What is Smart Irrigation?
Smart irrigation controllers take information over the internet from weather stations nearest to your location and use an algorithm to calculate the need to water. They automatically adjust timing and schedules to minimise water usage during normal to hot weather, switch off the system if rain is anticipated or is in progress and prevent shock to plants in freezing conditions.They claim that this technology saves approximately 35% to 50%. This will in turn save you money as well, particularly if you are on town water.
They are controlled via your smart phone or computer via a WiFi connection, thereby allowing them to both pull weather data from online, but also to interact with other smart devices in your home.
All of the smart controllers have simple, solenoid outputs that operate at the standard 24 V, meaning that they can control all the major valves available in Australia including: Pope, K-Rain, Toro and Holman.
The Candidates
The primary brands at this point are:
These devices are nearly all manufactured for the US market with only the Skydrop being sold locally by Reece Plumbing Supplies. All the rest are available on Amazon.
There are other models that I have not included such as Lono and Spruce, however these are too immature to compare yet and Spruce requires Samsung SmartThings which is an additional cost and does not yet ship internatinally.
So the big question is - how would they perform in Australia?
To me, the biggest factor is weather data. I need data that is close to the property which is 150 kms away from Melbourne and therefore may or may not have very good weather data available.
Other factors include whether they display data in Celsius, integrate with other devices such as rain gauges or flow meters, how many zones they support and whether there are any ongoing costs associated with running them.
There are other models that I have not included such as Lono and Spruce, however these are too immature to compare yet and Spruce requires Samsung SmartThings which is an additional cost and does not yet ship internatinally.
So the big question is - how would they perform in Australia?
To me, the biggest factor is weather data. I need data that is close to the property which is 150 kms away from Melbourne and therefore may or may not have very good weather data available.
Other factors include whether they display data in Celsius, integrate with other devices such as rain gauges or flow meters, how many zones they support and whether there are any ongoing costs associated with running them.
Feature Comparison
What features do an Australian gardener look for beyond all the website hype? We don't care that they are approved by the US EPA or that they use the American NOAA to obtain accurate data. What we need is a device that uses the best possible data for our locations and gets the watering right for our local conditions.
The software does basically the same thing so there is not a lot of point in comparing it. They all allow multiple schedules to be set up for each zone. They can be set up based on soil and planting type, such as sandy loam for vegetables, which makes them easy to set up. They all have smart phone apps and websites. The Rainmachine does have a touchable interface, but I doubt anyone would use this.
It should also be pointed out that all systems are in an active state of development and are going head-to-head to woo customers based on features. Just because they don't have support today does not mean they won't tomorrow.
They can all report back to your smartphone whether they have started or stopped, etc.
As you can see, they are all pretty close. I am not keen on paying for the Hydrawise account as this is the opposite of saving money and water. All the others use freely available data, even if it is not from the Bureau of Meteorology. In fact, Bureau data may not be relevant to me if the weather station is too far away.
This shows the location of the property as well as the five closest stations, according to their software. As you can see, the closest station is at Kyneton, 22.44 miles or 36 kms away. This is a PWS station which is collaborated on the PWS Weather website:
The software does basically the same thing so there is not a lot of point in comparing it. They all allow multiple schedules to be set up for each zone. They can be set up based on soil and planting type, such as sandy loam for vegetables, which makes them easy to set up. They all have smart phone apps and websites. The Rainmachine does have a touchable interface, but I doubt anyone would use this.
It should also be pointed out that all systems are in an active state of development and are going head-to-head to woo customers based on features. Just because they don't have support today does not mean they won't tomorrow.
They can all report back to your smartphone whether they have started or stopped, etc.
Rachio
|
Rainmachine
|
Skydrop
|
Hydrawise
|
|
Price (AUD)
|
$258 (Amazon US)
|
$313 (Amazon US)
|
$375 (Reece)
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$230 (Malvern Irrigation)
|
Zones
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8 or 16
|
8, 12 or 16
|
8 or 16
|
6 or 12
|
Data Sources
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Private system (Gladstone), PSW Weather
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Weather Underground,
Community Written
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Weather Underground
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BoM (paid)
|
Paid Subscription
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No
|
No
|
No
|
Yes ($60 per year)
|
External Integration
|
Alexa, IFTTT, Nest, iControl, Control4, Crestron, Nexia, Wink
|
IFTTT, Alexa, Nest, and SmartThings
|
IFTTT
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None
|
Celsius Support
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
No
|
Yes
|
Rain Sensor Support
|
Yes
|
Yes via module
|
Yes via module
|
Yes
|
Flow Sensor Support
|
Yes
|
“Pipeline”
|
Yes via module
|
Yes
|
As you can see, they are all pretty close. I am not keen on paying for the Hydrawise account as this is the opposite of saving money and water. All the others use freely available data, even if it is not from the Bureau of Meteorology. In fact, Bureau data may not be relevant to me if the weather station is too far away.
Weather Data Comparison
The Rachio uses data in Australia sourced from two possible locations, the Gladstone service and PWS Weather (Personal Weather Stations). The other two use data from Weather Underground, which includes Personal Weather Stations.Rachio Weather Data Locations
The support team at Rachio were kind enough to enter my address in to a device and see where the closest stations are. They provided this screen shot:
This shows the location of the property as well as the five closest stations, according to their software. As you can see, the closest station is at Kyneton, 22.44 miles or 36 kms away. This is a PWS station which is collaborated on the PWS Weather website:
Weather Underground Locations (RainMachine and Skydrop)
By searching for my location on Weather Underground, I can see 25 weather stations within a similar range as the map for Rachio.
The closest station is at Yapeen, 3.2 kms away.
This station is also listed as a Davis Vantage Vue (wireless) which is a top-of-the-range weather station.
This is a great result. There are 10 weather stations within the range of Kyneton, compared to just the one at Kyneton for the Rachio. This effectively knocks the Rachio out of the race, leaving the RainMachine and the Skydrop.
A two horse race: RainMachine or Skydrop?
Given that the models that support Weather Underground are the Rainmachine and the Skydrop, these are the only two realistic contenders for my location.
The Skydrop is more expensive and, at the point of writing this, does not support Celsius. This makes me worry that they are not interested in supporting the global market and tends to remove Skydrop as a candidate.
This leaves the Rainmachine.
I'll come back to you with a review of the Rainmachine once I get me hands on one...
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