What can a smart irrigation system do?

Water Requirements of Plants

A smart irrigation system makes watering your garden child's play. But how exactly does it work?

The water requirement of a garden or irrigation area depends on many factors. Important factors include temperature and sunlight intensity, soil structure, plant species and root depth, wind, and humidity. And most of the time, the most important water source is still natural rain rather than artificial irrigation. The water demand of the garden fluctuates greatly. Even in midsummer, days with excess water from precipitation follow days with moderate or very high water demand.

A smart irrigation system can communicate via the internet and optimize water delivery based on measured parameters and internet control, thereby promoting the health of soil and plants.

The Most Important Features of a Smart Irrigation System

  1. App control and remote access: A smart irrigation system should be accessible via an app on the smartphone, allowing the user to monitor status, change settings, and receive notifications no matter where they are.
  2. Customizable irrigation times: The system should support schedules that can be adjusted at any time to the individual needs of the garden and plants.
  3. Weather integration: An essential feature of smart irrigation systems is the consideration of weather forecasts to decide when and how much to water. Irrigation is reduced or completely stopped when rain is imminent.
  4. Soil moisture Sensor: Using Sensors to measure soil moisture allows the system to precisely determine when the soil is dry and needs water. This prevents both over- and underwatering.
  5. Water volume control: It should offer the ability to precisely control the amount of water to avoid waste and protect the environment.
  6. Energy efficiency: To be smart, devices must be connected and constant communication consumes a lot of energy. Therefore, they ideally operate with solar charging and a long-lasting battery.
  7. Compatibility with smart home systems: A good smart irrigation system should integrate into existing smart home systems so it can work with other devices like weather stations or voice assistants.
  8. Adaptability to different plant species and garden areas: Different plants and garden areas have different watering needs, which a smart system can adapt to.

How Smart is MIYO?

The MIYO irrigation system in a garden is controlled by the MIYO Cube. It stores and processes all data locally.

The Cube is connected to the internet and communicates with:

  • the MIYO app on the smartphone
  • the MIYO Cloud for storing garden status
  • weather systems
  • smart home systems
  • self-created programs via the open API

For optimal irrigation, the garden is divided into irrigation zones. For each zone, any number of irrigation windows can be created throughout the week. If a Sensor is used, the target range for soil moisture can be set.

On the garden side, the Cube is wirelessly connected to the Valves and Sensors. It receives information from the Sensor about soil moisture, temperature, and sunlight intensity for the irrigation zone. When irrigation is triggered based on parameters or manually, the Cube opens the Valves assigned to the irrigation zone.

MIYO Integration Options

MIYO has an open API and can be integrated into a variety of systems. We connect your garden with your existing smart home system.

LOXONE

MIYO Smart Garden smart home connectivity

The extensively documented plugin establishes a WebSocket interface to the MIYO Cube and sends the received messages in a format easily processed by Loxone to the Loxone Miniserver.

Details about MIYO & Loxone in the LoxWiki or directly from the creator:
https://miyoplugin.phantasoft.de/

API Logo

Home Assistant

Details on setting up MIYO in Home Assistant can be found here: MIYO Home Assistant Plugin

openHAB

Details on setting up and configuring the MIYO openHAB binding can be found here: MIYO openHAB Binding.

What Are the Benefits of MIYO?

  • Flourishing garden: With MIYO, irrigation is very easy and quick to adapt to the needs of soil and plants. This ensures that a key factor for a flourishing garden, irrigation, is always optimally maintained.
  • Water savings: Through the many settings, integration of soil moisture measurement, and weather forecast, MIYO can significantly reduce water consumption. During periods of frequent rainfall, savings exceed 50%.
  • Calculation of evapotranspiration: MIYO uses numerous factors from precipitation to temperature, sunlight intensity, and wind to calculate a theoretical water requirement for the garden, which can be used as a basis for irrigation duration. More information on evapotranspiration can be found here.
  • No battery consumption: The energy for Sensors and Valves is provided via solar charging. Conventional Valves, e.g., from Gardena, consume at least 3 AA batteries per irrigation season. MIYO requires 3 AAA rechargeable batteries for a lifespan of 5-10 years. The saving of about 12 to 30 batteries per Valve (!) over the device lifetime is an important contribution to conserving resources and the environment.
  • Irrigation zones: With MIYO, the garden can be divided into any number of irrigation circuits, all individually adjustable to the needs of the plants. This ensures that plants with different water requirements are optimally and water-efficiently irrigated.

What Can MIYO Not Do?

Every garden is different. Differences start with the soil and extend to microclimate, slope, orientation, and plants. MIYO cannot make adjustments to these conditions, but it provides the garden owner with a practical tool to efficiently and sustainably solve one of the main questions, namely water management.

Switch over and let your smart MIYO irrigation system do the work for you!

Do you want to connect your system with MIYO?

Here is the documentation of our API

Are you a system provider, business developer, or software developer?

Then contact us by email at support@miyo.garden or by phone for an interface description.