An alpha of the next big release: Smart Irrigation can now run your whole watering itself. This is for the curious who want to try it before everyone else. If your garden depends on Smart Irrigation and you do not want surprises, stay on v2026.10.2.
Nothing changes unless you switch it on
The full controller is off by default. Update, restart, and Smart Irrigation keeps doing what it did: calculate how long each zone waters, and open the valves itself only if you already use direct valve control. Your settings, entities and automations are untouched.
One change that applies to everyone using direct valve control
A Sonoff SWV paired with ZHA is now opened with the timed command (On with timed off): the valve opens and closes itself after the run, even if Home Assistant restarts or the network drops in the middle. We measured it on a real SWV: it counts the time in seconds and closes on time. Other ZHA valves keep the plain open by default, and the "Safety off mode" of a zone lets you choose (automatic, ZHA timed off, off). If your SWV is a different model than ours, tell us in #893 whether it behaves the same.
The full controller
Switch it on in the General page, card with direct valve control. You get a Watering tab with three pages:
- Pumps: pumps and main valves that run around a zone, with delays before and after (negative too), and a zone that stays shut when its pump will not come on.
- Programs: ordered steps, one zone or several at once, watered for the duration Smart Irrigation calculated (or a percentage of it, or a fixed time), with bounds, passes (cycle and soak), waits between steps (negative to overlap), a volume limit, and a minimum deficit to water at all. Schedules anchored to a start or to an end ("done by sunrise"), days of the week, every N days, odd or even days, days of the month, months, date ranges, skip conditions, and a hard deadline.
- Planning: what will run and when, with the weather forecast taken into account.
Your current setup becomes the main program: your start trigger, sequencing and cycle and soak, as they are. You can now also give the main program schedules of its own; when one is enabled, they replace the start trigger, and the panel says so.
Also: pause, resume, skip to the next step, stop one program, water a zone now, run a program for a given time, queue or replace a running program, a pause and a queue that survive a restart, several valves per zone, a check every minute that an open valve is still open, a notice when a weather sensor goes silent, an alert for a zone that no program waters, and a sensor per program. Programs show up in the companion card too.
Coming from Irrigation Unlimited? There is a page for you: Coming from Irrigation Unlimited. The full documentation is here.
Before you try it
- It drives real valves and pumps. Try it first with a program on a zone you can watch, and keep an eye on the first runs.
- Switching it on closes, at startup, any valve that no run of ours owns. A valve you opened by hand outside Smart Irrigation will be closed after a restart.
- Switching it off brings back the previous behaviour; your programs and pumps stay stored.
- An alpha can still change before the stable: names, settings and services may move.
Trying it
In HACS, turn on "Show beta versions" for Smart Irrigation, update, restart Home Assistant, and reload the browser so the panel is the new one. 2692 unit tests, 42 integration tests and 86 panel tests pass.
Feedback is welcome in the issues, good or bad, with the log if something goes wrong. @Megalos, this one is for you as promised 🌱