About ten minutes, once per device. No app to install, no hub to buy, no tools for the first part.
You'll need the sensor, a USB charger or power bank, your phone, and the password to your home or shop WiFi.
2.4 GHz WiFi only. These nodes can't see a 5 GHz network. If your router broadcasts both under one name, that's usually fine — but if the setup page never finds your network, that's the first thing to check.
Plug it into any USB charger, phone charger, or power bank — 5 V, 1 A or better. There's no switch and no battery to fit. Give it a few seconds to wake up.
When the light is blinking slowly, the node is in setup mode and waiting for you.
Open WiFi settings on your phone. You'll see a network called OpenRanch-XXXX — the last four characters are different on every device. Join it. There's no password.
Your phone will probably warn you that this network has no internet. That's right, and it's temporary. Stay on it.
A setup page usually opens by itself. If it doesn't, open a browser and go to 192.168.4.1.
Pick your network from the list, type its password, and tap Save. The node restarts, joins your WiFi, and its own OpenRanch-XXXX network disappears — your phone goes back to normal on its own.
Once it's connected, the page shows a 6-character claim code. Write it down or take a screenshot before you close the page.
Codes never contain a zero, a capital O, a one, or a capital I — those are left out on purpose so nothing is ambiguous. If you think you see one, it's another character.
Go to dash.remotecontrolranch.com on your phone. Tap Sign up and make an account, then tap + Add a device and type the code.
The device names itself from what it reports — Flow Meter, Soil Probe — and readings start arriving. Rename it to something you'll recognise: North pasture beats Soil Probe 2 at six in the morning.
The dashboard is a web app, so it installs from the browser rather than an app store:
It then opens full-screen like any other app, and it can send you notifications.
A sensor in the wrong spot doesn't read wrong — it reads something you didn't mean to measure, which is harder to spot.
| Soil moisture | In the root zone of what you actually care about — about a hand's depth for beds and pasture, deeper and out at the drip line for trees, never hard against a trunk. Keep it out of an emitter's direct spray or you'll be measuring the sprinkler. The case and cable end stay above ground. |
|---|---|
| Tank level | Either a pressure sensor plumbed in at the bottom of the tank or a distance sensor aimed straight down from the top — both work, and both hate turbulence. Keep it away from the fill inlet: incoming water and foam read as a level that isn't there. |
| Water flow | Inline, with the arrow on the body pointing the way the water goes, on a straight run of pipe. Leave a few inches of straight pipe either side — an elbow or valve right at the inlet makes the reading jump around. Mount it where you can still reach the unions to clean it, and drain or wrap it before a freeze. |
| Pressure | Into a tee or a spare port on the pump or manifold, fitting pointing sideways or down so grit doesn't settle in it. Thread tape on the threads, not on the sensing face. Don't put a 0–500 PSI sensor on a line that hammers past 500 and expect it to survive. |
| Temp / humidity | Out of direct sun and out of the rain — a north wall, under an eave, or indoors. In full sun it reports the sun, not the air. In a greenhouse, hang it at plant height rather than up in the peak where the heat collects. |
| Vibration | Bolted or strapped to something rigid that genuinely shakes when the machine runs: the motor housing, the pump body, the gate frame. Not on a hose, a flexible panel, or the fence it's bolted to. |
| pH / ORP | Tip in the water and kept there — these probes are ruined by drying out. When it's out of the water, cap it with storage solution. Calibrate with buffer solution on install and every few months after; drifting readings are usually the probe asking for that, not the water changing. |
A relay node switches a circuit; it doesn't power one. Inside you'll find a common terminal (COM) and a normally-open one (NO). Wire the thing you're switching through COM and NO and it stays off until the dashboard turns it on. Use NC instead if you need the opposite — on until told otherwise.
The node needs its own USB power. The relay contacts are dry: nothing comes out of them, they just close a loop for you.
That's not a liability line. Mains-voltage mistakes in a wet place — pump houses, well heads, pool equipment pads — are the kind you don't get to learn from.
The button pair stands apart from everything else on this page. It's two pieces — a transmitter button you mount where you need it, and a receiver at the equipment — and they talk straight to each other by radio. No WiFi, no account, nothing to set up. It is not connected to the dashboard in any way: the dashboard never sees the pair, and can't switch it.
The AUTO switch on the receiver sets what the relay does:
Pick the position by what should happen when nobody's standing there: AUTO on for something that should run whenever the receiver is powered up, AUTO off for something that should run only while a person is holding the button.
A zone is one output plus the sensors that watch it — a valve, and optionally the flow meter and soil probe on that line. Add them under Zones on the dashboard. If you have a master valve, set its lead time so it's fully open before the first zone opens and stays open until the last one has closed.
A program is when those zones water and for how long: the days, one or more start times, and a run time per zone. Zones in a program run one after another rather than all at once, so your pressure holds up.
Zones, Programs and Automations sit next to each other on the dashboard, and Controls gives you one big tile per zone when you just want to open something by hand.
A rule is one sentence: IF a reading crosses a limit, THEN do something. For example:
Build them under Automations. Start every new rule as notify-only and leave it that way until you trust the readings — a rule that opens a valve on a bad reading will happily water all night and never think twice about it.
You can link a Telegram chat and then just ask — "how much water did we use yesterday", "is the pump running" — by text or by voice, and get a morning briefing without opening anything.
On the dashboard, go to More → Telegram and get a link code. The page prints the whole message for you, like /link ABC234. Open Telegram, start a chat with the OpenRanch bot, and send it exactly as the page shows it — with the real code in place, not the word "code". Link codes are single use and expire.
Email us and a person who has actually wired one of these up will answer. Tell us the device name and roughly when the trouble started, and we can look at what it's been reporting.