Smart moves

Alexa, turn on the lights. Alexa, lower the thermostat by 3 degrees. Alexa, where’s my stuff?

“You can talk to your appliances and other devices in the home, and we feel it shouldn’t be any different in an outdoor landscape system,” says Orion Goe, senior channel manager, Toro, explaining how smart irrigation systems have evolved from weather stations to wireless controllers. Now there are robust app-based platforms that give consumers and professionals a real-time view of an irrigation system with data-driven alerts.

Today, “smart” means Internet connected, says Rain Bird’s Joe Porrazzo, marketing group manager of the contractor division and lead for the residential controller team. Advancements are making the technology easier for landscape professionals and their clients to adopt.

With a focus on connectivity, integration, usability and data, the smart controller space is evolving at a fast clip — albeit behind home automation — and an intuitive ecosystem is on the horizon. There’s demand for it. Customers are looking for more than savings on their water bills, Goe says. “Five years ago, we talked only about water efficiency in dollars and cents, and how, ‘The system will save you this much,’” he says. “Now, dollars and cents are just as important as the water you will save because we are in a water crisis. It’s economic and ecological conservation.”

And basically, smart systems are expected today.

“Modern consumers are accustomed to doing everything from smartphones, and now they expect that kind of functionality in every appliance they buy,” says Dave Shoup, product manager, central control systems, Hunter Industries. “Like many things in tech, it has gone from an exclusive function of very high-end controllers to a standard. Customers can enjoy their own remote access to the irrigation system, as well as allowing professionals remote access.”

For professionals, the labor savings, profit possibilities and sales add-ons with smart controller systems are a real opportunity. With commercial and residential customers’ savvy, thanks to our friend Alexa, and other smart home systems, irrigation industry experts expect this arena to continue accelerating with even more capabilities.

“Automation users monitor and control resources over many types of devices — HVAC, alarm systems, pumps, tanks — and they are not understanding the benefits of including irrigation in these large custom systems,” Shoup says.

Redefining Smart

First, let’s rewind and redefine “smart,” because the idea has morphed during recent years. “Smart controllers have come to mean many things to different users,” Shoup says. “Many use it to mean controllers that automatically adjust irrigation amounts based on climate or soil conditions.”

This can be accomplished with local sensors or online data.

“One of the bigger advances has been the availability of connected controllers, and the ease of connectivity and use,” he continues. “Another emerging trend, particularly in large systems, has been the integration of irrigation controllers directly into building, campus or city-wide automation systems.”

Controllers that are Wi-Fi connected can be a game changer for landscape professionals and their clients. Porrazzo explains the evolution at Rain Bird, which essentially began with an add-on module in 2016 that provided Internet connectivity to its existing line of controllers. That way, irrigation professionals could literally plug and play. “We added a thumb-drive looking component that take a few seconds to install and set up in a mobile app,” he says.

Then in 2021 came Bluetooth connectivity. (Again, connectivity is the key.) Basically, this was Gen II and meant the plug-in included new features that made linking the system to the app and monitoring easier.

“Many contractors prefer a web platform where they can manage many controllers at one time, make batch edits and send permissions for crews,” Porrazzo explains. “There is software that makes it very fast to program so you can save an irrigation schedule and use it over and over. You can say, ‘Copy this program into this new controller,’ and it programs in less than 90 seconds.”

Ease and speed are crucial for contractors and customers.

At Rachio, the company followed consumers during their use of smart controllers to see what features they embraced. “We wanted to learn how they use the product,” says Chris Klein, co-founder and chief product officer. “If you think about it, a lot of this is about usability and simplifying the system.

“We want to make sure the system connects with Wi-Fi when you get it out of the box and you are not going through a multi-contact situation with customer support, resetting routers and stations to get the controller to work,” Klein adds.

Because let’s face it, we’re impatient people. And that applies not just to property owners and managers, but professionals who realize setup time is non-billable hours. Realizing ROI is crucial. Rachio conducted a study with Redwood City, Calif., and Stanford University in partnership with local utilities. “They took it upon themselves to do a multi-year study with Rachio controllers to verify, without us, that these smart systems would do what they said they are supposed to do,” Klein says. “With that efficacy data, we have proof that they do save water.”

As for what “smart” means, another compelling component is leveraging data, Klein notes. “In the irrigation space, smart scheduling is more than skipping when it rains — it’s shifting when seasons change and watering based on soil moisture that can be driven from weather stations and not necessarily soil sensors,” he says.

Data will help “productize” smart controllers.

“You can find out how much water you are using, how that changes every year and every month, and even on a daily basis to show if there are leaks, high flows or low flows,” Klein says. “Data coming from the controller can tell us if we have a slow burn on a valve.”

For a professional who is managing hundreds or thousands of controllers from a single platform, diagnosis is significantly less time consuming. And it does not necessarily require a site visit. “We get data in different ways, whether form the water service that can help us out or from soil moisture sensors,” Klein says.

