I’ve finally configured my garden and landscaping on drip irrigation, but I’m using some dumb valves hooked up to my house hose spigot.

I would absolutely love a smart valve that I can have better control of the schedule, or respond to sensors.

After some looking around, it seems like “Rachio” is the only integration I can find for something like this. It’s a bit pricy ($99 per valve), and it looks like it needs a wifi hub to work. Has anyone used this integration successfully?

Is there any other options? There seem to be lots of “Bluetooth” controllers available in the big box stores, but I’m guessing they will need an app or something?

  • chrdEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I am using BQ05 valves flashed with Tasmota: https://templates.blakadder.com/irrigation_timer_BQ05.html

    They have been running drip irrigation for my raised beds for a couple of weeks now. Their wifi is kind of weak though, I needed to install an outdoor repeater to improve connection stability.

    Edit: Using MQTT the valves appear als simple switches in home assistant and are easy to automate.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      Love me some Tasmota.

      What are the connections on that thing though? It doesn’t look like standard garden hose thread?

      • chrdEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        I had to use some adapters to fit it to my system - the top fresh water connection is a 1" outside diameter (with an adapter to 3/4" inside diameter thread) and the bottom outlet is a 1/2" outside diameter thread with a Gardena (used a lot in Europe and Germany) style quick connect adapter included.

          • @[email protected]OPEnglish
            2•1 year ago

            Ah, interesting. I might snag one to tinker with. I’m getting lazy in my ways, so generally things I have to take apart to flash get lower priority, but my greenhouse and garden are my favorite places to tinker.

            Edit: I’m still figuring out how lemmy works. In one app it showed my reply was posted to another topic I was browsing at the time. So I deleted it, and tried to repost in this reply. But once it was removed, I couldn’t edit it. So I ended up replying to my own removed reply…

            • chrdEnglish
              1•1 year ago

              Thankfully taking it apart is really easy, takes no time at all.

              Yeah lemmy is still a bit rough around the edges for me too sometimes, still better than the official reddit client though ;)