

Kickstarter: Control your sprinklers with your smart phone - dougiebuckets
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/173231925/lono-sprinkler-controller

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tsumnia
Is this really worth investing though?

I've been working on an Arduino based garden automator for the past few months
and one of the things I'd like to see is some higher-level automation. There
are soil moisture sensors that can be added so now you no longer need to
'schedule' it, it will just happen. Add a real time clock and you can make
sure watering only occurs in the morning to avoid unnecessary evaporation.

My initial opinion of this will be that of HarvestGeek (Which I'm a backer of)
and other irrigation systems from Kickstarter: they fail to deliver or are
never funded. ([http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1408853060/a-cloud-
compu...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1408853060/a-cloud-computing-
based-sprinkler-controller),
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22seeds/greenbox-
smart-i...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22seeds/greenbox-smart-
irrigation-for-everyone/), [http://harvestgeek.com/forums/forums/ask-your-
questions/topi...](http://harvestgeek.com/forums/forums/ask-your-
questions/topics/when-where-will-harvestgeek-be-available)).

That being said, I need to hurry up with my project before the market becomes
saturated.

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keiferski
I'm still waiting for xeriscape landscaping to take off outside the American
Southwest. Hopefully it won't be as a necessity when we run out of water,
period.

 _Xeriscaping and xerogardening refer to landscaping and gardening in ways
that reduce or eliminate the need for supplemental water from irrigation_.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeriscaping](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeriscaping)

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swamp40
Here in the Midwest, you can't stop the lawn from growing beautifully on its
own, at least in May thru July.

You can take an abandoned field and mow it once and it will look good. Maybe
not great, but nice.

Watering only gets you from 75% nice to 100% gorgeous.

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, a bed of rocks will grow weeds in anywhere with a reasonable climate,
which means your xeriscape is not low effort anymore.

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swamp40
> _Lono includes bluetooth 4.0 (LE) so the Lono app will be able to recognize
> the device by proximity (no pairing required). This will make setup of the
> device a snap– especially on iOS 7 which has an API to automatically setup
> wifi access._

Does anyone have any additional information on this? I would think if you're
going to send over your wifi credentials, there should be some pairing
involved.

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sshykes
This seems like overkill. [http://www.amazon.com/Orbit-91213-One-Dial-Garden-
Digital/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Orbit-91213-One-Dial-Garden-
Digital/dp/B001RCTWZE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381424016&sr=8-1&keywords=sprinkler+timer)
works phenomenally for 99% percent of cases IMO.

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jack-r-abbit
None of the 6 or 7 watering zones I have are attached to a hose. It is all
underground with valves and what not. That you linked to isn't really going to
work with most underground sprinkler systems... which I am going to suspect
account for more than 1% of the cases. I've used those types on one off
watering zones and they do work. But I don't think that covers 99% of the
watering people do.

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eekfuh
Being from Utah, I love seeing useful technologies come out of our oft
forgotten tech center.

