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A Smart Lawn Sprinkler System?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm about to install a sprinkler system for my lawn. There are lots of timers and computers out there to automate the watering of your lawn. However, before I go out and buy something, I wanted to know if there are any interesting open source projects for watering lawns. I've heard about smart sprinklers that get weather from the internet/satellite and water accordingly. What have other Slashdot readers done?"
If you're looking for solutions to water your gardens, aim to get a system which is economically efficient. Use your common sense as well, don't water your gardens if it looks like it's going to rain and I'm sure the lawn without having to be watered by the sprinkler system everyday.
Also, place them strategically around the lawn so that you are getting the maximum use out of the sprinklers, placing them where the water hits the pavement more than the lawn should be avoided.
The most important thing is, to get something that is efficient and doesn't use up huge amounts of water. In the long run, you'll save money and if you're in an area that is prone to long periods of time without rain, then others will appreciate you for it.
Ask yourself if you really want a lawn. I suspect most people don't but they've never stopped and considered the alternatives. Consider these problems with lawns...
The silliest thing about grass is that it's an artificially stunted plant. The grass wants to grow long but by mowing it you are cropping it to the roots. The grass is permanently kept in the juvenille state. Why bother?
So what did I do? I got rid of my grass. A few mounds of dirt to give the garden a bit of privacy. Woodchip on top to shade the soil and blanket the roots. I put in some native bushes, flowers and trees. Built a nice path through the garden. Then I built a paved area where I can put some chairs and a small table. Now I can sit in my garden and enjoy the beautiful scenery. I don't have to see the neighbour's laundry hanging on their washing line. I also don't have to water it more than once a week because of the woodchip. Native birds, lizards and insects love my garden; it's a healthy thriving ecosystem. Meanwhile my neighbours waste 3 hours of every weekend mowing their ugly lifeless lawns.
"Smart" means getting tried and true equipment designed for the purpose. A good timer will do everything you need reliably and with minimum power draw. Just be sure to get a timer with non-volatile memory and a backup battery for the clock.
Any decent timer will allow you to add a rain sensor that will turn off the sprinklers if it rains. Most rain sensors consist of pieces of material that absorb water and swell up causing them to push a switch. The sprinklers won't resume till the sensor dries out and the amount of moisture needed to stop the sprinklers is adjustable. Butt simple and reliable.
If you want to get way fancy then you can get a system that incorporates soil moisture sensors.
Depending on your situation you may want to check out subsurface drip irrigation for the lawn. Subsurface drip is generally more expensive but really excels 1) in very hot areas, 2) for oddly shaped or narrow areas that don't work well with sprinklers, 3) where it is often windy and 4) on steep slopes.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
"Code has been written for DSC Alarm pannels, Stargate LCD displays, Slinke IR send/receive, Marrick X10, RCI X10 sprinklers, Xantech preamps, ISDN modems, voice modems, ComPool and Aqualink pool equipment"
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http://www.misterhouse.net/
There's several perl sprinkler scripts
Words to men, as air to birds.
They are shaped like flowers and have bendy piping, and comically rave around when the water flows through them, and waters your garden through thier rose flower heads (the sprinkly bit)
I think sprinkers should be used at a minimum, if you put a timer on a permanent water coneciton, have an absolute minimum, also water after sundown (less evaporation) and not when it rained.
You can try a simple water detection system rather than sat weather - or soil moisture content meteres around the flowerbeds.
Or below soil irrigation.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I've heard about smart sprinklers that get weather from the internet/satellite and water accordingly. What have other Slashdot readers done?"
When you put in a sprinkler system... you plan it out accordingly so it fits your lawn, where you have trees (and need less water due to shade), where you need more water (gardens), and so on. As well, you can also have a rain gauge put in with the sprinkler system so that it doesn't run after it's rained. The only reason to have a satellite controlled system is to impress your neighbors momentarily before they realize what a dope you are for wasting money on that.
I had tried X-10 years ago and it seemed pretty lame, but I recently installed the latest hardware on my home server and bought a Rain8 and a rain sensor and it works great.
The best part is that the Indigo software for OSX that drives the X10 has an awesome community who have come up with plenty of ways to do what you're asking about.
Mark Gibbs at Network World ran a http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/071904gear head.html/couple of articles about networking the garden. X-10 came up, as well as some other interesting technical problems. He points to a couple of sources for software, mostly closed source.
And xeriscaping http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22xeriscape%2 2/ may give you a few ideas about designing for a water-restricted future.
Back in the early days of the space program, NASA spent tens of thousands of dollars on research to develop a pen that would write in zero gravity. The Russians used a five cent pencil.
Use a timer. A basic four or six zone timer with battery backup will be far more cost effective and reliable than a computerized and connected solution. I had one of the fancy electronic timers for a while. After having it knocked out by lightning a couple of times (remember, these are connected to low voltage lines running underground across your property) I got a better solution.
I bought an inexpensive 6 zone timer with built in battery backup that I could set up in acordance with local watering restrictions that would handle my needs. It even had the ability to hook in a rain sensor to interrupt the cycle if it had been raining recently. It worked great. (May still be, I sold the house.)
-- "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." - R.A.H.
while perhaps false.
spacepen
The leason is not...
SOOOOOOOO nice of you to go off on some for no REAL reason.
Firstly, for all the 'just don't use sprinklers' commenters, true, sprinklers aren't terribly efficient water users, but there are other options such as drippers which can be very efficient, the luxury of an automated system also allows you to irrigate when evaporation is minimal (i.e. very early morning).
