Irrigation Controllers?

John Gonzales

Does anyone have any irrigation controllers that they've interfaced with AMX before? We're looking for a communicating controller that has it's own standalone interface that we can over-ride/control via AMX.

jeffaco

I've been looking at the Ware Borthers Irrigation controller.

It's a standalone controller, but has an interface to allow for it to be automated. I've contemplated picking one of these up and writing a module to control it via NetLinx, but haven't acted on this impulse (yet).

http://www.warebrothers.com

for more info.

-- Jeff

John Gonzales

Thanks Jeff, I haven't seen that one before. Here's another one: http://www.wgldesigns.com/rain8pc.html. They used to make only X10 based controllers, now they allow direct control of the valves and offer a computer interface. One of the things I'm looking for is one that has a dedicated simple outdoor interface so we don't need to have the landscapers accessing computers or AMX panels inside the home.

jeffaco

I'm familiar with the "rain8" model. It gives strict control to the valves. You can get this much by just using a relay card in a NetLinx system. A relay card gives you 10 relays, and thus access to 10 zones.

I wanted more smarts than this. I wanted the irrigation system to work as per it's own schedule (even with NetLinx down), but allow the NetLinx system to override the schedule, etc.

I, too, want a simple outdoor interface that landscapers can use. Apparently, the Ware Brothers controller doesn't do that, but they're looking at that capability shortly. It'll be "dumb" (i.e. press a button and that zone turns on for a prearranged time). For anything smarter, you'd use the HTTP interface, or a NetLinx system to control it. This is probably good enough for me.

-- Jeff

accuwater

Irrigation controller for AMX

I know that this thread is quite old, but it asks a very relevant question. If you still need a solution, look at AccuWater <http://www.accuwater.com>. It provides centralized, weather-based irrigation while allowing you to override it via an API on the controller. AMX has just released an integration module for it.