@SmartHomeJunkie Hi Ed, great video! Thank you! Did you check the open sprinkler add-on for HA? It‘ll be great if you could do another video on open sprinkler…???
Even if I do not need a watering systems, I learned more about templates, the reload of HA from Visual Studio Code. In addition I discovered that you use the "indent-rainbow" extension to colour the indent spaces in different colours. Always good to learn from professionals. Thanks!
Great explanation, congratulations! Today I'm using an ESP8266 board to obtain measurements from a humidity (mosture) sensor with ADC platform. So in Home Assistant, if the humidity is low, a relay is turned on for a few minutes while it opens a solenoid valve to drain the water. It's a small garden with some plants but it works well.
Took me a while to actually build this, but I've had this up and running now for a week now and absolutely love it. I use this to run my 5 zone in ground water system with a Athom 8Ch relay system which I am sstruggling with (range/connectivity issues) . In my climate our in ground watering systems will freeze and burst so each Fall you have to roll the dice to determine if we are getting close to freezing. I have added a helper that will keep track of the minimum temp for each day and then if the overnight temp gets to below 5C over 3 days in a row, HA sends me alerts to let me know that it is time to blow out the system and winterize the whole thing. Before this I would just blow out the system when I had to scrape my windshield two days in a row. Also going to try to use this code to trigger an alert in spring that it is time to turn the water back on. We are on metered water so watering just the right amount will save a lot of money. Thanks again...
Thank you for this.. I am just starting my way into Home Assistant having had Fibaro for last 7 years.. slowly starting to bring things over to HA and your videos have been very very helpful…
Hi, thanks for the great and really helpful video. I used this as an inspiration. I have one (edge) case, that I'm not sure about: - The Maximum Temperature Measured is 24 degrees after Day 2, so that option 2 does not match (because of the 3) and will not match option 3 (because temperature is >26). Would it make sense to account for this by changing option 2 to "beween 2 and 4 days"? Or, am I missing something?
Hi, I am new to Home Assistant and this is my first project. I have installed the irrigation code and it looks OK. The explanations and guidance are great. Thanks. I am now at the dashboard code but I do not know what to do with it. How and where do I install it?
As always: great content! I would advise against using delays to turn off services. Create a time pattern triggered second automation. This is much more robust in case somethign happens to the system while the service is on.
I came to say thank you... Honestly this kind of solutions are really admirables because the dedication... But to be honest, I think that this is too much for a process that just need to be constant and skipped only if the rain supplied the water needed for our garden... I mean, I guess that the grass dont need water every day, I saw some specialists say that the grass must be sprinkled 3 time per week on summer with sufficient amount of water... so, check every day tons of conditions maybe is too much, in my case I just check the rain and the weather station ignoring anything else... but you gave me a clean solution because I didnt know how get the info about the water fall the last 24 hours, I started to save in an input number the water fallen by rain since the last sparkle and use that data to evaluate if the next sparkle need to be skipped. Thanks!
Good video and good irrigation system. I bought the code and implemented it in my HA, so only have a problem, the data of the expected rain appears to me as unknown. So it does not predict correctly the days of irrigation.
Thanks Ed, helped me out during the holiday period. Learned a lot! What source did you use to base your temp / rain fallen conditions on and the amount to sprinkle?
What a great tutorial and excellent solution! I have followed the instructions to the letter and have learned a lot in the process. A few things I ran into, which might help other users: - openweathermap did not want to install on HA 2022.7 01. After upgrading my container to latest version it did install though. The version difference was 2 weeks . - I had to link the scripts in the automations manually, after pasting the yaml. Otherwise the scripts would not be triggered, eventhough the naming conventions were identical. - I will experiment with the watering duration, my garden is quite small, the default times seem too long for me. Thnx again Ed! I am now waiting for delivery of my Woox smart garden Irrigation controller, which should work with zigbee on ZHA. My dummy works now, so a small change of entity in the script will have my automation up and running.
Hi smart home junky. Awesome lesson in HA! Very useful Thank you so much. I could not test it yet because it is raining and raining. You advised to monitor it on the dashboard, however I could not make it. I am a newby in HA. Can you describe me how a where I have to past your codes? Do I have to change the codes? Thank you
Loved this! And perfect timing! I will use these tools and techniques to automate my house's dehumidifier/air exchanger. with your templates and helpers will average the 9 thermostats in the house (each report humidity) and determine if I need to exchange the air in the house or dehumidify... I can also the leverage window sensors from my security system and avoid running the air exchange system if one of the kids left a window open, I might count the number of windows left open use that as min/max for activating the air exchange fans. You made a very complicated system easy to understand and something that I will definitely tackle.
So cool to hear that you can use this tutorial as starting point for something completely different 👍🏻. This is exactly what I am trying to achieve. Inspire people to implement their own ideas.
Hello Ed, just a question to the "main automation" that checks, if garden should be watered. Why didnt you combine some of the options , or better the conditions in this options, with "and" ? Is there some reason? Last 2 days, we had 27 degrees, but also heavy rain yesterday, but the system wanted to water with option 2...but that isnt necessary..thanks for your info - just thinking, how it fits for my situation..regards from germany (near dutch border :) )
Hi. Until now I my irrigation system worked with homeassistant timers but I will give your solution a try... looks very promising and not too complicated. Thanks for sharing! NB: the is the condition "Rain < 20mm" for Day1 missing in the introduction slides - but no big deal
Ah yes. You have a sharp eye sir. I don't think you really need to check if rain has fallen if the temperature has been above 31 degrees, but you can play with the variables the way it suits you best.
Absolutely awesome video. Learned a log about scripting and helpers here. Also searching for a watering system these days. But the setup is hard and if something doesn't work because of a type it will be hard to troubleshoot. Wouldn't it be easier to have this awesome scripts/helpers as a HACS integration or something like that? I don't know how mich work this means. I feel it would a nearly perfect solution for a standard watering requirement.
Loved it. Like so many others have said, I learned a ton by following along, step by step, absorbing information like a sponge. It was particularly useful to attempt to paste in your text files and then troubleshoot. Almost all 'errors' were from variations in inset spaces. I am very proud of myself for figuring them out. I don't know if the Automation works yet; I am hoping your Dashboard will help there. But.... There is one error I cannot resolve. In your Dashboard code I get the error "Your configuration is not valid: r: At path: views -- Expected an array value, but received: undefined".
Cancel that. Started over from scratch by editing a new, working dashboard and adding jus a little at a time an got it to save without errors. There are still problems with how it displays but I am excited to try to figure those out.
Hello! Great video! I have used all your code after a donation to your web and I recently became a subscriber because I love what you are doing. I have one problem though: everytime the automation has to reset the helper values I get an error saying that the script could not be found. I really cannot understand why.
Great video, covered a lot of linked HA topics. What would happen if HA is restarted during sprinkling? The helpers would still hold there data, but the sprinkler would never turn off as the control automation would no longer be running. Perhaps an additional automation triggered on HA start to turn on the sprinkler if it was supposed to be on (another helper) so long as the delay time has not already expired. It would also turn off the sprinkler at the saved sprinkler end date/time. End sprinkler date/time would also be stored in a helper that will survive restart. Restarting can be for numerous reasons including by the user for updates or from a power failure. It's possible in the heat of the moment you don't remember the sprinkler is on & you restart HA. Does the switch turning on the pump stay off or revert to previous state after a power failure? I think some at least you can program the behavior. Staying powered off would be safest. This ability to still turn off the sprinkler is probably most important if you are away from home & you cannot monitor the operation of the sprinkler easily. Cheers
I also think about it. The best solution is a system that you can not only say start watering, but also give a duration. Second best solution could be a system that switches off after a maximum of x hours.
Thx. To be honest, I never had an issue with this because I never reboot HA this early in the morning. ☺️ But what you can do is create a toggle helper that switches to on when the sprinkler starts and switches to off when the sprinkler stops. Then, after a reboot, start an automation that triggers on starting of HA and checks if the toggle is on or off. If it's on, you can either shut down the sprinkler and reset the watering values, or let the sprinkler run for another 10 minutes or so and then shut it off and reset the sprinkler values.
