a few great ideas

Sprinklers are not water efficient and require a lot of movement and owner attention to place and to cover the lawn properly. Irrigation systems are expensive and time consuming to set up.

What if you could just snap a photo of your lawn, estimate dimensions, mark the sprinkler location, set an alarm to start and stop, then just leave your sprinkler to do it all while you play with the kids or get some work done? A few moments "work" only.

Why not? It's a simple matter of coding an app which stores and transmits an array covering a 2-Dimensional area. To add water coverage to be even in saturation across the entire lawn, use 3-Dimensional object manipulation on screen or add dimensions and let the app work it out for you. Using the internal gyroscope of the device, the app should even be able to convert a photo to aerial/plan view. The further the lawn location the greater the water flow rate and angle of incline of the sprinkler head - information which can be stored in the same array.

The app can transmit via bluetooth to the sprinkler's onboard processor and this is remembered until the next time the sprinkler is set up, or it might never be changed again since the sprinkler can be used in the same location forever!

Solar panels can charge the system for completely wireless and green operation, or it can be plugged into the mains.

With super cheap computing like Arduino or Raspberry Pi, this is feasible to produce at a low cost. Simple motors and actuators can be cheaply and reliably produced too.

Sam
14th February 2013

Google Doc for planning (come collaborate)