StarGate. The Next Generation in Automation.
When I moved into my house the sprinkler timer was kinda out dated. It let you choose start times and the amount of time for each zone, but it does not allow for which specific days. Only every day, or every second day etc. Not great for me because I don't want to water on the day I mow the lawn. Also every time the power went off, I would have to reset the time.
So, I decided to add the lawn watering to my home automation system. There are a number of ways to do this from using individual appliance modules driving relays, custom X10 irrigation controllers, and what I used, a RCS X10 Relay Controller. This RCS controller has eight individual relays on it that respond to X10 codes.
I wanted to automate the sprinker system to do the following:
- Skip water cycle after or durring rain
- Ability to skip any water zone
- Water 2 hours before sunrise, no matter what season
- Stop water cycle at anytime
- Remote control of sprinklers for maintenance purposes
- Ability to start water cycle on demand
- Automatically increase watering time when outside temperature is high
To control the system, I created a VoiceMenu. Using the VoiceMenu System, I can skip zone(s), start the watering process, get a verbal status of the zones (skipped or not), stop the watering, or enter manual mode.
In manual mode, I can remotely turn on/off any sprinkler zone using a palmpad wireless controller. This is great for fixing and adjusting sprinkler heads. After an hour, the system will turn off manual mode, and also turn off any sprinkler zone still on. Durring normal irrigation, the system will water each zone for 15 minutes unless it was hot (ie. over 90 degrees), then it will water for 25 minutes. When the system is not in manual mode, or irrigation mode, and it sees an X10 on command for a sprinkler zone, it will immediatly issue an off command.
The code for this was a little challanging. I included it here to save you the trouble!
Here are some photos of what I did. Notice the extra wiring in the RCS unit. Each relay has two sets of switch contacts, so I parralled them to increase the current handling of each.
Old Irrigation Timer
Installation