I added some code to my GitHub page with a solution for your specific question. See the EXTRA section there. github.com/smarthomejunkie/Home-Assistant-Tutorials/tree/master/Create-Your-Own-Garden-Watering-System#extra
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks. I think it is a good idea to move the reset of the input_boolean into the reset script. In current solution after a reboot the input_boolean is not reset.
great video thanks alot. especially the perception sensor is really cool. one thing i noticed after looking through your code is that you will always water your garden at least every three days ? even if its raining alot? at least this is how i understand your automation code edit: oh i misread your last condition action. now it makes sense
Wow Ed, dit is een geweldige tutorial. Goed voorbereid en helder uitgelegd. Ik heb er veel aan gehad om bij mij het e.e.a. te verbeteren. Ik ga hem nog verder finetunen, omdat ik mijn eigen weerstation heb en zou willen werken met de output van de regensensors en soilsensors, maar dit is perfect! Dank je wel!
Yeah, sorry. I had to upload the video again because of a silly mistake that I made. I said that Sunset was in the morning, but that was of course a mistake. I really wanted to fix that, but unfortunately you cannot replace a video in RUclips, so you lose all your views and comments. #sad 😢
First Off - THANK YOU - for all the time and effort put into such great content; clear explanations and sharing your experience. I subscribed immediately and am working my way through some of your other videos! Secondly. I used to control 6 raised vegetable beds with individual esp32 and Blynk. Each bed had moisture sensors, water flow sensors, Hunuduty/Yemp etc all controlled by the esp32. The logic for when to watering was identical to your but with hours of coding - so this is great to replace this with scripts and automations. The esp32 open and closed solenoids for each bed allowing the water to flow. identical to your smart switch. I'm a bit overwhelmed with HA learning curve, but could you either suggest how I now activate these solenoids through HA or point me in a direction to learn how to use HA and esp32 to do it? Thirdly - do you have patreon page? Your content deserves more than "Buying you a coffee"!
Hello Ed, GREAT Tutorial...this will be my first "big project"..typed all in and created helpers, sensors, automations...just ONE problem. When I set up the first script for resetting helper values, it says Message malformed: extra keys not allowed @ data['sequence'][1]['entitiy_id']...I used the same code as in your tutorial here, did perhaps something change in HA - actual version? Thanks so much for a hint...best regards from germany
Hi Ed, Great movie and will be checking out all other vids, this helps me setup my watering system in HA coming from Indigo & HC3. Can you tell me which version of HA you did this video with ? My current version 2022.8.3 does not show the "Helper Display mode option to set the step size and unit of measurement". HA evolves fast so wonder if its not needed anymore to fill in.
The step size and unit of measurement is still there in the latest version. Is your Home Assistant account set to "advanced". Might be that that changes that. Not sure though.
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks Ed,.. that indeed did the trick, its now visible. So this setting to be enabled is mandatory to be able follow you vid's on some occasions.
Thank you for this nice and thorough tutorial. For me this is much too complicated. I use the Gardena drip system which waters directly on the soil and every day at 17:00 my HA takes the max temperature over the last 24 hours and and subtracts 18 of it and this is the amount of minutes I water the garden. So 25 degrees max temp gives me 7 minutes of watering. In addition if it above 28 degrees at 12:00 I water for a fixed 5 minutes.
Great that you found your own solution. However, you are not taking into account that it might start to rain right after or while you are watering your garden. That might be cool to add!
@@SmartHomeJunkie correct, you do have a point. But as I don't have much trust in the reliability of weather services like buienradar for instance I kept it simple.
Not sure if it is easier tbh. You can use your own sensors too of course. But you will be missing the expected rain calculations. If you have your own sensors to measure temperature, rain faken, moisture, etc., you can adapt the automations in this video so that they use your own sensors. Using Openweathermap is free.
Thank you i learned a lot from this video. Did not need a watering system but learned about studio code server (was using file editor but this is so much better) and i used the first part of your template to get the expected rain fall for the next 24 hours but had to change it a little as i'm in the states and we use the old measurements (don't know why we still use it but we do) so inches instead of MM. Just divided the ns.totalpreciption by 25.4 and set the rounding to 2 instead of 0 and was good to go. Put this on my HA's weather page. Thanks again. 😁
@@Reel2RealProd Sure the 3rd line from the bottom of the first template looks like this {%- set ns.totalprecipitation = ns.totalprecipitation + precipitation -%} change it to look like this {%- set ns.totalprecipitation = ns.totalprecipitation + precipitation / 25.4 -%} Dividing it by 25.4 gives you inches instead of millimeters.
I just posted a comment about the OpenWeatherMap forecast and of course you were right and I was wrong (despite watching the video a few times), but there still might be some room for simplification. The documentation states: "The time period these sensors use depends on the forecast mode selected when configuring the integration: hourly or onecall_hourly will show conditions for the current hour of the day, while daily or onecall_daily will show conditions for the current day. Since you have OpenWeatherMap configured to Hourly, you need to do the complex template sensor thing while if you would configure OpenWeatherMap to daily, i simple multiplication would be sufficient. Are there good reasons why to do the hourly forecast? Have you compared the results with for example the BuienRadar forecast values?
I used buienradar before, but it doesn't cover the whole world. It might be that one call daily works too, but I wanted to be more precise at the moment when I check at sunset.
Terrific video! I was looking for something similar for my garden and you have helped me a lot. I did the full deployment in Node-Red instead of using HA scripts, automations and YAML. Thank you again for the amazing contribution!
Thanks a lot for the very helpful video. I just started working on watering. I'm new to use Home Assistant. Thank you in advance if you answer this question. Do I need to purchase additional equipment to make a custom sensor?
@@SmartHomeJunkie Now I can custom sensor, thank you so much for the video tutorial and your code that I have donated it makes my work easier, Thank you very much. 🙇🏻♀
Hi, i've been using this for a few weeks now and I think it has an major flaw. I've noticed that if there have been a few days of rain AND the temperatures are high the automation still triggers the sprinkers to water the garden. it looks like there is something wrong with the resetting of the helper values. The automation "check if the garden should be watered" will reset all values after 3 days. However when there have been rain for the past 3 days the helper values will be reset and the next sunrise, if the temps where high enough, the garden is going to be watered. After a couple of days of heavy rain it should need more water I think. Is there a way this can be fixed? Kind regards, Remco
I guess you have to double check your automations, scripts and helpers. This runs already for years here without any problem. But if you want it to behave differently for you, you can change it the way you want.
As the new API 3.0 doesn't states same attributes as before, will this templates still work? The entity weather.openweathermap now only shows temperature: 31.3 apparent_temperature: 31.8 temperature_unit: °C humidity: 43 cloud_coverage: 0 pressure: 1016 pressure_unit: hPa wind_bearing: 312 wind_gust_speed: 24.84 wind_speed: 13.32 wind_speed_unit: km/h visibility_unit: km precipitation_unit: mm attribution: Data provided by OpenWeatherMap friendly_name: OpenWeatherMap Thanks in advance!
Thank you. The pump is a dab aquajet inox 132 m and I used a Blitzwolf plug for it. The plug is an. indoor plug, but it is protected so that it does not get wet.
Great tutorial. Learned allot. I got a bunch of takeaways. Having a little bit of an issue. Whenever I try to test by running the Check if Garden should be Watered Automation it keeps choosing the default action and nothing happens. What am I missing?
Thank you. Well, I guess, either the conditions are not met yet or maybe a helper value is not set. If you create the helpers, you'd have to give them an initial value too or run the reset helper value script.
@@SmartHomeJunkie I have it working with the Orbit B-Hyve XD Smart Hose Timer. Its working great. Thank you again. How can I change the measurements to Imperial instead of metric? Looking forward to more of your videos!! For the temperature I manually converted the numbers to Fahrenheit in the automation, and F in the helper but the dashboard display is still show a C. As for the mm to inches, I'm clueless.
