Automation part 2

Sam

• 3 min read

This is an update to the first post which you can find here: https://plants.samr.dev/automation/

Update on devices

From the original post, here are some of the items I purchased:

  • Tiny Zigbee temperature & humidity sensor which was only about $5 (so I ordered 3 of them)
    • These are great and have been reliable. I tested putting multiple in the same location and they are all off by a couple degrees. So these aren't the most accurate but good enough for basic control and the battery lasted about a year as advertised.
  • Govee smart humidifier H7140
    • This is very reliable and worked great for my setup.
  • Programmable no WiFi drip irrigation system
    • This is great. A bit difficult to figure out how to use but once you have it setup it is reliable.
  • WD-01ADE drip irrigation system
    • This one is okay but somewhat unreliable. I am not sure if this is a WiFi coverage issue or something with the device but sometimes when you command it to turn on or off, it just won't do it. This can be catastrophic if you have an automation that fails to turn it off and just dumps your entire water reservoir onto the plants. This actually happened to me once but luckily the reservoir was almost empty.
    • In order to solve this issue, I connected a known reliable WiFi outlet switch. In the automation when it is finished watering, I have it try to turn off the pump. Then it will wait 30 seconds, check the state of the pump, and if the pump is still on it will cut the power to the device.
    • If you would like to use my script as a starting point, I have included it below:
alias: Irrigation pump 1
description: ""
triggers:
  - at: "16:00:00"
    trigger: time
conditions: []
actions:
  - type: turn_on
    device_id: fill_in
    entity_id: fill_in
    domain: switch
  - delay:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 1
      seconds: 30
      milliseconds: 0
  - type: turn_off
    device_id: fill_in
    entity_id: fill_in
    domain: switch
  - delay:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 1
      seconds: 0
      milliseconds: 0
  - if:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: switch.wd_01ade_switch_1
        state: "on"
    then:
      - action: notify.fill_in
        metadata: {}
        data:
          title: Irrigation pumps error
          message: Unable to shut off irrigation pump 1, cutting power!
      - type: turn_off
        device_id: fill_in
        entity_id: fill_in
        domain: switch
        enabled: true
    else:
      - action: notify.fill_in
        metadata: {}
        data:
          message: Irrigation pump 1 successfully ran.
mode: single

New addition: plant cabinet

Since the original post, I have setup a plant cabinet indoors to keep some plants safe from my cats. I have a fan in there that stays on 24/7 and some grow lights which are connected to my system using a Zigbee wall outlet. I am using this scheduler card in Home Assistant to make scheduling the lights on/off easier: https://github.com/nielsfaber/scheduler-card.

Here are the exact outlets I am using: https://a.co/d/7aekPRG