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I too replaced my dying PoS Rainbird irrigation controller with a raspberry pi and a relay board. > With cron, I can schedule things however I want! Wait, are

by haroldp 10y ago

I too replaced my dying PoS Rainbird irrigation controller with a raspberry pi and a relay board. > With cron, I can schedule things however I want! Wait, are you not using sprinklers_pi[1]? I highly recommend it. I have more home pi/arduino/IoT projects coming up, but I am thinking it's going to be a lot of work integrating them. I'd like one home app/page that integrates them all. 1. https://github.com/rszimm/sprinklers_pi/wiki https://github.com/rszimm/sprinklers_pi/wiki

kzisme 10y ago
What did you dislike about your Rainbird system ?
- haroldp 10y ago
  1. It didn't work reliably 2. The UI was awful and buggy 3. It finally broke outright and replacements with halfway modern features were pricey
- twothamendment 10y ago
  I installed my own sprinklers and drip - 22 zones of it. A Rainbird controller was going to be nearly $300. I went with a pi and loved it. Then came the real problem - I put the home on the market and ended up replacing my pi with a rainbird for the next people. Why? I kinda wanted to keep my setup and buyers didn't know what to think of it. After I swapped it out I missed quite a few things - controlling it from my phone, from home or remote, being able to pull up a graph and see how long each zone ran. I wasn't in the mood to get up at 3am to see if the rainbird was working so I crossed my fingers and hoped it would work at least until the house sold. Setting up all my zones was a lot faster on the pi than it was with cranky dials and buttons on the rainbird. I won't miss it.
jon-wood 10y ago
For the integration side you should take a look at http://home-assistant.io http://home-assistant.io - they support a huge variety of hardware already, and almost every type of device includes a configurable MQTT adapter if you're building your own. Once your hardware is integrated with Home Assistant it can handle automating things. The whole system is a big state machine so most automations will involve reacting to state changes and sending commands to other devices in response.
krzyk 10y ago
If it is only for irrigation of anything not grass, why not use off the grid system like blumats (http://blumat.com/en/ http://blumat.com/en/)? You only need to provide it with a water source.

by haroldp 10y ago

kzisme 10y ago

What did you dislike about your Rainbird system ?

haroldp 10y ago
1. It didn't work reliably 2. The UI was awful and buggy 3. It finally broke outright and replacements with halfway modern features were pricey
twothamendment 10y ago
I installed my own sprinklers and drip - 22 zones of it. A Rainbird controller was going to be nearly $300. I went with a pi and loved it. Then came the real problem - I put the home on the market and ended up replacing my pi with a rainbird for the next people. Why? I kinda wanted to keep my setup and buyers didn't know what to think of it. After I swapped it out I missed quite a few things - controlling it from my phone, from home or remote, being able to pull up a graph and see how long each zone ran. I wasn't in the mood to get up at 3am to see if the rainbird was working so I crossed my fingers and hoped it would work at least until the house sold. Setting up all my zones was a lot faster on the pi than it was with cranky dials and buttons on the rainbird. I won't miss it.

jon-wood 10y ago

For the integration side you should take a look at http://home-assistant.io http://home-assistant.io - they support a huge variety of hardware already, and almost every type of device includes a configurable MQTT adapter if you're building your own. Once your hardware is integrated with Home Assistant it can handle automating things. The whole system is a big state machine so most automations will involve reacting to state changes and sending commands to other devices in response.

krzyk 10y ago

If it is only for irrigation of anything not grass, why not use off the grid system like blumats (http://blumat.com/en/ http://blumat.com/en/)? You only need to provide it with a water source.