Selling Points

More than ever, consumers are requesting smart systems. “Homeowners are influencing what products go on the wall,” Porrazzo says.

Though in plenty of instances, clients might not realize that the same smart-home type technology can be implemented outdoors in the landscape. So, there is some education — including explanation related to cost. “Smarter systems generally are slightly more expensive than simple timers, but the payback in water savings, remote management, plant health and alarm monitoring easily justify a premium controller price,” Shoup says.

Rachio sells directly to consumers and professionals, and Klein says the price point has actually decreased. “Inflation is top of mind and we have held or lowered our prices over the years, and that is something we continue to look at: How can we continue to add value?” he says.

Peace of mind is also a selling point. “Just knowing the product is on the property and will detect rain falling gives people confidence because in many markets across the country and outside of the country, you can get fined if a system is running while it is raining or if the temperature drops below a certain level,” Porrazzo says.

For professionals, smart controllers allow them to service customers efficiently. “They can at least do some high-level troubleshooting remotely,” Goe says. “So, 15 years ago if a homeowner called and said, ‘My system isn’t turning on,’ or, ‘My system won’t turn off and the water is still running,’ you had two choices. You could get in the truck and drive out to the property, or you could talk the customer through the process of finding the right button on the controller, which isn’t a great experience on either side of the equation.”

Now, professionals can remotely turn off a system to prevent water waste or identify if there is a leak. Then a service call can follow.

“Controllers can be adjusted and report alarms directly to a smartphone, reducing the number of site visits,” Shoup says. “These services also create a value-added benefit that can billed as part of a maintenance agreement by professionals.”

The evolution of battery technology also makes wireless controllers and components more practical, Porrazzo notes. “A lot of our wireless products can go up to six years or more with everyday use on the same battery and that makes it easier for customers,” he says, adding that after some consumer research, professionals are divided on how they feel about the call to replace a battery.

“Some want it to last longer so they can move on to the next job, and others like to replace the battery because it’s a service call and they can upsell it, so it gives them a reason to go back on a property. It depends on the business model,” Porrazzo adds.

On the horizon

What’s next in smart irrigation technology? “People want everything in their yard to be wireless, and they want more and different kinds of sensors,” Shoup says. “These are trending topics.”

Goe says technology continues to advance — and there are wireless flow sensors and above-ground connected devices. “But the technology is at a point where anything that is subterranean for Wi-Fi isn’t there yet,” he says.

Does everything have to be Wi-Fi enabled to be “smart” and connected? Not exactly. “There is no reason why all of these devices can’t ‘speak’ to possibly a common receiver and that receiver is talking to Wi-Fi or the cloud,” Goe says. “So instead of building Wi-Fi into every device, you can have an integrated system that talks back to the cloud. But in terms of the sensors and controllers or whatever else in the landscape and how those components ‘speak’ to the receiver, maybe it’s Wi-Fi, maybe radio, maybe a good, old-fashioned wire.”

When Porrazzo first dug deep into the connected world at Rain Bird in 2016, “everyone wanted to be wireless and in the cloud,” he says. “I’m really curious to see if there is a move back to on-site, on-device monitoring and that is something we have seen in the last couple of years. For example, we assumed our wireless sensor business would slow as Wi-Fi technology got better, but that’s not the case. Water districts and public agencies almost double down on physical technologies like rain sensors, soil sensors and flow sensors.”

Why during a move toward everything connected is there also a shift toward “grounding” tech to a location? “We were hearing from customers that they needed rain sensors on the property because it could be raining at their house but sunny across the street,” Porrazzo says, relaying feedback from the field. “Those are things that Internet-connected weather can’t get, and it doesn’t matter how accurate the service is. It will never be as accurate as on-site sensors.”

Goe adds, “I’m excited for systems to get even smarter and more intuitive. For example, take the Nest thermostat in my home. It learned my patterns so when I get up in the morning, it kicks on to 72 degrees, and when everyone leaves the house, it ratchets it down to 68. Our irrigation systems will become smarter in that sense. They will become more intuitive.” Also on the horizon: sensors with predictive capabilities. Goe illustrates how. “Say the sodium levels in the soil jumped up 15% in the last 16 days. The system says, ‘You should do this.’ Then the system can ping a contractor with suggestions, tools or products they can present to their customers to maintain the health of the landscape. That’s where we are going.”

Goe compares this to Amazon offering suggestions after you search for a purchase. “Did you think about this? Did you see that? We might start to see tools like that from an irrigation perspective,” he says.

Overall, the existing and emerging technology will go through a survival of the fittest evolution. “We’re seeing competing technologies like the old days of BlueRay vs. HD and VHS vs. Beta Max, and we are waiting to see which technologies are going to win,” Porrazzo compares.

And at the end of the day, customers want their irrigation products to be “faster, smarter, smaller, better,” Porrazzo says of consumers and professionals. “Overall, people expect more of their systems.”

The author is a freelance writer based in Cleveland, Ohio.