I guess another concern is how long these moisture sensor companies will stay in business. Have any universities tested the products you mentioned?
I don’t know and I don’t care. I am talking to the home grower that doesn’t need an oldschool controller and many dollars to grow his garden but want’s to spend $20 for an ever evolving technology.
plus …
can you connect your sensors to Rachio?
Wirelesstags you can.
Yes, the Toro Precision Soil Sensor wires into the sensor port on Rachio, then uses wireless radio technology to connect to the sensor in the landscape. Same with the Rain Bird SMRT-Y, except the sensor wires directly into a valve. The Toro and Rain Bird soil sensors are well made and have heavy gauge stainless steel. I have taken a look at the products you mention and I doubt their long term viability. Buyer beware.
Edyn review not too good: https://youtu.be/yJRB7tuWTdc
Koubachi: https://youtu.be/ByRCNu70ivo
Spruce, deal breaker because it requires a spruce controller. Sensors look cheap: https://youtu.be/E2VoagwERlE
Toro Precision Soil Sensor: https://youtu.be/HAQTrv1011w
Wifi garden reviews and installs: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFOVDf2I596jgOde6PCcNYg
I read information on the wireless sensor tags, but did not read anything that explains how this product can connect to a controller. Reviews from 22 people average 4.3 out of 5, but they mention battery life is just 6 months and then you must buy a new sensor. Some say the sensors are dead out of the box.
You can use Spruce sensors directly with a SmartThings hub, which is cheaper than the spruce controller.
Wirelesstags connect to rachio or spruce via IFTTT or other shared platforms
Their long term viability as companies is questionable. Why isn’t using Rachio enough? No need for soil moisture sensors with Rachio.
I was just answering your questions.
Are you an irrigation expert and a M&A financial analyst too? Stick to the product discussion, we are not talking about companies. The best product out there for a homeowner in terms of usability, price and connectivity is Spruce sensor, period. Then wireless tags. If Spruce is bankrupt or about to be bought by Apple I do not care.
Your response is flagged for Rachio to review as very unkind.
You should be flagged for review for using this community to market your product agenda. Then you should be flagged for flagging others responses when you run out of arguments. And finally you should be flagged for flagging people for nothing.
Learn to discuss with arguments and accept when others are right.
You said you needed a Spruce controller for using Spruce sensors. WRONG.
I answered you that you could use a SmartThings hub which is much cheaper.
Then you said you didn’t know how to connect WirelessTags to Rachio. I will say it for the third time, you can use IFTTT to connect them. Maybe you just do not know what that is.
And you discard products because you doubt on their long term viability as a company ??!! Who are you again? Please show us your financial models on those companies or at least some hard facts for you to go out and state something like that. You should be flagged for review for expressing lies and unfunded statements on companies. That is a felony.
Hey everyone,
Let’s make sure to keep these conversations positive and constructive!
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Has anybody tried Scotts Gro Water sensor?
I am new to rachio. I read this thread. I am very confused on the system setup. I did the setup and went to flex daily. I did do advanced zones and picked soil water inch/inch rate and adjusted Sq Footage. I have about 9 zones with lawn and trees. Before I used to do about 3 to 6 mins/zone depending on the season. Now Rachio programming is setting up the schedule for nearly 20-30mins/zone. Wow thats a lot of water. I really wish I could get a more accurate soil measurement.
This is really cool! I’m going to try these out this year and trigger Rachio via an automation in HomeAssistant. I’ve integrated Rachio to homeassistant and have control to trigger each zone, I just didn’t know exactly what to do with it yet. My original idea was to use a raspberryPi with soil sensors to monitor my vegitable garden zone, but may expand this to have HomeAssistant monitor my other zones as well based on your post. Thanks for this.
I’ll provide an update in a few months to see how this goes.
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After doing some research I found out the company that makes the Edyn sensor is out of business, and the Xiaomi sensor while decent, has some limitations with the bluetooth range. I did find this company https://vegetronix.com/ that makes a wifi Hub with various sensors. The cool part is that since it uses it’s own Hub I won’t need any long cable runs back to the Rachio which is nice. My plan is to use their moisture and temperature senors and grab the data from their API via NodeRed. I can then trigger an automation in NodeRed to tell home assistant to turn on / off my Rachio zones. More to come.
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Hi, so this is a very interesting thread, thanks for all the information.
I am actually developing a commercial wireless soil sensor myself. While it is currently intended for indoor use, I am a garden nerd so obviously i am using it in my garden and greenhouse :).
Since it is my sensor i have full api access etc, and would like to make it work with the Rachio to automate my greenhouse.
Also I guess it would be cool for other people if they could make use of it to easily control their Rachio via for example IFTTT.
I am not that into the maker community my self, so my question is, what would be the preferred way for garden-tinkerers like your selfs to have a wireless commercially available sensor integrate with Rachio.
Is IFTTT the best easy-to-use solution?
I’m brand new here, so if this is out of place, please ignore it. I use HomeAssistant for my home automations, and my #1 choice would be to use z-wave+ However, that may not be an option for you, so my #2 choice would be MQTT over wifi. This way, all the data stays on my home network and does not need to go out to the internet like IFTTT does. This is my main goal for my home automations. I want to keep my data local if at all, and wherever possible. Good luck with your development.
what came out of your development?
Hey guys,
Why couldn’t you guys simply wire in the rachio sensor wires directly to the raspberry pi GPIO PINS? My question would be does the Rachio require the NC switch to be closed again until its ready to continue with its normal schedule?
My thoughts would be to wire the Raspberry Pi Ground PIN to SC (or VAC - ) and lets say GPIO PIN 23 to S1 on the Rachio. Run a raspberry pi Python program that opens the the NC switch on the Rachio if the Raspberry Pi detects moisture using the Xiaomi Moisture sensor. No hacky API solution required.
Thoughts?
Thanks for such topic, it’s very actual for me these days. The situation inside my crawlspace is getting worse and worse. The level of humidity is just awful. I can hardly breathe there after entering it. And I am thinking over purchasing a quality humidity sensor in the shortest terms. Or do you think I should better do some repairs? My friend suggested me to visit this site https://crawlspaceremedy.com/crawl-space-cleaning-repair-in-everett/ and ask them for help. But what I can tell them if I don’t know what is a level of wetness inside my crawlspace yet. And what is the best moisture measurement accessory for you?
The API does allow setting up Moisture level in mm or % per zone via PUT call to https://api.rach.io/1/public/zone/setMoisturePercent