Yardian brings smarts to home water systems

I live in the Midwest where our issue with rain is there is often too much of it. My son, on the other hand, lives in an arid part of Northern California where his lawn and garden beg for water almost every day and where the local authorities have tight control over water usage.

I thought about him when I came across the Yardian. It's a smart sprinkler manager designed to fit nicely into his lifestyle and into the Internet of Things. It not only manages your irrigation schedule, it also works with a mobile app and responds to Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant.

The Yardian is a replacement for the typical irrigation controller with its arcane settings and setup commands. The Yardian helps with the switch by providing numbered stickers for the wires and on-call assistance. It reminds me of how easy it was to swap out my decades-old thermostat for its slick successor, the Nest.

Once you have the wires plugged into the Yardian, you set it up using the free app available in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. The controller connects to your home WiFi and takes orders from the app.

During the setup process, you'll tell the Yardian where you live and what utility provides your water. Why does that matter? Because, like my son's water provider, your utility might have restrictions on how much water you can sprinkle on your property and when you can do it. Last summer he could only water after sundown and he could get in trouble if any of it landed on his concrete driveway.

Linking the Yardian app to the local water company lets you check on local rules and restrictions. And Yardian maintains a database of water restrictions to automatically revise a user's watering schedule to match local rules. It also checks local weather forecasts to optimize watering schedules.

The Yardian control box also contains a video camera to provide continuous monitoring of the area around it, typically a yard or garage. And the system can be set to automatically activate a sprinkler head when it detects an unwanted animal.

The Yardian watering manager is available directly from Amazon. A system to manage eight watering zones costs $159.99 or 179.99 for 12 zones.

For more details about the Yardian system, check the video below and visit the Yardian website.

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Written by Ric Manning

Follow me on Twitter @ricmanning and read my technology columns at My Well Being.