Secondly, I have a project that is in early beta stages for running the irrigation systems on a commercial farm. The idea is that it will be programmable, intelligent (respond to atmospheric conditions, pump pressure, etc) and network connected (the program itself runs as a server, client software can be used anywhere on the network to interact with the running service). The code written so far is in C, it
compiles under Linux (but is written to be relatively flexible for other systems). The idea is that the code will at some point be released under some kind of FOSS licence. If there is some interest on here I can probably make the code available to you, so reply to this comment and I'll get in contact.
Use a frikin' hose. Not only is it cheap but it helps with stress.
Accurain (http://accurain.com/info.html) is very cool. You define a geometric figure and amount of water you want to put there and it does just that.
Protocol to control the sprinkler head should be fairly easy to reverse-engineer. Or, maybe, just contact the company and see if they are willing to tell you about it.
I would like to do the same with my pot plants on my patio. I always forget to water them. I imagine sensors in the pots attached to a computer, so it "knows" if the plants need water and then opens a tap on a water hose. And I reaIly mean plants in flowerpots. Although, speaking of pot, I wonder if there are such systems for cannabis growers ...
Of course the system has to run on an old Mac or Sun Workstation or any other old hardware that's small and looks kinda cool at the kitchen window.
Bury a tracer wire along with the plastic tubing, so that you can find it again in the future.
I noticed the local gas company doing the same with their lines.
I moved into a brand new home 3 years ago and did the landscaping and watering system myself.
;)
I'm in Sydney, so the above comment on water restrictions applies!
7 X10 Universal modules and a few relays mean I have x10 control of up to 64 zones (42 of them currently in use!) all computer controlled of course.
The system works well and being able to sh/perl script everything has had many advantages, mainly due to the adaptability.
1) I adapted one zone to do automated water changes on my (large) aquarium
2) When I got my weatherstation (la crosse2310), which connects to my computer, I sh programmed the system to keep track of the dampness in each area of the garden (based on temp,wind and rain) and only water what needs watering when it needs it.
3) When we got our 9000l rainwater tank and a pump for it, the computer keeps an estimate of how full the tank is and uses tank verses Sydney town water however I program it (i.e. use tank water whenever available).
4) When our first set of water restictions came in (we are in drought in Sydney) of no sprinklers between 8am and 8pm, a couple of lines of shell scripting sorted that out!
5) When the second round of restricitions came in (no sprinklers anytime) a couple more lines of shell script meant that the sprinklers were only watered by tank water and the drippers by town water.
6) When the next round of restrictions come in in a few weeks (maybe only drippers allowed and only on a full moon, only between 5am and 8am, and only within 2 days of when the australian cricket team wins a game... or something like that... they're keeping it a secret), I'll be ready
7) Another zone fills the fish pond as appropriate (computer estimates evaporation from the weather station).
8) It allows the easy use of a heap of zones (42 and counting). This means that each zone is very targetted and you don't have to water one area of the garden just because some other area is too dry!
9) With an X10 remote I can controll the system from the loungeroom or the garden.
10) My (geekier) friends like to see a demo of the system, each zone operating for 5 seconds!
11) It operates itself when I go on holidays, or have the flu, or are busy at work, or don't feel like going outside to handwater in the dark at the only legal time.
As for the lawn itself, we made sure it was less than 25% of the garden, and use a drought resistant buffalo that doesn't particularly mind going brown in a drought and coming back when it rains. Now we just need the robotic lawn mower and we'll be set!
I installed a sprinkler system in my house when it was built ~2 years ago.
First thing, have a plumber come in and install a deduct-meter (if your house isn't new you can probably do it yourself. I couldn't, I'd lose my plumbing warranty for the first few years).
Then shop around for controllers. I bought one that had plenty of extra space for valve control, as well as weather control, master water valve controller etc etc.
Then get your trusty plot plan out and figure out where things are going to go. Try to imagine the future too - because you can always trench extra lines while you have your yard torn up. But going back and trenching in add'l lines (like I was digging this evening till the mosquito's came out) just sucks.
So plan plan plan!
As far as being geeky with it - some of the controllers have serial ports. For me, this wasn't a priority. The controllers (atleast mine) has a good interface, and it's easy to set and configure. Even though I have a few linux boxes sitting in the basement next to it, I've not had the urge to try and wire it into the LAN and play. I don't know that I ever will.
Hope that helps.
Oh - be sure to investigate micro-irrigation. I just found out about this stuff on Saturday. The heads are tiny and come in various (even bendable) formats. No trenching involved. It'll even do hanging plants. Once we put the beds into the backyard and the plants in the spring I'll be running the mico-stuff everywhere that I can. I wish I'd have known about it when I setup my front yard with Pro-sprays.
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
The silliest thing about grass is that it's an artificially stunted plant. The grass wants to grow long but by mowing it you are cropping it to the roots. The grass is permanently kept in the juvenille state. Why bother?
Coincidentally, the reason is because it's for my juvenile states. My kids, that is. Ages three, two, and one, all of whom just love to run around on a big flat lawn (which has to be kept short, because the one-year-old actually stumbles over unmowed grass), ride their trikes down the hill, roll down it, sit on it, lay on it, chase each other on it....
When they get older, we may set up a soccer goal, a volleyball net, or a cheap croquet game. Or a picnic table to have barbeque dinners at. With a nice big lawn, the possibilities for kids and families to enjoy it are nearly endless. With a nice garden, it looks great, but the play value is severely diminished -- especially for toddlers, who'd just pull the plants to pieces anyway.
I am an electrical engineer and over the years I have played with home automation. All I can say is keep it simple or the system will own you rather then help you.
Given, that I used drip irrigation around the house with an off the shelf timer system. This was very low cost and works very well along with conserving water use.