Every day, at the time you choose, Agent Aqua runs a daily check. Here's what happens behind the scenes and how it decides whether to water each zone.
What data it reads
Agent Aqua gathers four types of information:
- Current weather: temperature, humidity, recent rainfall.
- Forecast: expected rain and conditions for the next few days.
- Watering history: when each zone was last watered.
- Zone setup: which plants you're growing, how much water they need, and how you're watering them.
By default, it reads weather data from Open-Meteo for your plot's coordinates. If you've connected an EcoWitt weather station, it uses live readings from your station instead.
How it decides
For each zone, Agent Aqua weighs up whether the plants need water. It considers each plant's water requirement (very low to high), the recent rainfall, any rain in the forecast, and how long since the zone was last watered. Then it decides: water or skip. It includes a plain-English reason for every decision.
A zone might get "water for 8 minutes, no rain forecast" or "skip, heavy rain yesterday" or "skip, watered today already". The reasoning helps you understand what's driving each call.
The wet-ground safeguard
Agent Aqua won't recommend watering if the ground is already wet. It looks at three things:
- Recent rain: 5 mm or more in the last 24 hours.
- Forecast rain: 5 mm or more expected over the next couple of days.
- Weekly total: 20 mm or more across the past week.
If any of these is true, Agent Aqua assumes the soil is already moist enough and skips the zone. This prevents overwatering and rot. You can always override it and water by hand if you think your soil needs it.
Running a check yourself
You don't have to wait for tomorrow's automatic check. On the dashboard, you'll see a Run a check now button. Tap it anytime to trigger an immediate check and get today's watering verdict. This is useful if you want to know right now whether to water, or if you're about to go away and want to make an informed decision.
After the check
Once the check is done, you'll receive a report by email (and push notification on the mobile app) listing each zone's verdict. You'll also see a summary on the dashboard showing how many zones need watering today. The timeline page keeps a history of every past check so you can look back at what happened.
Learn more about reading your daily report or the timeline and charts.