Flow Meter Incorporation

Hi Rachio,

Are there any current or planned future methods to incorporate pulsed flow meter inputs into the controller?

Thanks!
Jim

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@Jay Great question. When we start to build our generation 2 product we plan on having this capability. We will have to characterize each one but we should be able to read them with the design. No dates on generation 2. For generation 1 there is no current way to do that unless we find one with a cloud-to-cloud integration.

Thanks Franz. One idea – would it be possible to make the physical rain sensor input user configurable for either rain sensor or pulse flow meter input? This along with an input parameter for volume per pulse would seem to provide the needed information. Thanks!

@Jay Great question, following up with my hardware team, will let you know what the consensus is.

@Jay We think this is possible but need to do some testing, will let you know when we have proven this concept.

Could be really cool pairing!

@Jay Wanted to followup, we still don’t have a definitive answer. The thought is that we would have to make a hardware change which is not possible for generation 1. Hopefully by next week, time permitting, we are able to explore a couple of different options and get back to you. Thanks! Sorry not to have a better answer but team is focused on other priorities right now :wink:

No need to apologize Franz; I appreciate your responsiveness and understand engineering priorities. :slight_smile:

I’m interested in flowmeter incorporation since it would support actual water usage reporting and under / overflow detection indicating supply and/or leak issues (I especially want to detect leaks). Of course implementation is much more difficult if the existing hardware can’t accommodate it.

In my case I have a rebate deadline coming up, although I’ve recently learned that may be extendable if I submit another application. I’d appreciate any updates as they become available on Gen I accommodation or Gen II availability to help me plan. And thanks again for the dialogue!

@Jay

Our hardware guru is looking into this, should have a definitive answer in the next day or so. Will provide an update!

@Jay The short answer is generation 1 will not support a flow sensor. There are ways to do it but would be too custom.

Generation 2 will have this feature, but no dates on product availability yet :wink:

Hope this helps!

@Jay Ok so this thread isn’t dead, I am now being told we might have a solution for flow on generation 1 hardware. Stay tuned :wink:

Got it Franz. Thanks for the update!

Franz, we’d be extremely keen to see a compatibility with the Hunter Flow-Sync system.

I know they are going to be a direct competitor soon, but the ability to pull information from the outputs of a common sensor like this one would be incredibly useful to us.

@regenesis Thanks for the heads-up on that, will definitely put this on the short list of flow compatibility for generation 2.

Following up with our hardware guru if this could work with generation 1.

Will followup. Thanks again!

@regenesis Being told this can’t be supported off-the-shelf with our current generation product, will definitely put it on the short list when we do incorporate flow. Thanks!

Ok great. In the meantime, we’re 80% sure that the Hunter Flow-Clik would, while not able to track actual water usage, allow the system to shut down in the event of a break.

I believe this is just a simple circuit interrupter that would cause an always-on Master Valve to shut down in the event of a line-break. It would be interesting if the current gen. board software could alert us to this type of event, in lieu of a rain sensor.

@regenesis We are going to keep this in our backlog, I looked at the product and it looks fairly expensive :smile:

I’m reaching out to our firmware team to see if this is a possibility.

@regenesis Seems to be a possibility, but could be significant firmware work.

Will keep in our backlog and let you know if this gets pulled in for development.

Thanks!

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A flow meter would be fantastic. One for the main water line, one for the water line going into the house, and one for the pool. Main line minus the other two meters would equal all the water for the yard. Pool meter would show how much water evaporates! House meter shows how much water my kids use in the shower! It would be cool for the Iro to display all that in a neat graph!

Franz,

Since 99% of the intelligence of the IRO is in the cloud or on the phone, why not use a flow meter that reports into the cloud via wifi? The local hardware only needs to be able to take commands from the cloud, so it would seem to me that the system should be able to integrate the flow meter - but I may not fully understand the system.

@Tomzo If there is a WiFi based flow meter with an open API and cloud solution it could work, but I have not seen any to date.