Paradise ponders: beautiful sunrise edition...

Paradise ponders: beautiful sunrise edition...  I woke up at 5 am this morning, had a cup of tea, fed the (happy and excited!) dogs, then headed out around 6:15 to help my friend Tim move his hand line.  The sunrise at right greeted me – so beautiful!  The silhouetted mountains are the Wasatches to our east.  There were orange-painted clouds here and there in all directions, but the best were directly to our east.  Shortly after I took this photo, we were completely socked in and it started raining.

I'm still waiting on some parts so that I can finish plumbing the irrigation shed. This morning I've started on the next step, though, and this one is rather directly up my alley: adding a computer control.  There are already two computers out there: one in the irrigation controller (the fancy timer that controls the zone valves) and one in the variable frequency pump controller.  I'm adding a third “supervisor” computer whose main purposes are to turn the pump on and off, and to monitor the filters so that it can let me know when they need cleaning.  This supervisory computer will be a Raspberry Pi 3, with inputs from four pressure sensors in the same lines as the physical pressure gauges, an input sensing when the irrigation controller is running, and an output to turn the pump on and off.  It will also have temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure sensors, and it will be connected to our WiFi network so that it can send me texts when the filters need cleaning, or if something goes wrong.  We'll also be able to monitor the irrigation system through a tiny web site.