While there are many solutions that cater to managing garden irrigation, they’re either powered by the AC mains supply or run on batteries, that need replacing at intervals. To circumvent problems with inconsistent mains power or having to check on batteries regularly, this project had to run off solar power. It should also be able to notify about its state of operation, the amount of water used and any problems in the water supply. Parts selection The ESP8266 from Espressif, was the perfect fit as the controller. Inexpensive and readily available, the ESP12E NodeMCU board was used. The modules WiFi is used to send updates to a MQTT broker. The ESP8266 mentions 20uA as 'Deep Sleep' current consumtption,as per the datasheet, but we'll see later that to achieve that on a general purpose development board requires additional modifications. For time keeping, I prefer the DS3231 over the DS1307, primarily for its internal temperature compensated oscillator and all inclusive pa...