Moisture Sensor Integration

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post by dpryan on Jul 18, 2017

There’s a bunch of threads on this, but none of quite solve the issue of adding cheap, accurate, and commercially-available soil moisture sensing to Rachio.

This is the ideal way to “close the loop” of the Rachio soil-moisture guesstimation.

Edyn seems like the only available option (via IFTTT), but it’s relatively expensive and the reviews suck (e.g. it reports the same moisture value no matter what). And it doesn’t actually use the moisture value to feedback into the Rachio algorithm.

My plan is to use the $14 Xiaomi plant sensor (sometimes called “Flora” or “Miflora”) to push the data to Rachio (using a $10 Pi Zero W as a Bluetooth to WiFi bridge). Previously, people talked about an API that allows moisture percent to be pushed to Rachio, but I can’t find the details of that API. (I plan on having multiple moisture sensors to measure different zones, so hopefully the API supports that.)

Or, if IFTTT is the only option for Rachio Integration, is there a way for the Rachio to accept the moisture percent in the JSON body of the Webhooks? Currently, the only relevant Rachio slots would be “Start watering time” or “Start a zone” but neither of those accept a moisture level.

(Side note: The “GreenThumb” soil sensor seems like a good alternative sensor if it was more widely available.)

Edit: Found the API here, but I don’t see anything that would allows input of soil moisture percent: https://rachio.readme.io

post by dpryan on Jul 20, 2017

Business idea: Perhaps Rachio could design a “smart” thermostat that never measures temperature. Simply enter the square footage of your house and the BTU output of your furnace and it can use local weather to determine when to turn on/off the furnace by guesstimating the temperature.

post by mckynzee on Jul 20, 2017

This is interesting @dpryan - how do you see this working in comparison to Nest?

PS- I do not believe that we currently allow soil moisture to be changed through the API.

post by dpryan on Jul 20, 2017

@mckynzee - I was being facetious… a sprinkler controller without a moisture sensor is like a home thermostat without a temperature sensor. Open-loop control systems suffer from offset errors, sensitivity to disturbances, and a high reliance on accurate input parameters.

It seems like many other people realize the desire for this:

@johnny2678 says “Incorporating actual soil sensors would be nirvana” in this post.

@azdavidr says “Integrating robust soil moisture sensors seems like the holy grail for smart irrigation as they complete a closed-loop system” in this post.

@franz, @plainsane, @jjpaz and others talk about integrating soil sensors extensively in this thread (Feb 2015 - June 2016).

It seems crazy (to me) that Rachio doesn’t allow the input of soil moisture data.

In the meantime, it seems like the workaround is to disable all schedules on the Rachio and write your own closed-loop control system to trigger individual watering sessions using the soil moisture data.

post by plainsane on Jul 20, 2017

It may seem crazy at first, but have you seen how expensive controllers with 20-30 sensors cost?

post by dpryan on Jul 20, 2017

@plainsane That seems like a different ballpark. I’d like to have one sensor per zone. But I guess it would be expandable to as many as you want, so long as you have wireless reach. The limit with my proposed approach is the range of the Bluetooth LE in the Xiaomi sensors (since they need to reach the wall-powered Bluetooth/Wifi Bridge). The GreenThumb sensors have built-in wifi which would give a bigger range (but the battery life is only a few months).

I guess I’m not sure what your point is?

The key issue is that Rachio doesn’t have the ability to use soil moisture data, regardless of how many sensors you have.