3rd party Moisture sensor support
I would like to see support for 3rd party moisture sensors. Although the weather forecast integration is nice, a lot of us have gardens with different rates of evaporation and soil moisture conditions(shaded, various soil types, etc.) It would also be nice to have 3rd party IoT support for SmartThings, wink, etc... to enable broader integrations.
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Excellent idea - Wireless solar-powered moisture sensors (not sure if those are available) that plug into the home's wifi and feed data into the rain machine. Maybe correlated with a database of how much water a specific plant needs, and you've got an efficient garden on auto-pilot.
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it'd be awesome if Rainmachine brought out wifi/Bluetooth(something low power) solar powered soil sensors, I'd buy them if they lasted a few years
it'd also be great if Rainmachine made something Wifi relay that could be attached using a pair of the zone control cable conductors
failing that, Rain machine reading the data coming from multiple Vantage Pro2 Leaf & Soil Moisture sensors and then allocate these against zones would be awesome
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It would be nice to have integrated the usage of the zone temperature/humidity to decide if and how much to irrigate.
In a first time the information could also just be injected to the rainmachine using the REST API..... (For example the Home Assistant platform may inject those informations that have been collected).
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I had another brain the other day... it'd be great to be able to buy a 6 pack of sensors for example that have multiple individual sensors located at various depths, so the watering system could train each section for the right amount of water...
so say you have a garden bed you are trying to get right, slap a few of them around the garden bed, let RM then apply water and using feedback from the sensors to figure out what your soil is like..
from there it can use a full auto mode to figure out and efficient schedule
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I can imagine many opportunities for software and hardware integration to add value to RM. USB ports on RM could provide hardwired expansion sensor or control ports, but even more ideal would be to allow wifi to interface to extra sensor and control. Being able to place a wifi node at a valve manifold for control without long wires would be great. Being able to place a wifi node nearby collection of Bluetooth sensors would be great. Spruce seonsors use Zigbee mesh wireless which may have alternate advantages. AC powered, battery powered, or solar/battery powered wireless nodes or mesh should be effective. Battery and low power is especially practical because continuous data and control aren't needed. Low interval wake-up would be sufficient.
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Is there any possibility of integrating the Gardena smart sensor?
There already seems to be work being done in a Python project.
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I would be happy to use a moisture sensor connected to Home Assistant as daniweb said above. As RainMachine already exposes its API and is integrated with Home Assistant, any Zigbee or Zwave moisture sensor could easily be set up.
I wouldl like to see if anyone can get the Spruce sensors working this way. Sensor to Zigbee USB or RPi hat, then via API to RM.
I already have RM integrated to Home Assistant. E.g. below:
Unfortunately, Spruce does not ship to Australia so I can't test this.
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Did you ever reach a solution Richard?
I'm in the same boat and can get soil moisture per zone through Ecowitt GW1000 into home assistant. I also have rainmachine integrated into home assistant, but haven't looked into connecting the two to get better adjustments (automation...) on sprinkler times based on soil moisture levels.
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