n8n Golf Irrigation Scheduler: Open-Meteo + Telegram Alerts

Automatically schedule golf irrigation with Open-Meteo weather + Telegram alerts (n8n workflow)

This n8n workflow turns daily golf course zone sensor readings into an irrigation schedule by pulling an hourly forecast from Open-Meteo, applying ET-adjusted water needs, enforcing pesticide REI and water-hazard buffer rules, then posting the final plan to your irrigation controller API—and notifying staff via Telegram when zones are skipped.

What this workflow does

• Receives zone data via a webhook POST with course coordinates and an array of zone sensor readings.
• Fetches weather forecast from the Open-Meteo API (including ET0 and precipitation probability) for the course location.
• Processes each zone by splitting the payload into one item per zone and calculating:
  • soil-moisture deficit
  • ET-adjusted water need
  • whether irrigation should be skipped due to high rain probability
• Enforces pesticide restrictions: for zones with a pesticide application within the last 5 days, the workflow uses OpenAI (GPT-4o-mini) to extract REI hours and the required water-buffer distance from provided label text, then determines if the zone remains restricted.
• Builds the irrigation schedule: sets irrigation minutes to zero for restricted zones (or when rain-threshold conditions are met), aggregates zones back into a single controller-ready payload, and includes compliance exceptions.
• Executes and alerts: sends the schedule to the irrigation controller API; if any zones are skipped, posts a Telegram message listing affected zones and reasons.

Use cases

• Daily, compliance-aware irrigation scheduling for golf courses using zone sensors and weather-driven ET needs.
• Automated pesticide REI and water-hazard buffer enforcement with clear staff notifications via Telegram.
• Reducing unnecessary watering by skipping irrigation when Open-Meteo precipitation probability indicates likely rainfall.

Technical details

• n8n webhook input, then split out to process zones individually.
• Weather via Open-Meteo (hourly forecast including ET0 and precipitation probability).
• Conditional logic and data shaping using if, set, code, and merge nodes.
• OpenAI (GPT-4o-mini) for extracting REI hours and buffer distance from pesticide label text.
• Outputs to an irrigation controller API and Telegram for exceptions.