A bit off topic

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gardenman

13 posts

Geek

#33238 4-May-2009 16:47

but this is the closest forum I could find to home automation.
I just wondering if anyone knows of any products / software that allows you to control garden irrigation systems from your PC?

tonyhughes

Hawkes Bay
8476 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#212152 4-May-2009 16:58

Kludge it?

With typical automation stuff hooked up to the battery circuit of an electronic water timer or three, that are set to "on" (when the 'battery' is connected), and then do the smarts from the PC?

Dunno, how flash you want to get with it?

gardenman

13 posts

Geek

#212234 4-May-2009 20:37

how flash do I want to get?

At the moment I have got 3 seperate watering lines that I want to be able to control independantly (could get away with 2 seperate lines) but I would like to be able to do the programming of when they come on and off from the PC, then if its pouring down with rain I don't have to go outside to switch off the watering for that day.
In a really ideal world it would be good if it could link to metservice or some other site and see that it is going to rain and automatically switch of for that day, and I'd be able to remotely control it when I go away on holiday.

minimoke

750 posts

Ultimate Geek

#214836 14-May-2009 14:08

The best time to irrigate is when it is raining so you shouldn't be wanting to turn the irrigaiton off when it rains - unless perhaps your ground is super saturated. Also you shouldn't be irigating every day - much better to do it deeply and not frequently than shallow and frequent. You could get a decent irrigaiton controller and run one water line and at the end of the line add solenoids. The cost of the wire is cheaper to the solenoids than running the water line. You can get controllers that have rain sensors which turn the irrigaiton off after X amount of rainfall. And the joy of water controllers is that you can set and forget - you won't have to worry when you are on holiday.