Zones

A zone is one chunk of yard on one valve. LocalSky schedules each zone on its own: you describe the grass, the soil, and the area, and the engine computes the crop evapotranspiration (ETc), the soil-moisture bucket, and the runtime from there. Edit zones under Settings, then Zones; each save round-trips through the full config, so the engine picks up changes on the next tick.

The core fields

• Name: what you call the zone (for example “Back Yard”). It auto-derives a stable internal slug used by history and sensor bindings.
• Grass species: picks the seasonal Kc curve, root depth, and MAD (allowed depletion) threshold. See the grass species catalog.
• Soil texture: a USDA texture class (used worldwide). It drives field capacity, wilting point, and infiltration rate. See soil textures.
• Area: approximate square footage. It does not have to be exact; it feeds leak detection and flow validation when a flow meter is present.
• Controller and Controller station: which configured controller fires this zone, and the station identifier on it. For OpenSprinkler the station is a 1-based number (1, 2, 3); for a DIY HTTP board it is the board’s zone id; for a Home Assistant service call it is the entity id (for example switch.back_yard_zone).

A zone needs a controller before it can run; configure one under Settings, then Controllers, first.

Advanced options

The rest have sensible defaults, so a beginner can add a working zone with just the fields above:

• Sprinkler type (rotor, spray, MP rotator, drip, bubbler): sets the default precipitation rate when the measured rate is blank.
• Measured precip rate: a catch-cup measurement in mm/hr. Leave blank to use the catalog default for the sprinkler type; measuring it improves runtime accuracy substantially.
• Soil moisture sensor (optional): assign a probe to drive this zone’s skip decision. The picker lists every discovered soil channel, both Home Assistant entities and LocalSky-native sources. Blank means the engine uses its modeled soil bucket only.
• Healthy band low % and Saturation %: the zone’s soil thresholds. Below the low band the zone reads “dry” on the Sensors page; at or above the saturation percentage the zone skips watering.

Each zone card has a Test run button that fires the valve for 30 seconds, so you can confirm water actually comes out before trusting the overnight engine.