Hi again, Ed. I have the following scenario, if I have 2 watering zone wich can't work both at the same time because off the insufficient water quantity, and they must run one after another, what modification I must add to you system configuration?
I would say, create two scripts. One for each zone. Then create an automation that triggers script one first and triggers script two after the first one end. This is just one of the possibilities. There are more ways to achieve this. You can also adjust the existing script to address both zones one after each other. That might be the easiest way.
Hi Ed, again a great video. Question wat is needed to replace my Rainbird irigation computer with 6 irigation groups. At my house every irigation valve/group has a different timer and only 1 valve at the time is openend due of a pressure drop of top many are in service at the same time.
Thx. Ah yes! I think I would solve it like this: change the script that actually waters the garden and add a start watering for each of the 6 valves in there followed with a delay and a stop watering for each valve. When all 6 valves are finished, then reset the helper values
@@SmartHomeJunkie first of all thanks for posting this very helpful video. Keep up the good work! @Marcel Brouwer, to answer you question. I got the same situation with my 4 groups on my rainbird computer. What I did is easy, use @Smart Home Junkie implementation for only one zone. Create a few new automations that are triggerd by the switch of the previous zone from on to off. So for example, the automation starts zone 1 for a duration of 90 minutes. After 90 minutes the switch for zone 1 will transition from on to off. When the zone 1 switch enters the off state that would be the trigger for zone 2, call the service rainbird.start_irrigation and start zone 2 enter this duration: '{{ states(''input_number.sprinkler_watering_duration'') | int }} ' in the duration. After the watering_duration of zone 2, the switch will change from on to off and.. well I think you''ll catch my drift.
@@ElPrOeSt Thanks for the idea, all 8 zones working in succession now, remember to move the "Script: Sprinkler: Reset Helper Values" to the last zone. I also doubled up the switch on/off to also toggle my master valve (borehole pump) @Smart Home Junkie Great tutorial al always, thanks for solving this problem for me 🙂
Many thanks for this tutorial. How can it be tested "manually" if it works? I started the "Water the Garden" script, the device (smart plug) turned on and then it stopped immediately. Should certain values be set for "helpers", or can I use the ones you indicate?
Thx. It stops immediately because the watering duration is 0 when you test it like this. What I did to test it manually was as follows: 1. Create a toggle helper to switch on or off the automation 2. Add a trigger to the automation that checks if the garden should be watered and check if the toggle helper is on 3. Set the settings of all the helpers manually for a certain maximum degree celcius, max rain fallen and last watering day 4. Create an automatlon that stops the sprinkler if the toggle helper is off 5. Toggle the toggle helper to test
Awesome. Thanks for this great video. I could set-up everything and had only one small issue: I get the error message "Unable to find service script.sprinkler_reset_helper_values" when calling the script from 'Sprinkler: Water the Garden'. When I select the script in the visual editor in YAML the "long text version" is replace by "service: script.1653898872270" and this works fine. I've no idea why the long name is not working. BTW: Both script links in my dashboard are showing the internal ids as well and not the long name.
@@SmartHomeJunkie I think this happens when you copy&paste the YAML code. If I create a new script and enter immediately the YAML mode and copy&paste source code of a script, I see afterwards only the long number.
@Jörg Werner That might be the case indeed yeah. Maybe it's already enough to paste the Yaml code, go to the UI mode after that, change something and then save the script. Anyway, it's a good thing that it works! 🎉
this openweatermap seems to be way off for my area ...and how do i even know it's showing for my area? I don't see the option to change location. i know that it might use the location from my home assitant account settings but still doesn't look right
Hi hi, I am struggling to follow along on Home assistant 2022.06. I am running HA in docker and can't seem to find the same stuff as in the video. Any advice you can offer?
I was able to get it going, in the newer one the main configuration.yaml looks different, but pretty much acts the same. After getting that right, the rest looks happy :)
Hi Ed, I haven't used the sprinkler system since last fall and now I just realised that the "Total precipitation expected" senzor is unavailable, but I never changed anything in the yaml. Am I missing something, any changes wich took place since lastyear? Thanks.
I've tested the new "billing plan" from Openweathermap for a couple of days now. The first 1000 api calls per day are free. In the last couple of days I had a maximum of 151 calls per day, so I don't think it's a big issue that you have to register with your credit card now. I personally do not care about using my credit card. And... people do have to get paid to keep services like this alive.
Is this type of automation based on precipitation and temperature better than an automation based on soil moisture sensors and outdoor temperature sensors?
Well, precipitation cannot be measured with moisture sensors and outdoor temperature sensors, so the precipitation can only be retrieved through something like Openweathermap. I would say measuring the actual moisture and temperature is always better, but you need precipitation as well to know how much rain will fall in the next couple of hours/days.
@@SmartHomeJunkie This is exactly where I wanted to go with the discussion. I think that both options have their pluses and that maybe they should be combined, or at least add the soil moisture sensor to your automation (which, by the way, is awesome). I'm not an expert in gardening, but I suspect that each soil has its own peculiarities and that some soils drain/dry faster and that only the factors of time, precipitation and temperature are not enough to establish soil moisture. What do you think? Would it work to add a humidity sensor to your automation?
This has been a great tutorial. I have setup everything and seemed to be working OK (still kinda cold and rainy here so never actually triggered the irrigation system). However, with the 2024.4 release two of the template sensors have become unavailable: sprinkler total expected precipitation and sprinkler total rain fallen plus expected. I cannot figure out why. All the entities from openweathermap are present and have values... Any clues ? Anyone with the same issues ?
See this video and also read the information in the description of this video: Unlock the Hidden Weather Forecast in Home Assistant ruclips.net/video/zrWqDjaRBf0/видео.html
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks Ed - will check it later and report on progress. For now i have rolled back to 2024.3 from a backup and everything works good. I am having some other issues with 2024.4 (frigate) so I ll need to resolve that one as well before i can move to .4. Thanks again :) Really appreciate all the tutorials.
hi! i can't seem to get the OpenWeatherMap integration to work - waited over 24hrs and i still get the "Invalid API key" error when trying to set it up. Any ideas? Otherwise, seems like a great tutorial
@@SmartHomeJunkie i've tried with multiple API keys but still the same issue. I wonder if it's because i'm on an older version of HA - supervisor-2022.11.0? unfortunately i can't update because i got stuck on a nasty bug that won't let me update or backup - so would have to restart from scratch which is a daunting prospect...
@@SmartHomeJunkie they must have been having some issue in the server side because I just tried it again and managed to register the integration. Good stuff. Looking forward to giving your tutorial a go over the weekend!
Hi, Ed! I am trying to recreate your watering system, I have downloaded your code and I got stuck... When I try to add "sensor: !include sensors.yaml" in "configuration.yaml" I get this error: "Invalid config for [sensor]: required key not provided @ data['platform']. Got None. (See /config/configuration.yaml, line 16)." And it indicates the line before (e.g.: line 16) in configuration file. Any advice?
@@SmartHomeJunkie I am still far from enjoying it, at this tine I am struggling with automation identation... It's giving me a hard time, but I hope I will get it right soon.
I have a question please, when you set the calculation for the sensor “sprinkler days since last watering day”. The first watering day of the 3 days cycle will be set to (now) and then it will calculate the difference between that day stamped in the helper substraed from (now) again to calculate the value of the sensor. Assuming I understood the process correctly, after 24h after last watered, the sensor value will be 1 and only after the second day the value will be 2. That means that you will never water the garden the second day of the cycle unless the temperature is more than 31.1 and “rain fallen + expected rain” is less than 21.1 mm. Am I correct, or maybe missing something? thank you in advance for your help.
The difference in days is measured from 0:00. So, it starts counting at midnight. Which means that at sucrose the value is like 2.2 or something. So, option 2 will be executed if the rain fallen and temperature values are correct too.
