Wireless wind sensor

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1

We live in a desert climate, so wind (not rain) is a reason not to water. The local weather source rarely gets it right for us because we’re next to a mountain. So a wireless wind sensor that will work with an IRO is needed. Anyone know of a model that would work?

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Hi @edvaill, thanks for reaching out! I think a small personal weather station (PWS) would be the best solution for you. Using IFTTT, you could setup a recipe to issue a rain delay anytime the wind gusts over a certain MPH.

https://ifttt.com/recipes?channel=rachio_iro

Thoughts?

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Thanks emil, I’m new to Ittt but I sure get the concept. I just don’t understand the real world interfaces. Does the PWS toggle something (what?) And how does the ‘something’ tell the IRO ‘go/nogo’

I come from a world of relays and ladder diagrams, but I can learn.

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I’ll try and ask the question a different way. We live on the Front Range and experience some fairly consistent high wind speeds which makes it a reason to water a bit extra, once the winds calm down again. Are there plans to allow IRO to be more “wind-aware” from Aeris and water-compensate for the rapid ET that results from these conditions?

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@edvaill @landru IFTTT can be linked to the Weather channel (https://ifttt.com/weather) and any time the trigger ‘Wind speed rises above’ a certain threshold you can easily skip a schedule or ‘rain’ delay the system. In this case, you don’t even need a PWS, although I don’t know the accuracy of that channel.

We currently do not have the capability to allow you set a wind MPH threshold like we do for rain precipitation (weather intelligence). This is definitely in our software backlog to expose this functionality.

@landru Our ET calculator does take into account humidity, solar radiation, min/max temp, and wind. Our 2.0 software (May) is going to introduce the concept of flex schedules where daily ET will have much more of an impact on day-to-day watering.

Thanks and let us know if you have any more questions or feedback.

:beers:

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@franz, sorry to hear that we can’t interface off a PSW. The Weather Channel and local weather stations are not even close to accurate for our house which sits at the mouth of a mountain canyon, and experiences winds that houses even a mile away don’t see. Most of the time we have to manually operate our sprinklers, because of the wind variability. Maybe @emil can think of a workaround. Thanks

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@edvaill I’m thinking something like this then:

@emil What do you think?

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@franz, @emIl, I had looked at that sensor, but they only offer it in a wired version, I believe. Unlike the Hunter Wireless Rain Sensor. Wiring from an appropriate. sensor mounting location (in my application) would be difficult.

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Hi @edvaill, probably the best options for you would be one of the following:

  1. An on-site PWS (once we add a wind threshold to skip watering schedules) as we discussed earlier.

  2. Hunter makes a wired wind sensor. I haven’t used one before, but we could work together on wiring one if you’re interested. Should be just as easy as a wired rain sensor.

Thoughts?