ET Water Systems, Inc., manufacturer of smart irrigation control and efficient landscape water conservation and management solutions, launched today the HermitCrab.
HermitCrab is a universal smart controller that upgrades inefficient conventional irrigation controllers to ETwater smart irrigation. It will improve water efficiency and control for the commercial irrigation market.
The HermitCrab is a small, self-contained weatherproof unit that connects to a broad range of existing conventional irrigation controllers. It converts them into smart controllers that operate on ET Water’s web service to efficiently and remotely manage landscape irrigation.
“Water is one of our most and precious natural resources and we need to take a more environmentally conscientious approach to managing and reducing our nation’s water consumption where it is the highest and most expensive – outdoors,” said Pat McIntyre, CEO of ET Water Systems.
Lawn and landscape irrigation wastes up to 1.5 billion gallons of water every day and accounts for 40% to 60% of all urban and suburban water use.
“HermitCrab is a groundbreaking approach to saving money, labor, installation, and water use by upgrading inefficient controllers across the board while promoting community-wide water conservation best practices,” McIntyre said.
Typical installation time of existing conventional controller takes about 10 minutes or less. The HermitCrab connects wirelessly to the ET Water web servers to obtain customized daily watering schedules based on evapotranspiration (ET) computations and landscape requirements.
It is also compatible with Hunter, Irritrol, Rain Bird, Rain Master, and Superior/Sterling. The box plugs into a conventional controller via its remote control access port. Customers can configure stations online with the ETwater Manager, and the ETwater server combines this site information with current local weather data to generate a custom watering schedule. Via wireless modem, the weather-adjusted schedule is downloaded daily from the server to the HermitCrab, which signals the conventional controller to open and close valves.
The ETwater Manager smart irrigation solution combines state-of-the-art horticulture science with proprietary web-based technology to automate the scheduling and management of irrigation systems for commercial, municipal and residential landscapes.
ET Water is showcasing the HermitCrab and its smart irrigation offerings in booth number 1845 at the Irrigation Show 2010 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona.