I think this doesnt work anymore. I followed your tutorial until 20 mins but it looks like openweather changed the way they provide information. It looks like they don't send out dayparts anymore. Any suggestions?
@SmartHomeJunkie thanks for your quick reply. I did purchase a subscription and created an api key. However the daypart data is not showing up in the openweather sensor. When I add the openweather integration and fill in my key and location it accepts the key. I noticed in your video you can choose hourly, daily etc... however don't have any options to choose from
@@remcove Yes, I believe that changed. The whole automation is still working here though with the same code. The only thing that changed is the precipitation because Home Assistant changed the way how weather sensors work. See this video on how that works now: Unlock the Hidden Weather Forecast in Home Assistant ruclips.net/video/zrWqDjaRBf0/видео.html The code that you can download for the price of a coffee is already compatible with it.
@@SmartHomeJunkie thanks allot. Now the sensor is being created however the state shows "unkown". I followed the "unlock the hidden weather..." to the dot. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance! For testing purposes I changed hourly to every minute. After a minute it goes from unkown to unavailable. Is this due to openweather only allowing a "pull" once every hour?
I downloaded the v1.3 code for this and the total expected precipitation part doesn't work. if I use developer tools/services Weather: Get forecast I do not get the option for openweathermap and if I put the code in the template editor I get forecast is undefined.
The V1.3 code should work fine if you installed Openweathermap. Regradless, I updated the code a bit and created a V1.4 version. This one is exactly the same as how I run it on my system (only a variable name changed). You might want to try V1.4.
@@digitalaction Not sure what's going on on your side. The fact that you do not get Openwheatermap as an entity in the developer tools services tab seems to indicate that something went wrong with the installation of Openweathermap. It should at least be there.
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks again. I reinstalled openweathermap and restarted HA and the get forecasts bit now shows openweathermap, not sure what was wrong there but its working now. I also updated my templates.yaml with the v1.4 code but still get "UndefinedError: 'my_forecast' is undefined" in the Dev Tools/template with this part of the code. I will let it run for a bit and see if the entity updates.
Places like the PNW (Pacific North-West, Cascadia) are DRY in the summer. Nearly impossible to rot anything in the summer... anything other than evening watering - is willfully wasting water.
Beginning in early July I received the error "The automation "Sprinkler: Check if Garden should be Watered" (automation.sprinkler_check_if_garden_should_be_watered) is not active because the configuration has errors. Error:Entity sprinkler_total_rain_fallen_plus_expected is neither a valid entity ID nor a valid UUID for dictionary value @ data['action'][0]['choose'][0]['conditions'][1]['entity_id']. Got 'sprinkler_total_rain_fallen_plus_expected' extra keys not allowed @ data['action'][0]['choose'][0]['sequence'][2]['conditions']. Got [{'condition': 'numeric_state', 'entity_id': 'sensor.sprinkler_days_since_last_watering_day', 'above': '2', 'below': '4'}, {'condition': 'numeric_state', 'entity_id': 'input_number.sprinkler_maximum_temperature_measured', 'above': '80', 'below': '88.1'}, {'condition': 'numeric_state', 'entity_id': 'sensor.sprinkler_total_rain_fallen_plus_expected', 'below': '0.6'}]." Then in August I received "The script "Sprinkler: Reset Helper Values" (script.sprinkler_reset_helper_values) is not active because the configuration has errors. Error:Service notify.mobile_app_John's_iphone does not match format . for dictionary value @ data['sequence'][3]['action']. Got "notify.mobile_app_John's_iphone"." and "The script "Sprinkler: Water the Garden" (script.sprinkler_water_the_garden) is not active because the configuration has errors. Error:Service notify.mobile_app_John's_iPhone does not match format . for dictionary value @ data['sequence'][0]['action']. Got "notify.mobile_app_John's_iPhone"." I am teasing through the code to see if I see anything different from when I created it. Am I the only one? Any advise?
Hi Ed, I have this error. Maybe you can tell what is causing it. "Sprinkler: Check if Garden should be Watered uses an unknown service The automation "Sprinkler: Check if Garden should be Watered" (automation.sprinkler_check_if_garden_should_be_watered) has an action that calls an unknown service: script.sprinkler_water_the_garden. This error prevents the automation from running correctly. Maybe this service is no longer available, or perhaps a typo caused it. To fix this error, edit the automation and remove the action that calls this service."
Hi Cosmin, The automation calls a script that I created too. My best guess is that you did not create the script yet, or gave it a different name. Does this help?
Hi! I hope this video helps you. Please let me know in the comments what you think! I'd really appreciate that.
@SmartHomeJunkie Hi Ed, great video! Thank you! Did you check the open sprinkler add-on for HA? It‘ll be great if you could do another video on open sprinkler…???
Even if I do not need a watering systems, I learned more about templates, the reload of HA from Visual Studio Code. In addition I discovered that you use the "indent-rainbow" extension to colour the indent spaces in different colours.
Always good to learn from professionals. Thanks!
You are reading my mind!
We recently moved and now have a Big garden, and I have been thinking of making this! Looking forward to watch this video!
Superb!!! I think you will really like it!
Great explanation, congratulations! Today I'm using an ESP8266 board to obtain measurements from a humidity (mosture) sensor with ADC platform. So in Home Assistant, if the humidity is low, a relay is turned on for a few minutes while it opens a solenoid valve to drain the water. It's a small garden with some plants but it works well.
Took me a while to actually build this, but I've had this up and running now for a week now and absolutely love it. I use this to run my 5 zone in ground water system with a Athom 8Ch relay system which I am sstruggling with (range/connectivity issues) .
In my climate our in ground watering systems will freeze and burst so each Fall you have to roll the dice to determine if we are getting close to freezing. I have added a helper that will keep track of the minimum temp for each day and then if the overnight temp gets to below 5C over 3 days in a row, HA sends me alerts to let me know that it is time to blow out the system and winterize the whole thing. Before this I would just blow out the system when I had to scrape my windshield two days in a row. Also going to try to use this code to trigger an alert in spring that it is time to turn the water back on.
We are on metered water so watering just the right amount will save a lot of money.
Thanks again...
Thank you for this.. I am just starting my way into Home Assistant having had Fibaro for last 7 years.. slowly starting to bring things over to HA and your videos have been very very helpful…
That's great to hear!
Very well done! I really like how you structures your video and how easy it is to follow. Pls continue your good work!!
Thank you for your great compliment!
Awesome! Just implemented it according to your tutorial:)
Waiting for sunrise to see how it works:))
Hi, thanks for the great and really helpful video. I used this as an inspiration. I have one (edge) case, that I'm not sure about:
- The Maximum Temperature Measured is 24 degrees after Day 2, so that option 2 does not match (because of the 3) and will not match option 3 (because temperature is >26).
Would it make sense to account for this by changing option 2 to "beween 2 and 4 days"? Or, am I missing something?
You have a sharp eye sir. I think that would be a better option indeed. I will change it on my GitHub page.
Hi, I am new to Home Assistant and this is my first project. I have installed the irrigation code and it looks OK. The explanations and guidance are great. Thanks. I am now at the dashboard code but I do not know what to do with it. How and where do I install it?
Awesome tutorial @smarthomejunkie ! Learned a lot and implemented it! Optimized it to my setup and weather. Please share more such tutorials!😊
Thanks
As always: great content! I would advise against using delays to turn off services. Create a time pattern triggered second automation. This is much more robust in case somethign happens to the system while the service is on.
Agree. I added an extra automation to the code that you can download that stops a running sprinkler when Home Assistant gets rebooted.
I came to say thank you... Honestly this kind of solutions are really admirables because the dedication... But to be honest, I think that this is too much for a process that just need to be constant and skipped only if the rain supplied the water needed for our garden... I mean, I guess that the grass dont need water every day, I saw some specialists say that the grass must be sprinkled 3 time per week on summer with sufficient amount of water... so, check every day tons of conditions maybe is too much, in my case I just check the rain and the weather station ignoring anything else... but you gave me a clean solution because I didnt know how get the info about the water fall the last 24 hours, I started to save in an input number the water fallen by rain since the last sparkle and use that data to evaluate if the next sparkle need to be skipped. Thanks!
I forgot to mention that you have a new follower... I really like the way that you explain the things and your content...
Thanks! And yeah, maybe it's a bit over engineered, but it works for me ☺️
Good video and good irrigation system. I bought the code and implemented it in my HA, so only have a problem, the data of the expected rain appears to me as unknown. So it does not predict correctly the days of irrigation.
You need to get a subscription at Openweathermap to make that work. Don't worry about payment. You will never reach the 1000 API calls per day.
Thanks Ed, helped me out during the holiday period. Learned a lot! What source did you use to base your temp / rain fallen conditions on and the amount to sprinkle?
Just my own experience.
What a great tutorial and excellent solution! I have followed the instructions to the letter and have learned a lot in the process. A few things I ran into, which might help other users:
- openweathermap did not want to install on HA 2022.7 01. After upgrading my container to latest version it did install though. The version difference was 2 weeks .
- I had to link the scripts in the automations manually, after pasting the yaml. Otherwise the scripts would not be triggered, eventhough the naming conventions were identical.
- I will experiment with the watering duration, my garden is quite small, the default times seem too long for me.
Thnx again Ed! I am now waiting for delivery of my Woox smart garden Irrigation controller, which should work with zigbee on ZHA. My dummy works now, so a small change of entity in the script will have my automation up and running.
Brilliant!!! Yeah, I am on sandy soil, so I need to water a long time.
Hi smart home junky. Awesome lesson in HA! Very useful Thank you so much. I could not test it yet because it is raining and raining. You advised to monitor it on the dashboard, however I could not make it. I am a newby in HA. Can you describe me how a where I have to past your codes? Do I have to change the codes? Thank you
Loved this! And perfect timing! I will use these tools and techniques to automate my house's dehumidifier/air exchanger. with your templates and helpers will average the 9 thermostats in the house (each report humidity) and determine if I need to exchange the air in the house or dehumidify... I can also the leverage window sensors from my security system and avoid running the air exchange system if one of the kids left a window open, I might count the number of windows left open use that as min/max for activating the air exchange fans.
You made a very complicated system easy to understand and something that I will definitely tackle.
So cool to hear that you can use this tutorial as starting point for something completely different 👍🏻. This is exactly what I am trying to achieve. Inspire people to implement their own ideas.
Hello Ed, just a question to the "main automation" that checks, if garden should be watered. Why didnt you combine some of the options , or better the conditions in this options, with "and" ? Is there some reason? Last 2 days, we had 27 degrees, but also heavy rain yesterday, but the system wanted to water with option 2...but that isnt necessary..thanks for your info - just thinking, how it fits for my situation..regards from germany (near dutch border :) )
Hi. Until now I my irrigation system worked with homeassistant timers but I will give your solution a try... looks very promising and not too complicated. Thanks for sharing!
NB: the is the condition "Rain < 20mm" for Day1 missing in the introduction slides - but no big deal
Don't mention it. Let me know if it worked.
Ah yes. You have a sharp eye sir. I don't think you really need to check if rain has fallen if the temperature has been above 31 degrees, but you can play with the variables the way it suits you best.
Absolutely awesome video. Learned a log about scripting and helpers here. Also searching for a watering system these days. But the setup is hard and if something doesn't work because of a type it will be hard to troubleshoot. Wouldn't it be easier to have this awesome scripts/helpers as a HACS integration or something like that? I don't know how mich work this means. I feel it would a nearly perfect solution for a standard watering requirement.
Loved it. Like so many others have said, I learned a ton by following along, step by step, absorbing information like a sponge. It was particularly useful to attempt to paste in your text files and then troubleshoot. Almost all 'errors' were from variations in inset spaces. I am very proud of myself for figuring them out. I don't know if the Automation works yet; I am hoping your Dashboard will help there. But....
There is one error I cannot resolve. In your Dashboard code I get the error "Your configuration is not valid: r: At path: views -- Expected an array value, but received: undefined".
Cancel that. Started over from scratch by editing a new, working dashboard and adding jus a little at a time an got it to save without errors. There are still problems with how it displays but I am excited to try to figure those out.
Great to hear that it helped!
Hello! Great video! I have used all your code after a donation to your web and I recently became a subscriber because I love what you are doing. I have one problem though: everytime the automation has to reset the helper values I get an error saying that the script could not be found. I really cannot understand why.
You deserve so much more subscribers! High quality & clear tutorials!
Thank you so much. Spread the word! You can really help me by sharing my channel. ❤️
Amazing and explained very well.
Thank you!
Great video, covered a lot of linked HA topics.
What would happen if HA is restarted during sprinkling? The helpers would still hold there data, but the sprinkler would never turn off as the control automation would no longer be running.
Perhaps an additional automation triggered on HA start to turn on the sprinkler if it was supposed to be on (another helper) so long as the delay time has not already expired.
It would also turn off the sprinkler at the saved sprinkler end date/time.
End sprinkler date/time would also be stored in a helper that will survive restart.
Restarting can be for numerous reasons including by the user for updates or from a power failure. It's possible in the heat of the moment you don't remember the sprinkler is on & you restart HA.
Does the switch turning on the pump stay off or revert to previous state after a power failure? I think some at least you can program the behavior. Staying powered off would be safest.
This ability to still turn off the sprinkler is probably most important if you are away from home & you cannot monitor the operation of the sprinkler easily.
Cheers
I also think about it. The best solution is a system that you can not only say start watering, but also give a duration.
Second best solution could be a system that switches off after a maximum of x hours.
Thx. To be honest, I never had an issue with this because I never reboot HA this early in the morning. ☺️ But what you can do is create a toggle helper that switches to on when the sprinkler starts and switches to off when the sprinkler stops. Then, after a reboot, start an automation that triggers on starting of HA and checks if the toggle is on or off. If it's on, you can either shut down the sprinkler and reset the watering values, or let the sprinkler run for another 10 minutes or so and then shut it off and reset the sprinkler values.
I added some code to my GitHub page with a solution for your specific question. See the EXTRA section there.
github.com/smarthomejunkie/Home-Assistant-Tutorials/tree/master/Create-Your-Own-Garden-Watering-System#extra
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks. I think it is a good idea to move the reset of the input_boolean into the reset script. In current solution after a reboot the input_boolean is not reset.
@@jwerner294 Correct! Let's do that!
Bedankt voor video. Is een vochtsensor ook eenvoudig toe te voegen bv van sonoff
great video thanks alot. especially the perception sensor is really cool. one thing i noticed after looking through your code is that you will always water your garden at least every three days ? even if its raining alot? at least this is how i understand your automation code
edit: oh i misread your last condition action. now it makes sense
No, I'm not always watering the garden every three days, but you already noticed that yourself. 👍🏻
amazing, what a detail video.
Thank you.
Wow Ed, dit is een geweldige tutorial. Goed voorbereid en helder uitgelegd. Ik heb er veel aan gehad om bij mij het e.e.a. te verbeteren. Ik ga hem nog verder finetunen, omdat ik mijn eigen weerstation heb en zou willen werken met de output van de regensensors en soilsensors, maar dit is perfect! Dank je wel!
Wat een leuk bericht! Dank je wel voor de complimenten!
Great video, but my previous comments and yours are gone, but everything is working now. Thanks
Yeah, sorry. I had to upload the video again because of a silly mistake that I made. I said that Sunset was in the morning, but that was of course a mistake. I really wanted to fix that, but unfortunately you cannot replace a video in RUclips, so you lose all your views and comments. #sad 😢
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thank you.
HI ! how to get your Automation editor like yours, looks nice with toggle switch and "Run Actions" button. thanks
You can't. Home Assistant changed the interface a couple of months back.
First Off - THANK YOU - for all the time and effort put into such great content; clear explanations and sharing your experience. I subscribed immediately and am working my way through some of your other videos!
Secondly. I used to control 6 raised vegetable beds with individual esp32 and Blynk. Each bed had moisture sensors, water flow sensors, Hunuduty/Yemp etc all controlled by the esp32. The logic for when to watering was identical to your but with hours of coding - so this is great to replace this with scripts and automations.
The esp32 open and closed solenoids for each bed allowing the water to flow. identical to your smart switch. I'm a bit overwhelmed with HA learning curve, but could you either suggest how I now activate these solenoids through HA or point me in a direction to learn how to use HA and esp32 to do it?
Thirdly - do you have patreon page? Your content deserves more than "Buying you a coffee"!
Thank you. You can probably control your esp32 solenoids with ESPHome. My Patreon page is at www.patreon.com/smarthomejunkie
Thanks. Signed up on Patreon too
@@MarcoRyan Thank you so much for your support. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Hello Ed, GREAT Tutorial...this will be my first "big project"..typed all in and created helpers, sensors, automations...just ONE problem. When I set up the first script for resetting helper values, it says Message malformed: extra keys not allowed @ data['sequence'][1]['entitiy_id']...I used the same code as in your tutorial here, did perhaps something change in HA - actual version? Thanks so much for a hint...best regards from germany
solved :)
Very nice video, TNX.
Great video!!!
Thank you so much Sir! 🙏🏻
Hi Ed, Great movie and will be checking out all other vids, this helps me setup my watering system in HA coming from Indigo & HC3. Can you tell me which version of HA you did this video with ? My current version 2022.8.3 does not show the "Helper Display mode option to set the step size and unit of measurement". HA evolves fast so wonder if its not needed anymore to fill in.
The step size and unit of measurement is still there in the latest version. Is your Home Assistant account set to "advanced". Might be that that changes that. Not sure though.
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks Ed,.. that indeed did the trick, its now visible. So this setting to be enabled is mandatory to be able follow you vid's on some occasions.
Thank you for this nice and thorough tutorial. For me this is much too complicated. I use the Gardena drip system which waters directly on the soil and every day at 17:00 my HA takes the max temperature over the last 24 hours and and subtracts 18 of it and this is the amount of minutes I water the garden. So 25 degrees max temp gives me 7 minutes of watering. In addition if it above 28 degrees at 12:00 I water for a fixed 5 minutes.
Great that you found your own solution. However, you are not taking into account that it might start to rain right after or while you are watering your garden. That might be cool to add!
@@SmartHomeJunkie correct, you do have a point. But as I don't have much trust in the reliability of weather services like buienradar for instance I kept it simple.
ma tu sei un fottuto genio! pagherei per saper fare quello che fai tu.
Grazie per questo!
Would it have been easier to use a capacitive moisture sensor with data that could trigger a pump response.
Not sure if it is easier tbh. You can use your own sensors too of course. But you will be missing the expected rain calculations. If you have your own sensors to measure temperature, rain faken, moisture, etc., you can adapt the automations in this video so that they use your own sensors. Using Openweathermap is free.
Thank you i learned a lot from this video. Did not need a watering system but learned about studio code server (was using file editor but this is so much better) and i used the first part of your template to get the expected rain fall for the next 24 hours but had to change it a little as i'm in the states and we use the old measurements (don't know why we still use it but we do) so inches instead of MM. Just divided the ns.totalpreciption by 25.4 and set the rounding to 2 instead of 0 and was good to go. Put this on my HA's weather page. Thanks again. 😁
Great that you could use parts of this. 👍🏻
Can you show where you made your change ? I'm also in the states.
@@Reel2RealProd Sure the 3rd line from the bottom of the first template looks like this {%- set ns.totalprecipitation = ns.totalprecipitation + precipitation -%} change it to look like this {%- set ns.totalprecipitation = ns.totalprecipitation + precipitation / 25.4 -%} Dividing it by 25.4 gives you inches instead of millimeters.
I just posted a comment about the OpenWeatherMap forecast and of course you were right and I was wrong (despite watching the video a few times), but there still might be some room for simplification.
The documentation states: "The time period these sensors use depends on the forecast mode selected when configuring the integration: hourly or onecall_hourly will show conditions for the current hour of the day, while daily or onecall_daily will show conditions for the current day.
Since you have OpenWeatherMap configured to Hourly, you need to do the complex template sensor thing while if you would configure OpenWeatherMap to daily, i simple multiplication would be sufficient. Are there good reasons why to do the hourly forecast? Have you compared the results with for example the BuienRadar forecast values?
I used buienradar before, but it doesn't cover the whole world. It might be that one call daily works too, but I wanted to be more precise at the moment when I check at sunset.
Good boy👏👏👏
Great job 👍🏻 👏 👍🏻
Terrific video! I was looking for something similar for my garden and you have helped me a lot. I did the full deployment in Node-Red instead of using HA scripts, automations and YAML. Thank you again for the amazing contribution!
Thanks for the compliments!
Hello Albert,
Do you want to share your node red code?
Thanks! Daniel
I like your garden watering system.
Thanks. It works really really well.
Thanks a lot for the very helpful video. I just started working on watering. I'm new to use Home Assistant. Thank you in advance if you answer this question. Do I need to purchase additional equipment to make a custom sensor?
No, you do not!
@@SmartHomeJunkie Now I can custom sensor, thank you so much for the video tutorial and your code that I have donated it makes my work easier, Thank you very much. 🙇🏻♀
@@onlym3311 Thank you for your support 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Hi, i've been using this for a few weeks now and I think it has an major flaw. I've noticed that if there have been a few days of rain AND the temperatures are high the automation still triggers the sprinkers to water the garden.
it looks like there is something wrong with the resetting of the helper values. The automation "check if the garden should be watered" will reset all values after 3 days. However when there have been rain for the past 3 days the helper values will be reset and the next sunrise, if the temps where high enough, the garden is going to be watered. After a couple of days of heavy rain it should need more water I think.
Is there a way this can be fixed? Kind regards, Remco
I guess you have to double check your automations, scripts and helpers. This runs already for years here without any problem. But if you want it to behave differently for you, you can change it the way you want.
As the new API 3.0 doesn't states same attributes as before, will this templates still work?
The entity weather.openweathermap now only shows
temperature: 31.3
apparent_temperature: 31.8
temperature_unit: °C
humidity: 43
cloud_coverage: 0
pressure: 1016
pressure_unit: hPa
wind_bearing: 312
wind_gust_speed: 24.84
wind_speed: 13.32
wind_speed_unit: km/h
visibility_unit: km
precipitation_unit: mm
attribution: Data provided by OpenWeatherMap
friendly_name: OpenWeatherMap
Thanks in advance!
Amazing guide! Out of interest, which pump did you use and also, which smart plug; was it an indoor or outdoor one?
Thank you. The pump is a dab aquajet inox 132 m and I used a Blitzwolf plug for it. The plug is an. indoor plug, but it is protected so that it does not get wet.
@@SmartHomeJunkie oh wow, an expensive pump. Mind you, if you have a big garden… Is it connected to sprinklers or to an irrigation system?
@@wilyc0y0te Is connected to both. I have multiple water hoses running in the ground.
Great video Ed! Keep up the great work!
Thanks Gerhard! I feel that this video is the best one I've ever created. Feels like a new starting point in quality. 👌🏻
Great tutorial. Learned allot. I got a bunch of takeaways. Having a little bit of an issue. Whenever I try to test by running the Check if Garden should be Watered Automation it keeps choosing the default action and nothing happens. What am I missing?
Thank you. Well, I guess, either the conditions are not met yet or maybe a helper value is not set. If you create the helpers, you'd have to give them an initial value too or run the reset helper value script.
@@SmartHomeJunkie I have it working with the Orbit B-Hyve XD Smart Hose Timer. Its working great. Thank you again. How can I change the measurements to Imperial instead of metric? Looking forward to more of your videos!! For the temperature I manually converted the numbers to Fahrenheit in the automation, and F in the helper but the dashboard display is still show a C. As for the mm to inches, I'm clueless.
@@Reel2RealProd great! I think it should use the standard metrics of your system. It’s in settings-system-general
Hi again, Ed. I have the following scenario, if I have 2 watering zone wich can't work both at the same time because off the insufficient water quantity, and they must run one after another, what modification I must add to you system configuration?
I would say, create two scripts. One for each zone. Then create an automation that triggers script one first and triggers script two after the first one end. This is just one of the possibilities. There are more ways to achieve this.
You can also adjust the existing script to address both zones one after each other. That might be the easiest way.
@@SmartHomeJunkie I will try and see how it fits my needs. Thanks!
@@CosminFrinculescu if you succeeded with the multiple zone application you might want to posted it here or at a link…. thanks!
@@stefan-lupo-pelzl Not yet, it is still winter so no hurry for me.
10 out 10 like your naming convention Remeber to add a default value to the Float(0)
Thx. You can, but you don't have to if the value is always filled which is the case here.
Hi Ed, again a great video. Question wat is needed to replace my Rainbird irigation computer with 6 irigation groups. At my house every irigation valve/group has a different timer and only 1 valve at the time is openend due of a pressure drop of top many are in service at the same time.
Thx. Ah yes! I think I would solve it like this: change the script that actually waters the garden and add a start watering for each of the 6 valves in there followed with a delay and a stop watering for each valve. When all 6 valves are finished, then reset the helper values
@@SmartHomeJunkie first of all thanks for posting this very helpful video. Keep up the good work!
@Marcel Brouwer, to answer you question. I got the same situation with my 4 groups on my rainbird computer.
What I did is easy, use @Smart Home Junkie implementation for only one zone. Create a few new automations that are triggerd by the switch of the previous zone from on to off.
So for example, the automation starts zone 1 for a duration of 90 minutes. After 90 minutes the switch for zone 1 will transition from on to off. When the zone 1 switch enters the off state that would be the trigger for zone 2, call the service rainbird.start_irrigation and start zone 2 enter this duration: '{{ states(''input_number.sprinkler_watering_duration'') | int }} ' in the duration. After the watering_duration of zone 2, the switch will change from on to off and.. well I think you''ll catch my drift.
@@ElPrOeSt
Thanks for the idea, all 8 zones working in succession now, remember to move the "Script: Sprinkler: Reset Helper Values" to the last zone. I also doubled up the switch on/off to also toggle my master valve (borehole pump)
@Smart Home Junkie
Great tutorial al always, thanks for solving this problem for me 🙂
Many thanks for this tutorial.
How can it be tested "manually" if it works?
I started the "Water the Garden" script, the device (smart plug) turned on and then it stopped immediately.
Should certain values be set for "helpers", or can I use the ones you indicate?
Thx. It stops immediately because the watering duration is 0 when you test it like this.
What I did to test it manually was as follows:
1. Create a toggle helper to switch on or off the automation
2. Add a trigger to the automation that checks if the garden should be watered and check if the toggle helper is on
3. Set the settings of all the helpers manually for a certain maximum degree celcius, max rain fallen and last watering day
4. Create an automatlon that stops the sprinkler if the toggle helper is off
5. Toggle the toggle helper to test
@@SmartHomeJunkie thanks for quick reply
@@SmartHomeJunkie Why the watering duration is always 0, it is not being calculated?
@@abcben No idea why it does not work on your side. It works fine here.
Every now and then the template sensors generate a "'UndefinedError: None has no element 0" any thoughts on fixing this?
Interesting. I never noticed this. I will review my template sensor to see what might cause this.
Awesome. Thanks for this great video. I could set-up everything and had only one small issue: I get the error message "Unable to find service script.sprinkler_reset_helper_values" when calling the script from 'Sprinkler: Water the Garden'. When I select the script in the visual editor in YAML the "long text version" is replace by "service: script.1653898872270" and this works fine. I've no idea why the long name is not working. BTW: Both script links in my dashboard are showing the internal ids as well and not the long name.
Great that it worked. Yeah, I noticed that in some cases the long id number is shown. Not sure why that is tbh. 🤷🏼
Found the solution to fix it: Edit the script ,click three-dots to duplicate it, save it with new name and delete the old script.
@@SmartHomeJunkie I think this happens when you copy&paste the YAML code. If I create a new script and enter immediately the YAML mode and copy&paste source code of a script, I see afterwards only the long number.
@Jörg Werner That might be the case indeed yeah. Maybe it's already enough to paste the Yaml code, go to the UI mode after that, change something and then save the script. Anyway, it's a good thing that it works! 🎉
Hoi Ed, recentelijk heb ik de code gekocht, echter nu werkt open weather map niet meer, komt hier opvolging op??
Openweathermap still works. Just sign up for the 3.0 api
this openweatermap seems to be way off for my area ...and how do i even know it's showing for my area? I don't see the option to change location. i know that it might use the location from my home assitant account settings but still doesn't look right
It should show the weather for your zone in HA indeed. It's accurate in my location.
Hi hi, I am struggling to follow along on Home assistant 2022.06. I am running HA in docker and can't seem to find the same stuff as in the video. Any advice you can offer?
I was able to get it going, in the newer one the main configuration.yaml looks different, but pretty much acts the same. After getting that right, the rest looks happy :)
Hi Ed, I haven't used the sprinkler system since last fall and now I just realised that the "Total precipitation expected" senzor is unavailable, but I never changed anything in the yaml. Am I missing something, any changes wich took place since lastyear? Thanks.
Yes, the weather forecast has changed in HA. I have a video about it.
Thanks. I've made the modifications and now it's working again.
@@CosminFrinculescu Awesome!
Hi, with the new API 3.0 of openwwatermap, can this be use with a free version?
I've tested the new "billing plan" from Openweathermap for a couple of days now. The first 1000 api calls per day are free. In the last couple of days I had a maximum of 151 calls per day, so I don't think it's a big issue that you have to register with your credit card now. I personally do not care about using my credit card. And... people do have to get paid to keep services like this alive.
Why don't you use a statistics sensor with value_max to calculate the maximum temperature?
🤷🏼 Might also be a possibility.
Is this type of automation based on precipitation and temperature better than an automation based on soil moisture sensors and outdoor temperature sensors?
Well, precipitation cannot be measured with moisture sensors and outdoor temperature sensors, so the precipitation can only be retrieved through something like Openweathermap. I would say measuring the actual moisture and temperature is always better, but you need precipitation as well to know how much rain will fall in the next couple of hours/days.
@@SmartHomeJunkie This is exactly where I wanted to go with the discussion. I think that both options have their pluses and that maybe they should be combined, or at least add the soil moisture sensor to your automation (which, by the way, is awesome). I'm not an expert in gardening, but I suspect that each soil has its own peculiarities and that some soils drain/dry faster and that only the factors of time, precipitation and temperature are not enough to establish soil moisture. What do you think? Would it work to add a humidity sensor to your automation?
@@CosminFrinculescu Might work, but it can be done without too. Just set the duration longer or shorter. Anyway, I do not have a moisture sensor.
@@SmartHomeJunkie I will order one and give it a try, and I will post the result. It's ok with you if I post here?
@@CosminFrinculescu RUclips does not allow posting code here most of the time.
I assume that if you have multiple sprinklers you create a automation that starts the first sprinkler and runs through the others.
All my sprinklers are connected to the same pump. But yeah, you can do this if you have multiple.
This has been a great tutorial. I have setup everything and seemed to be working OK (still kinda cold and rainy here so never actually triggered the irrigation system). However, with the 2024.4 release two of the template sensors have become unavailable: sprinkler total expected precipitation and sprinkler total rain fallen plus expected. I cannot figure out why. All the entities from openweathermap are present and have values... Any clues ? Anyone with the same issues ?
See this video and also read the information in the description of this video:
Unlock the Hidden Weather Forecast in Home Assistant
ruclips.net/video/zrWqDjaRBf0/видео.html
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks Ed - will check it later and report on progress. For now i have rolled back to 2024.3 from a backup and everything works good. I am having some other issues with 2024.4 (frigate) so I ll need to resolve that one as well before i can move to .4. Thanks again :) Really appreciate all the tutorials.
@@promufa ooh, if the issue isn't there in 2024.3, then my suggestion won't fix it I'm afraid.
I do not experience this issue btw
at 26:14 with the current version of home assistant i can not see how under actions i can enter yaml?
hi! i can't seem to get the OpenWeatherMap integration to work - waited over 24hrs and i still get the "Invalid API key" error when trying to set it up. Any ideas? Otherwise, seems like a great tutorial
Can you try to create another api key? I think it shouldn't take so long.
@@SmartHomeJunkie i've tried with multiple API keys but still the same issue. I wonder if it's because i'm on an older version of HA - supervisor-2022.11.0? unfortunately i can't update because i got stuck on a nasty bug that won't let me update or backup - so would have to restart from scratch which is a daunting prospect...
@@milkplus27 That shouldn't be the case. i have this running for over two years now.
@@SmartHomeJunkie they must have been having some issue in the server side because I just tried it again and managed to register the integration. Good stuff. Looking forward to giving your tutorial a go over the weekend!
@@milkplus27 That's great!
Hi, Ed! I am trying to recreate your watering system, I have downloaded your code and I got stuck... When I try to add "sensor: !include sensors.yaml" in "configuration.yaml" I get this error: "Invalid config for [sensor]: required key not provided @ data['platform']. Got None. (See /config/configuration.yaml, line 16)." And it indicates the line before (e.g.: line 16) in configuration file. Any advice?
I got it working... I've had "sensor:" on top in my ""senzor.yaml".
That's awesome to hear! Enjoy!
@@SmartHomeJunkie I am still far from enjoying it, at this tine I am struggling with automation identation... It's giving me a hard time, but I hope I will get it right soon.
@@CosminFrinculescu You will definately get there! 💪🏻
I have a question please, when you set the calculation for the sensor “sprinkler days since last watering day”. The first watering day of the 3 days cycle will be set to (now) and then it will calculate the difference between that day stamped in the helper substraed from (now) again to calculate the value of the sensor. Assuming I understood the process correctly, after 24h after last watered, the sensor value will be 1 and only after the second day the value will be 2. That means that you will never water the garden the second day of the cycle unless the temperature is more than 31.1 and “rain fallen + expected rain” is less than 21.1 mm. Am I correct, or maybe missing something? thank you in advance for your help.
The difference in days is measured from 0:00. So, it starts counting at midnight. Which means that at sucrose the value is like 2.2 or something. So, option 2 will be executed if the rain fallen and temperature values are correct too.
I think this doesnt work anymore. I followed your tutorial until 20 mins but it looks like openweather changed the way they provide information.
It looks like they don't send out dayparts anymore.
Any suggestions?
Openweathermap still works here. You need to sign up for a subscription nowadays, but don't worry, you won't be charged.
@SmartHomeJunkie thanks for your quick reply. I did purchase a subscription and created an api key. However the daypart data is not showing up in the openweather sensor.
When I add the openweather integration and fill in my key and location it accepts the key. I noticed in your video you can choose hourly, daily etc... however don't have any options to choose from
@@remcove Yes, I believe that changed. The whole automation is still working here though with the same code. The only thing that changed is the precipitation because Home Assistant changed the way how weather sensors work. See this video on how that works now: Unlock the Hidden Weather Forecast in Home Assistant
ruclips.net/video/zrWqDjaRBf0/видео.html
The code that you can download for the price of a coffee is already compatible with it.
@@SmartHomeJunkie thanks allot. Now the sensor is being created however the state shows "unkown". I followed the "unlock the hidden weather..." to the dot. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance! For testing purposes I changed hourly to every minute. After a minute it goes from unkown to unavailable. Is this due to openweather only allowing a "pull" once every hour?
I downloaded the v1.3 code for this and the total expected precipitation part doesn't work. if I use developer tools/services Weather: Get forecast I do not get the option for openweathermap and if I put the code in the template editor I get forecast is undefined.
Hmmm...That shouldn't be the case. What version of Home Assistant are you running? And, did you install the Openweathermap integration?
The V1.3 code should work fine if you installed Openweathermap. Regradless, I updated the code a bit and created a V1.4 version. This one is exactly the same as how I run it on my system (only a variable name changed). You might want to try V1.4.
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks. I am running 2024.2.1 and Openweathermap is installed okay - I can see all its entities
@@digitalaction Not sure what's going on on your side. The fact that you do not get Openwheatermap as an entity in the developer tools services tab seems to indicate that something went wrong with the installation of Openweathermap. It should at least be there.
@@SmartHomeJunkie Thanks again. I reinstalled openweathermap and restarted HA and the get forecasts bit now shows openweathermap, not sure what was wrong there but its working now. I also updated my templates.yaml with the v1.4 code but still get "UndefinedError: 'my_forecast' is undefined" in the Dev Tools/template with this part of the code. I will let it run for a bit and see if the entity updates.
Places like the PNW (Pacific North-West, Cascadia) are DRY in the summer. Nearly impossible to rot anything in the summer... anything other than evening watering - is willfully wasting water.
Hi SmartHomeJunkie! Do you think the System needs some tweaking for the new "get.weather_forecasts" change coming in HA 2024.3?
Not sure. I already updated the code for the weather.get_forecasts change from a couple of months back.
@@SmartHomeJunkie It seems I was running on an old version of the system. I upgraded to 1.4 and now all is fine. Thank you!
Beginning in early July I received the error "The automation "Sprinkler: Check if Garden should be Watered" (automation.sprinkler_check_if_garden_should_be_watered) is not active because the configuration has errors.
Error:Entity sprinkler_total_rain_fallen_plus_expected is neither a valid entity ID nor a valid UUID for dictionary value @ data['action'][0]['choose'][0]['conditions'][1]['entity_id']. Got 'sprinkler_total_rain_fallen_plus_expected' extra keys not allowed @ data['action'][0]['choose'][0]['sequence'][2]['conditions']. Got [{'condition': 'numeric_state', 'entity_id': 'sensor.sprinkler_days_since_last_watering_day', 'above': '2', 'below': '4'}, {'condition': 'numeric_state', 'entity_id': 'input_number.sprinkler_maximum_temperature_measured', 'above': '80', 'below': '88.1'}, {'condition': 'numeric_state', 'entity_id': 'sensor.sprinkler_total_rain_fallen_plus_expected', 'below': '0.6'}]."
Then in August I received "The script "Sprinkler: Reset Helper Values" (script.sprinkler_reset_helper_values) is not active because the configuration has errors.
Error:Service notify.mobile_app_John's_iphone does not match format . for dictionary value @ data['sequence'][3]['action']. Got "notify.mobile_app_John's_iphone"."
and "The script "Sprinkler: Water the Garden" (script.sprinkler_water_the_garden) is not active because the configuration has errors.
Error:Service notify.mobile_app_John's_iPhone does not match format . for dictionary value @ data['sequence'][0]['action']. Got "notify.mobile_app_John's_iPhone"."
I am teasing through the code to see if I see anything different from when I created it.
Am I the only one? Any advise?
It's still working here...
Hi Ed, I have this error. Maybe you can tell what is causing it.
"Sprinkler: Check if Garden should be Watered uses an unknown service
The automation "Sprinkler: Check if Garden should be Watered" (automation.sprinkler_check_if_garden_should_be_watered) has an action that calls an unknown service: script.sprinkler_water_the_garden.
This error prevents the automation from running correctly. Maybe this service is no longer available, or perhaps a typo caused it.
To fix this error, edit the automation and remove the action that calls this service."
Hi Cosmin,
The automation calls a script that I created too. My best guess is that you did not create the script yet, or gave it a different name. Does this help?
@@SmartHomeJunkie The scrip is created according to you yaml code. I will go back on it again and check if made any mistakes.
You were right, the name was the problem. HA automatically called it "new_script". I changed its name and I hope it works now.
Very nice video, TNX.