API & Soil Moisture

Smart Home & API API
1

I’m writing my own scheduling mechanism and I’m trying to figure out soil moisture percentage so I can determine if a zone needs watering.

I was only able to come across one other occurrence of this topic within the Rachio Community but it is archived and does not answer the question:
https://community.rachio.com/t/accessing-and-modifying-moisture-levels-via-the-api/5288
It’s also a little bit on the older side so perhaps the response has changed.

Here is a zone we can discuss:

...
    "zones": [
        {
            "id": "obfuscated",
            "zoneNumber": 1,
            "name": "Z1: Side Northwest",
            "enabled": true,
            "customNozzle": {
                "name": "ROTARY_NOZZLE",
                "inchesPerHour": 0.47
            },
            "customSoil": {
                "name": "SANDY_LOAM"
            },
            "customSlope": {
                "name": "ZERO_THREE",
                "sortOrder": 0
            },
            "customCrop": {
                "name": "Warm Season Grass",
                "coefficient": 0.6499999761581421
            },
            "customShade": {
                "name": "LOTS_OF_SUN"
            },
            "availableWater": 0.11999999731779099,
            "rootZoneDepth": 10.0,
            "managementAllowedDepletion": 0.5,
            "efficiency": 0.800000011920929,
            "yardAreaSquareFeet": 800,
            "imageUrl": "obfuscated",
            "lastWateredDuration": 702,
            "lastWateredDate": 1563021000000,
            "scheduleDataModified": false,
            "fixedRuntime": 0,
            "runtimeNoMultiplier": 5222,
            "wateringAdjustmentRuntimes": {
                "1": 7834,
                "2": 6528,
                "3": 5222,
                "4": 3917,
                "5": 2611
            },
            "saturatedDepthOfWater": 0.66,
            "depthOfWater": 0.6,
            "maxRuntime": 10800,
            "runtime": 5222
        }
...

In the Rachio smartphone app, it says this zone has 53% soil moisture at the time of writing. I don’t see any obvious way to come to that conclusion with the above data.

How do I calculate soil moisture percent?

Thanks!

1 Like
2

The more I think about this, the more I’m seeing how complicated this formula will be. I don’t see myself being able to calculate it without having hourly weather data and tons of other factors.

Is there a way to get the soil moisture percentage via the API?

In general, any suggestions are welcome to help me determine when it’s time to water. Thanks!

3

There is no current way to retrieve that value.

:cheers: