Well, now that the RainMachine seems to be working, the next project is at another house where there isn’t any sprinkler built in so how do you build something that can be HomeKit compatible so you can say things like turn the sprinkler on and and other general conditionals. There are quite a few automatic sprinklers like Orbit but very few HomeKit ones.
But in any case here is what We’ve bought and where we are going and some criteria which are that it should be HomeKit automation so eventually it can be private and integrate with everything else.
And second it’s a drip system and can run from a hose bib and not require a bridge. And ideally jot chew up batteries etc.
- Eve Aqua. We’ve had good luck with the Eve Room and this device is battery powered and uses Thread which is great and means with enough appletv 4K and HomePod Minis if would all work. It basically turns things on and off remotely. The thing is the box is pretty big dimensions which is 94 x 123 x 80 mm / 3.7 x 5.2 x 3.1 in. So, you need a bib at least 5.2 inches wide.
- ATDAWN 4 Way Brass Hose Splitter, This fits the ¾” America. Fittings but it’s not wide enough at the bottom two so you can’t fit two Eve Aquas but is just $13. So you want something that’s split farther apart like the Gardena Two Channel Water Distributer which is actually in the Eve site. That allées sense both ate German companies but does cost $48. Unfortunately, you also need an adapter to the ¾” US standard as it uses their own Gardena system connector for $11. But it’s the only reasonable way to get two Eves if you need it. And it’s quick on quick off which is nice.
- Sennjnger Pressure Regulator. Ok one often looked component is the regulator that cuts down the normal 50-60 psi from a home faucet to 25 psi so it doesn’t blow out the drip regulators. A cheap $11 part.
- Aiglam Garden Irrigation 40M. This is just $10 so hard to know if it is going to work but a few things about it seem good. First is that this is not the raindrop system where you puncture a tube. You cut lengths of the ¼” tube and then you out junctions in. So hopefully it will leak less. Also it lets you split a single ¾” into two ¼” tubes and then it has a set of different heads that drip down or around. As an aside the way this works is that a ¼” tube shouldn’t be run longer than 30 feet so you want to be less than that to assume the right pressure.
Rose Bush drip irrigation
Ok, so the with this system, what’s the right way to treat rose bushes. But basically you want a emitter every six inches all the way around a bush drip line which is the outer circumference of the bush as that is where the roots are. You want to saturate the soil to 2-4 inches deep.
So for a typical row of rose bushes you layout a line and then wrap it around the bushes putting irrigation around it with a t connector to the main line.
Tl:dr HomeKit automations are so confusing.
soon as I figure out Siri Shortcuts do more automation. I have to say I find automations and shortcuts super obscure. There doesn’t seem to be an underlying programming model and there really should be.
What I really want to do is to when it is 107F, then sprinkle the roses. But it’s complicated to figure out how to do this. Even apps like IFTTT have a general event engine and general condition and then execute. I just wish that Apple would do this.
But in the end it’s pretty awesome
While we don’t use HomeKit that much, it is really nice to see the updates and the landscaping looks really good. The only limitation is that it would be nice to know the flow per zone, but it’s hard to do without looking at the water meter to calculate the flow.
