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ConfiguratorWeather-dependent OpenSprinkler garden irrigation with Netatmo weather station
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To irrigate my terraced house garden, I installed an OpenSprinkler irrigation computer to control the Gardena irrigation system based on the weather.
The OpenSprinkler is installed in the garage and supplies three irrigation zones equipped with Gardena 24V AC valves. It is integrated into my WiFi network via its integrated WiFi adapter and is powered by the associated power supply. The valves are installed in a Gardena 2-way valve box backyard and a 1-way valve box frontyard. The lawn behind the house is watered with a pop-up square sprinkler and a turbine pop-up sprinkler. Different drip irrigation nozzles are used to water the plants in the beds in front of the house and the flower pots on the terrace behind the house.
I have been using the OpenSprinkler 3.1-DC since spring 2019. I had already had two years of experience with an OpenSprinkler OSBee, but I didn't want to miss out on the advantages of weather-based irrigation.
The three irrigation zones are defined in the OpenSprinkler firmware program as “Backyard Lawn”, “Backyard Flowers” and “Frontyard Flowers”.
In my opinion, weather-dependent watering of the garden only makes sense if there is access to trustworthy local weather data. The amount of precipitation in particular can vary greatly from place to place. For this reason, I integrated my existing Netatmo weather station into the control system.
I use the Zimmerman method as the weather-specific method for the OpenSprinkler. I set the base value for the humidity to 65%, all other base values were retained. I think that this corresponds quite well to the average humidity level during the Central European gardening period and I have had good experiences with it.
In the current version V2.0.4 of the OpenSprinkler Weather Service, the weather data from the last 24 hours is used to calculate the irrigation value “% Water Level” when selecting the Zimmerman method and selecting Local Weather Station or Weather Underground. However, this is rather an advantage over the classic Zimmerman method, as more current data for temperature, humidity and rainfall are included in the calculation of the irrigation value.
In recent years, weather service providers and cloud services have increasingly introduced payment systems and the OpenSprinkler team has carried out a number of updates in this regard.
In order to become a little more independent of this, I installed the OpenSprinkler Weather Service together with the open source weather software WeeWx on a Raspberry Pi. WeeWx establishes the connection to the Netatmo weather station and also allows a graphical display of the weather data. I also recompiled the OpenSprinkler firmware 2.1.9(7) and reset the periodic polling of the Weather Service from 6 hours to one hour. In my opinion, this is the only way to obtain current data for irrigation in the early morning hours. Due to the local Raspberry Pi installation of the Weather Service, there are no additional costs for the OpenSprinkler team due to the increased polling frequency.
To avoid irrigation when it rains, a Kenko M152 rain sensor was also installed and connected to the OpenSprinkler sensor input S1. The IFTTT cloud service can no longer be used for rain warnings, as the guaranteed response time in the non-paid version can be up to 1 hour.
I only use IFTTT to log the total amount of rain from the previous day determined by Weather Underground and the OpenSprinkler activities on Google Calendar.In recent years, the lawn, flowers and bushes have been watered every two days at 7:00 a.m. This year the water supply to the potted plants on the terrace should be improved, as they obviously need to be supplied with water more often than every two days on hot days.
The lawn is now watered every two days, shortly after sunrise. Flowers and shrubs are watered daily at 6:00 p.m. A 100% base value of 30 minutes is set for the lawn and a 100% base value of 15 minutes for the flowers and shrubs. But I'm still optimizing here and will possibly increase the lawn watering to three days with a 100% base value of 45 minutes.
For me it is also important to check the function of the irrigation system when traveling. In addition to controlling the OpenSprinkler with the OpenSprinkler app, in the event of a severe error, a power reset of the OpenSprinkler is also possible via a radio-controlled socket that can be controlled remotely using the Fritz!Box.
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