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?
Buy a relay board and an ESP8266/32, flash Tasmotaon it (or them) and you’re done! You can control them with HA through MQTT.
Yeah, that’s the easy part. But what valve? How to power the valve plus the esp board? Waterproofing? Those are the tricky parts.
For the valve, any garden irrigation valve will do. If you have a DIY shop (sorry, I don’t know how’re they called, here are Brico) you can buy and ask for suggestions there. If you don’t have power at all there well…maybe a latch valve and an EAP32 with deep sleep code can last a few months (I guess, I’ve never tried that). For the waterproofing, the valve should already be waterproof, for the circuits you can buy an IP 65 electric junction box. Easy? Maybe not, but when it works, it feels good!!! :)