FYI I wouldn’t ever use soil sensors unless I planned on being at that property daily to assure the watering is correctly applied due to all the factors involved within the placement of the soil sensors.
Interesting post. what is the final output? does Iro support those sensors? which one you recommend to buy and where is the best place to install? close to the sprinklers or at random places? any documents with the instructions on how to proceed?
Currently we do not (native integration).
If anyone has done any creative integrations with our open API I would love to see them!
I head that PlantLink is integrating with SmartThings, and we plan to have a ST integration next year, so that might be the best choice going forward.
Hope this helps!
Have anyone successfully connected PlantLink sensor to IFTTT through Smartthings yet? I Would like to order PlantLink sensor this month.
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@andrey, great question! I haven’t heard of anyone pulling this off yet, but looks like there’s an aging topic on the ST community related to moisture sensors. Might be worth pinging this topic there to see if there’s any updates available.
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Is anybody running the Rainbird SMRT-Y - Soil Moisture Sensor Kit with a Gen 1 Iro ? If so, how - have you got it switching the rain sensor terminals or disabling all zones in some other fashion ?
@StuartM, looks like the SMRT-Y sensor acts like a rain sensor; i.e. a switch that interrupts the common wire depending on the soil moisture level.
If you wish to install a sensor on individual zones, an isolated common will also need to be installed and spliced into the zone common before the controller. If you wish to do this, please reference this support article.
For more information on SMRT-Y, please see the product listing on rainbird.com
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Cloud to cloud sounds great. I have seven zones being run by my Rachio 2d generation and I believe having my watering schedule controlled by soil moisture would be great as the different zones dry out at different rates. Do you anticipate your system to work at that level of granularity?
@jshawkins I would like to have these types of integrations, we have the platform to support it, no timeframe yet as to when these are built out.
My concern at this point is that Feb 2015, the direction from Rachio was “Expect to see these sometime this year.”. Now over 1 year has passed since this and we still do not have a viable solution and 14 days ago the message is now “no timeframe yet as to when these are built out”.
The messaging provided by Rachio is not clear or concise; the roadmap is obviously consistently in flux, with provides no clear direction to the development team or to customers. Are your PM’s even in touch with customers to understand a customers needs vs wants?
You have competition, like Spruce, which already support this, through the use of SmartThings. This is not the most ideal way of procuring data as there is additional costs involved, but it is a solution non the less.
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Well, hold tight. They wanted to rework flex daily to be more approachable and it didn’t pan out as they had hoped. This burned their winter months on development so they have had to fall back and begin development on their new super awesome-o scheduler to accommodate the many customers that face harsh monetary penalties for watering on the wrong day.
It’s ashamed, but they have provided me and others an added ability to help customers with flex setup while they work on “the juice”. I’m not here to make excuses for them, I hope to provide a peak at the sausage facility…
Now…spruce, it’s pretty awesome, I won’t lie, but I’ll take the Pepsi challenge every single day to a well tuned flex…they will get there with an integration, eventually…flex will become the dry spot terminator of irrigation, but, for the moment, you will not find a more accurate/precise water on demand solution sub $300,. Just hold tight…
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Plantlink mentions Rachio on the blog for their upcomming product so maybe there is some integration work happening behind the scenes.
Anything with IFTTT including parrot flower power can work with Rachio. I see on IFTTT that there are a few recipies out there that people are using.
@jcholpuch. Thanks for posting that. I’m eagerly awaiting the introduction of PlantLink Lush for use in some potted plants that aren’t on a valve controlled by the Rachio. Once I have it I’ll play around with comparing soil moisture readings to Rachio settings elsewhere in the yard. Cool technology.
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@plainsane Hold tight? This is my exact problem…messaging.
Speaking of Flex, you mean the Flex scheduling that they said was being retired in their e-mail on April 13? “Flex schedules will be retired and removed from beta, but will be accessible for the remainder of the watering season for existing users. This means new Flex schedules will not be able to be created in 2.5 and beyond. Don’t worry Flex fans, we’ll continue to support Flex Schedules until the end of the year”
At this same moment, they stated that software rev 2.5 would be released in a few days. Right when that occurred, my Flex Schedules stopped watering and Rachio support could not figure out what had occurred. It took me removing all of my Flex schedules to get my system watering again.
What do you know, on June 1, they sent out a new announcement about v2.6, which brought back Flex Scheduling. “And after listening to customer feedback, we’re happy to reintroduce Flex schedules”
So please tell me where they have a clear roadmap? Please tell me how their product management team is delivering clear messaging to their customers?
So we have messaging on Feb 2015 stating ‘Expect to see these sometime this year’ and on June 3rd a message stating ‘no timeframe yet’ in regards to soil moisture sensor support.
April 13th stating that Flex will be going away and that we need to migrate away from them, followed by a June 1st communication stating that Flex is here to stay. Hrmmmm…
The problem that I see with PlantLink is the form factor of the sensors. These are perfectly fine in a situation other than a lawn. A sensor must be low profile enough to remain below the cutting blade of a mower; just as your sprinklers are designed to remain below until they release water.
@sshannon Having been a part of a start up company I can empathize with the plight of Rachio. I’m absolutely sure that they had a road map that they intended to deliver. Unforeseen market development and technical and financial hurdles inevitably change that same road map. A small company is nimble and can do so quickly in order to adapt and survive. I’m OK with that as long as the guys steering the ship are smart and end up making a superior product in the end. I certainly believe that’s the case here. Larger companies with much more overhead will likely have the steadier road map that you’re looking for, but I’m not sure their products will benefit from the innovation that we’re getting with Rachio. Do you have an example of another irrigation company that’s building as good of a product with a long term road map that doesn’t change ?
Don’t get me wrong, I see what you’re saying in your example. I’m just saying that I understand the rationale for it and prefer to accept that these changes will happen over having an overall inferior product.
Very true. I plan to use them in pots both indoors and outdoors. Integrating robust soil moisture sensors seems like the holy grail for smart irrigation as they complete a closed-loop system. It seems that the key will be someone engineering robust, low-power sensors that work in all conditions and locations.
Thanks for both your feedback. I respect everyone’s opinions, yes startups and roadmaps are both difficult. When I have some time I’ll post as to what our current development efforts are working towards.
Let’s continue to keep the discussion respectful, I want everyone to feel like they can share here.
Closing this thread, if folks would like to continue the soil sensor discussion please create a new thread.
Thanks.