Patent ID: 8660705

Claim:
A soil moisture based irrigation system, comprising: a stand alone irrigation controller comprising a control panel including a display and a plurality of user inputs that enable a user to enter a watering schedule including a run time, and to manually adjust a percentage adjustment value of a percentage adjustment feature; a computer processor operatively connected to the control panel; a memory connected to the computer processor, said computer processor configured to execute programs stored in the memory; a plurality of switches operatively connected to the computer processor for turning a power signal ON and OFF to a plurality of valves that deliver water to a plurality of sprinklers; and programming stored in the memory to accept input from the user via the plurality of user inputs to implement the watering schedule, wherein during said run time, the computer processor operates ones of the plurality of switches to turn the power signal ON to one or more of the plurality of valves thereby delivering the water to ones of the sprinklers to irrigate an irrigation site, the programming further accepting input from the user via the plurality of user inputs to implement the percentage adjustment feature to increase or decrease the run time of the watering schedule by the percentage adjustment value; at least one soil moisture sensor; and a stand alone soil moisture control unit different from and operatively in communication with the stand alone irrigation controller and the at least one soil moisture sensor, the stand alone soil moisture control unit installed on the irrigation site and comprising a memory storing programming that calculates a soil moisture requirement value using a signal from the at least one soil moisture sensor and communicates a soil moisture adjustment value responsive to the soil moisture requirement value to the computer processor of the stand alone irrigation controller to automatically increase or decrease the percentage adjustment value of the percentage adjustment feature, the percentage adjustment feature configured to change the watering schedule by said percentage adjustment value.