@jeroenterheerdt - I just wanted to say thanks for this integration and your helpful videos.
I have a watering system where I use a simple (but semi-smart) approach to watering based on a few key parameters e.g. has it rained, will it rain today, todays temperature.
Now I have found your work and I will slowly switch over and use your integration but I have a couple of questions.
I use the Australian Government Weather data (BOM) in HA and I don’t use open weather maps. Would it be possible to expose the weather attributes that the integration needs so they can be configured manually?
I would like to be able to update buckets and calculated duration rather than just reset them to 0. Is this possible?
I think I have this all working how I wanted but have a question in relation to how precipitation (rain) from my weather station is being used in the bucket calculation.
Yesterday night there was 25mm of rain then another 60mm already today. So I manually updated and calculated and expected the bucket to be >0 and no need to water but the system thinks my garden still needs water (not much water but still unexpected).
I’d like to understand how the rain/precipitation data is being used and if I have something wrong in my configuration.
Everything all working. Thanks. Worked out how to set bucket and all is working but I think I have found a bug (or maybe this is by design). Let me know if you agree its an issue or not. Here is what I found.
Two zones can not share the same module and sensor group as the weather data is applied to the first zone and then deleted so it is not applied to the second zone.
I fixed this issue by creating a second (duplicate) sensor group and applied one sensor group to one zone.
Two zones can not share the same module and sensor group as the weather data is applied to the first zone and then deleted so it is not applied to the second zone.
that is a bug. Weather data should not get deleted if there are other zones depending on it. please open an issue on GH.
Great work on this integration by the way. All working very well for my setup now that I worked out what was going wrong with weather data and my second zone.
First I must thank jeroenterheerdt for his work on this. I am new to smart irrigation however I feel this might just be what my clubs RC field needs. Right now we are using a simple timer and wasting a ton of water. I was hoping to find someone with a working setup of say 4 zones to go off of but have been unsuccessful. I have been trying to work through it on my own. I do however have some questions…
If I turn off “Automatic duration calculation” and " Automatic weather data pruning" does this mean that the bucket will continue to fill over multiple days? I would like to water every other day. I would then need to send a call to calculate the zone and then empty the bucket and the time of watering correct?
I assume there is no way to display the bucket value until calculated? Doing so loses all the weather data so the duration becomes reset each time as well? Would love to be able to display real time bucket values on the front end dashboard but see no way to do so.
Is there a way to adjust the multiplier of each zone from an automation?
I am sure I will have many more questions as I try to navigate my way. Thank you for your help in advance.
hey, thanks for checking in and giving this a try! I really appreciate it. I’ll try to answer your questions below.
well, yes and no. If you don’t do automatic calculation / pruning your bucket is not updated and weather data is not deleted. so it will be there for your to manually calculate whenever you’re ready. It will then calculate the bucket and the zone’s duration taken into account all weahterdata collected up to that point. However, you can also just keep automatic calculation / pruning on and then the bucket will be updated daily. Keep in mind that you are responsible for resetting the bucket so if you don’t irrigate / reset the bucket daily, the automatic calculation will just happily keep “expanding” your bucket until the maximum bucket size configured.
if your bucket is zero you need to calculate to get a bucket value. If you don’t reset / calculate it that bucket value will stay the same. The bucket is an attribute of your zone, so you can use {{state_attr('sensor.smart_irrigation_your_zone_sensor_name', 'bucket')}}
to add this as a template sensor or just find it manually as an attribute on your zone.
no, there is no such thing right now. It’s interesting though, how often would you want to do that?
For an example of an automation with multiple zones, please see here.
Do I need to calculate only when I start the irrigation cycle or can I have it run the calculate all service every hour to update the durations and the buckets to upade the UI only? Then run my irrigation cycles and run the reset zone service after it completes? I assume it just keeps adding to the bucket each calculation until I reset it correct or will that mess with the proper calculations?
On the multiplier. I was planning to add a slider that would allow slight adjustment for more / less water on the interface itself making it easy to slightly modify duration. I can do it outside of the integration using a calculation there and using the new calculation as the duration.
Yes, you can calculate every hour and it with update the bucket and duration, but it the original design is to do the calculation just once per day. It will only ever reset the bucket if you tell it to.
Regarding that multiplier, that’s an interesting idea. I will add a feature request on Github to add a service to update the multiplier for all zones and a specific zone.
Welcome @MikeDel - are you still looking for help with your smart irrigation dashboard? I’m happy to share but there are quite a few bits to bring it all together.
Do you have an existing watering system (e.g. linktap) setup and working in HA?
Happy to share all the config and explain how if all comes together - so just let me know.
Dashboard looks like this now as I have continued to tweak it.
OK. Let me write it up and post the yaml, config and setup instructions.
Some of what I have in my setup is not needed for smart irrigation. Previously I had my own ‘dumber’ smart irrigation system that was based on temp/rain and schedules and I didn’t want to lose that work so I added ‘real’ smart integration as an option/switch.
I will post full working yaml but you can remove the ‘dumber stuff’ if you like.
I have not commented or changed anything - so this is the precise yaml for my dashoad/view. Happy to help with questions while you get it working. Then I will post on automations etc.
