Introduction: Smart Sprinkler With Wemo & IFTTT

About: US Army Veteran, Maker and Tinkerer- Makers make things without tinkering or following instructions on a worksheet to complete a project is less about tinkering to me. However, if in the middle of making you…

This system is simple and easy. It also has no coding involved.

Using Wemo and IFTTT I can control the sprinklers to do the following, come on 20 min before sunrise, turn on 20 mins before sunset, stay off for rain or snow, stay off if temp drops bellow 30 degrees F, Mark my calender that it was watered, plus control it from Alexa.

Provided you have a hose and sprinklers the Wemo was on sale for $19 and the inline valve was $10, and the fittings were $7. I made an IOT sprinkler for $37.00 and to get a smart irrigation system they run around $200 and up.

Step 1: What You Will Need

Supplies:

Hose reducers might very:

  • 1" Male Npt To Male 3/4" Garden Hose Adapter
  • 3/4-Inch Attachments to 1-Inch Hose, 1-Inch FHT by 3/4-Inch MHT

IOT stuff:

A IFTTT account

Wemo APP

Step 2: Wiring

  1. The wiring is simple because we have 24 VAC there really is no need to even keep track of positive or negative.
  2. make sure the 24 VAC transformer is unplugged and splice the 2 wires into the 2 wires of the inline automatic valve. I used some extra wire to run it indoors through a window because the transformer and Wemo switch are not weatherproof.

Step 3: Setup Wemo

  1. Follow the directions on getting your Wemo switch connected to Wifi. Just make sure to name it Sprinkler so you can make it look more complicated when you ask Alex to turn it on.
  2. Set up your rules I make a auto off rule so that no maker what it will shut off after 25 min. This should prevent them from staying on if something happens to power it also makes it so the lawn gets watered for only 25 min at a time. you can adjust times as you wish.
  3. Set a rule to turn on before sunrise you don't need to set a off time because of the 1st rule
  4. Set a run to turn on before sunset you don't need to set a off time because of the 1st rule

Step 4: Setup IFTTT

  1. You will need to open the Wemo App to get IFTT and Wemo connected.
  2. In the Wemo App hit ... More. then Connect to IFTTT
    • I had an issue with this when connecting it with my Iphone IOS. So I used my Android tablet to get the two connected but once they are connected you can use the IFTTT app or IFTTT webpage to set up recipes.
  3. Sign into or open IFTTT
  4. Create a new Recipe and you will see If +this then that.
    • click +this and find Weather underground and set in location and you will see your triggers pop up.
      • The trigger for example is if it is raining.
  5. You will see you can click +then.
    • Now search Wemo and select switch.
      • trigger it OFF and save.

You have set up a IFTTT recipe as you can see this can do a ton of stuff and I posted a picture off what Recipes I am using on my sprinkler.

As for Alexa as long as they are on the same network you just say "Alexa turn on sprinkler".

Microcontroller Contest 2017

Participated in the
Microcontroller Contest 2017

Gardening Contest 2017

Participated in the
Gardening Contest 2017