Thank you for the great project idea reggleston4!! I just implemented this for my house and works great!
I was curious, do you know if it would be possible to add an oled i2c display? I saw from the esp8266 12e that pins 4 and 5 are the SDA / SCL pins, however they are being used to control some relays. Do you know if any other pins from the header could control the display? (Sorry I’m a bit of a new learner with esphome).
First of all thank you so much for setting this up. Ive been looking to try and make one myself but have been having a hard time with it. I do have a couple of questions please
I am so confused as to how to setup zone watering. Say i want zone 1 to come on schedule 1 on tuesday and friday and then zone 2 to come on schedule 2 on wednesday and thursday, how to i get them to save so i can do each zone differently. Ican get 1 zone to work perfectly but unsure how to then move on to setting the next zone etc.
alsoI know you have included manual buttons for rain delay, but is there any way to use Openweathermaps precipitation to automatically delay watering?
Thank you very much
Macca
Do you consider adding rain sensors for detection and interrupting watering operations during rainy weather
@nahwel Hello, I’m happy to hear you got it working. As you have pointed out, the default I2C pins on the ESP8266 are used. I believe the GPIO pins across the bottom of the ESP8266 are unused (on the 8 channel board), so you may be able to use software I2C on those pins. It is unclear to me if this will work, but you can certainly try specifying a different set of pins in your I2C setup! That would probably be the fastest way to find out!
Hello @merlinmac, I’m glad you got it working. Unfortunately, the way this device is configured doesn’t allow for what you are trying to do. As it is, it only allows a custom duration for each zone, and you have the option of running 1, 2, or 3 times each day at your programmed start time.
This ESPHome configuration is not as “feature complete” as commercial apps like Orbit’s b-hyve. After all, I just whipped this up quickly in my spare time. You can certainly extend the configuration to add the features you want! In the future (probably distant future), I may write a more complex configuration that allows independent scheduling for each zone. If you do that, it ends up being a LOT of buttons and switches. You can do it though!
Regarding automatic rain delay, you could use an automation within Home Assistant to automatically delay watering. You can source data from the web using an integration, or you can integrate your own independent rain sensor into your local Home Assistant. Then just create an automation to set the rain delay to ON.
Good luck!
Thank you so much for getting back to me. That certainly explains why I spent 2 days playing with it and not getting anywhere. I will put it to good use for sure 