Hi there, my name is Eric M. and I’m a CX Supervisor on the Rachio support team. I’m a huge home automation geek and have been trying to figure out how to use my Rachio without investing in an expensive in-ground irrigation system. This is especially important to me because I live in a rental house, so investing a lot of money into a house that’s not mine seems crazy. Below, I’ve outlined how I use my Rachio with Samsung SmartThings to control my sprinklers through the Rachio interface.
For this to work, you need:
SmartThings Hub
Water Valves
Rachio Irrigation Controller
Sprinkler Heads
Hoses
Part 1: Set up the Rachio app
The first thing to do is set up the Rachio app as you normally would.
Weather Station Zones Schedules
I simply set up my zones, weather station and schedules as I would if it was on an irrigation system. We have a lot of rain here in the Portland area so it’s not watering too much right now!
Part 2: Smart Valves and Sprinklers
I have some Waxman Leaksmart valves that I got for free, so I figured I’d put them to use to automate my dumb sprinklers. With some simple fittings from Home Depot, I was able to connect it to my hose bib and hose.
Valve
I then set up a series of hoses and impact sprinkler heads around my front and backyard.
Part 3: SmartThings and Rachio
After getting my Rachio and sprinklers set up, I had to get Rachio integrated with my SmartThings as well as get the link set up.
The first thing to do is to set up Rachio in SmartThings. Once set up, it shows as switch like valve devices.
Then, I set up 4 routines, one to turn on each sprinkler valve and one to turn off each sprinkler valve. I only have 2 valves so one is for the front and one is for the back as shown in the images above.
Once that was set up, I grabbed a custom SmartApp from the SmartThings Community called “Switch Activates Hello Home Phrase”.
I set that up to run my Start routine when the zone is turned on and to run the Stop routine when the zone is turned off. The Rachio integration is pretty instant when it starts running in Rachio. I noticed about a second or less delay from manually running the zone in Rachio to when SmartThings updated the zone’s status.
Part 4: It’s complete!
Once all that is set up, every time Rachio runs a zone, the corresponding routine will run and start/stop the sprinklers! The zones are essentially synced with my valves, so any time that zone runs for any reason in Rachio, it will turn those valves on in SmartThings.