jeffw_00
Super User
Joined: June 30 2007
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 935
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| Posted: September 30 2017 at 07:47 | IP Logged
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Hi - We redid our lawn this year, which means I needed to water all of it every day (I don't have any underground system). I needed 5 sprinklers to cover the lawn, and I have only enough water pressure to run 1-2 of them at a time. So I bought some 24V electric valves (meant for underground systems), hooked them to my hose faucet, and ran hoses from the valves to the sprinklers. I powered the valves with 24V transformers wired to INSTEON Appliance Modules, and controlled it all using Timed Events in Powerhome.
Cool thing #1 - I have coded Powerhome to access the web (via a Perl script) to get temperature and forecast every 15min, so watering is automatically cancelled if it has rained in the last several hours.
Cool thing #2 - Every week the landscape company cuts the lawn and I have to re-position the sprinklers. I used Powerhome to create a webpage, accessible on my internal network, with buttons that control events. I created a page with buttons to turn each valve on/off individually. So, when I need to re-position the sprinklers, I head outside with a Kindle Fire Tablet, its browser pointing to the webpage, and I can individually control the valves from the tablet, standing in the middle of my yard.
Ain't Home Automation great?
/j
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Topic: An interesting use of Powerhome
