Ambroues

Ambroues is a Python fully automated irrigation system for your KNX / MQTT enabled home.

When to use

Ambroues actually makes sense if you have:

• a KNX home automation setup with at least one KNX/IP usable interface on your LAN
• KNX actuators linked to an irrigation system
• NEW MQTT broker with a connected irrigation system, (make sure to check out my other irrigation project: Ambrogino for an ESP8266 / MQTT system)

I've been using the excellent OpenHAB for my home automation but I'm not really happy of OpenHAB rules system, so, after setting up my irrigation schedule there I quickly got frustrated with the general instability and the unnecessary complexity.

I have since switched to the truly excellent Home Assistant, but this project was already ready and tested for me, so, here it is!

Your mileage may vary and maybe your KNX supervisor is far better at this than mine but if you've been looking for something simple and quick to learn for your irrigation needs then Ambroues might be for you!

Other things you can do with Ambroues

You can automate almost anything which is controlled by your KNX home, so you could also use Ambroues to do some presence simulation, I guess, that's not the usage I had in mind when I wrote this but I guess you can use it however you like!

Install

You need Python3 for Ambroues, and he gives his best in a virtualenv... make sure you install the requirements.txt!

virtualenv --python=python3 venv
source ./venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Configuration

Since Ambroues uses knx for sending watering signals, you need two things:

1. A working xknx.yaml (please look at xknx-example.yaml for inspiration)
2. A zones configuration file called "ambroues.json"

Here's an example ambroues.json (you can find it in the repo as ambroues-example.json)

{
  "knx_clean_bus": "Yes",
  "telegram_notifications": "No",
  "telegram": {
    "api_token": "XXXXXXXXX",
    "chat_id": "123456789"
  },
  "zones": [
    {
      "zone_name": "giardino ovest",
      "zone_knx_address": "1/0/1",
      "zone_enabled": "on",
      "zone_start_time": "06:30",
      "zone_duration_minutes": "10",
      "zone_week_days": ["mon","tue","wed","thu","fri","sat","sun"]
    },
    {
      "zone_name": "giardino sud",
      "zone_knx_address": "1/0/2",
      "zone_enabled": "on",
      "zone_start_time": "06:40",
      "zone_duration_minutes": "10",
      "zone_week_days": ["mon","wed","fri","sun"]
    },
    {
      "zone_name": "giardino est",
      "zone_knx_address": "1/0/3",
      "zone_enabled": "on",
      "zone_start_time": "06:50",
      "zone_duration_minutes": "10",
      "zone_week_days": ["tue","thu","sat"]
    }
  ]
}

• "knx_clean_bus": Yes | No

If this is turned on (value=Yes) it will send knx datagrams to shut of all zones on sigint, for safety reasons.

• "telegram_notifications": Yes | No

This will enable notifications to your own telegram chat, please remember to include the telegram details in your configuration:

  "telegram": {
    "api_token": "XXXXXXXXX",
    "chat_id": "123456789"
  },

Every other setting should be pretty self explanatory.

Launching Ambroues

Pretty simple:

python ambroues.py

Docker and Ambroues

Ambroues now comes with a pretty decent Docker image!

To build with Docker:

docker build . -t ambroues

To run with Docker:

docker run -d --network host -v /path/to/ambroues.json:/app/ambroues.json ambroues

Example with docker-compose:

version: "2"

services:
  ambroues:
    container_name: ambroues
    image: ambroues:latest
    network_mode: host
    volumes:
      - /path/to/ambroues.json:/app/ambroues.json
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/Rome

Things to keep in mind:

• You need host networking mode to be able to connect your KNX interface
• A json config file (ambroues.json) is required to define irrigation zones
• This docker container (for x86_64) has been built via multi-stage build so it's kinda slim, about 120 Mb
• The timezone is forced in this Docker container, so you might want to switch to your timezone via ENV at runtime like this: ENV TZ=Europe/Rome