Ok, I’ll try and add it to GitHub tonight or tomorrow…

http_edo13 · April 4, 2020, 7:16pm

Also i can’t wait to see the new package!!

klogg · April 5, 2020, 11:10am

For anyone interested version 2 is now on GitHub

PLEASE REMEMBER: Whilst it works on my desk, it can only be considered a preview at this stage.

alessandro.bardi · April 5, 2020, 12:22pm

Great idea, grazie Giuseppe.
I’ve tried to integrate this project but without success!
Ciaooo,

Alessandro

itajackass · April 5, 2020, 12:24pm

Hi thanks for sharing it. A question: i don’t undestand how to lovelace_gen works. where I need to put your lovelace dir? and how to modify ui-lovelace.yaml main file?

itajackass · April 5, 2020, 5:43pm

I tried to put content of view_garden_v2.yaml directly on my ui-lovelace.yaml. then i removed some entry about smartweather i haven’t yet… after reboot of HA I get a very bad not working layout. I’ve included all plugin required by HACS. Anyone has integrated it without problem?

http_edo13 · April 5, 2020, 6:32pm

Hi, thanks for the wonderful work. If I don’t have the master solenoid valve, what pieces of code should I remove?

klogg · April 5, 2020, 9:59pm

Lovelace_gen is a very powerful custom component by Thomas Loven. To find out what it does and how it does it I suggest you read his Github.

Some of my lovelace yaml files have the first line as:
# lovelace_gen
Do not remove this as it is need by this custom component.

Yes, I have probably not made it clear how my folder structure is…
In my config I have a lovelace folder.
Inside that I have two sub-folders:

includes which contains some lovelace yaml files that I use throughout my config and,
garden_includes which contains some lovelace yaml files that I wrote just for this package

You can move all the files into one folder but you will have to edit all references to them to point to the right place.

My ui-lovlace.yaml
has the following:

views:
  - !include lovelace/view_garden_v2.yaml

I hope that helps with those questions. I will try to remember to update the readme on Github to be clearer.

What exactly does this mean?

klogg · April 5, 2020, 10:04pm

If you mean the extra Sonoff I am planning to use as fail-safe switch with the PulseTime feature then you need to search for pulsetime and remove the relevant bits. However at this stage there is no real need to remove anything as it should still work with it still there. All it does is sends an MQTT message.

http_edo13 · April 5, 2020, 10:47pm

yes, because my system is made up of two 4ch pro sonoffs that turn on each valve(6 zones), I don’t have a master that turns on and closes the entire system. however, the pulsetime function will also be there for all sonoff 4ch?

dapuzz · April 6, 2020, 12:12am

I have installed HACS to get the custom lovelace cards but let me add some glue. We need also

helper input_text.notifications_user1_name
sensor.time

Is this correct? Any other suggestion?

klogg · April 6, 2020, 7:53am

Yes, sensor.time is needed somewhere in your config.

And yes I have written it to allow two users to receive notifications. You are right two helpers are needed (mine are elsewhere in my config as I use them not just in this package):

input_text.notifications_user1_name and
input_text.notifications_user2_name

The actual notifications are handled outside the package so it will need some adapting to make use of whatever notification methods you choose to use.

I included it so that when I am away on holiday it can use Telegram to tell me when irrigation starts and ends.

Again, I will update the readme on GitHub.

Thanks for pointing this out.

itajackass · April 6, 2020, 10:27am

Good. Maybe you can include notification in the package to get an all-in-one packages without external dependencies

klogg · April 6, 2020, 11:57am

As it stands the package will send the notifications by calling script.notify which is outside this package. You can change this to anything you like and it wouldn’t make sense for me to include the script.notify in this package as my notification system is a whole package all on it’s own and very tailored to my needs.

The irrigation notifications are all handled in the file garden_notifications.yaml.