3 growing seasons · 8 crops · 2 New Jersey sites

Stop guessing.
Start growing.

An irrigation controller that reads your soil and waters only when it's actually dry — not on a Sunday schedule. Plus fertigation that meters nutrients and verifies the line EC before and after each dose. Built by a grower who got tired of guessing.

Join the waitlist See the field data →
Alpha site · Long Branch, NJ · May 2023
Our own gardens · 3 growing seasons

What three seasons of soil‑driven scheduling did in our own gardens.

Two founder-operated New Jersey gardens. Six zones each. Eight crops. A predecessor controller running soil-moisture-only logic. The numbers below are our own season-by-season observations — informal, but real, and the reason we built this. Production HydroIQ adds live weather data to the scheduling model and sensor-guided fertigation (in validation); cloud-side per-zone learning that tunes schedules over time is in development.

Mixed September harvest, Year 3 — two watermelons, heirloom tomatoes, sweet peppers, NJ alpha site
September · Year 3Watermelons, heirloom tomatoes, sweet peppers — three seasons of scheduling refinement converging on a single basket.
Single heirloom eggplant, Year 0 alpha site
Eggplant · Year 0Heirloom variety, single-fruit close-up.
August Year 1 harvest basket — zucchini, tomatoes, peppers
August · Year 1Mid-summer basket: zucchini, tomatoes, peppers.
September Year 1 harvest basket — heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, apples
September · Year 1Heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, apples — late-season pickings.
November Year 2 — late-season tomatoes after a late frost event, NJ alpha site
November · Year 2Late frost edge case. Scheduling logic adapted; tomatoes kept ripening into mid‑November.
October Year 0 — tomato harvest with watermelon, end of first alpha season
October · Year 0End of the first alpha season — tomatoes (mixed ripening) and watermelon. The data started here.
∼20%
water reduction vs. prior-year timer baseline
12–34%
fruiting-yield improvement across 8 crops
3 seasons
of season-by-season observations · 2 founder gardens · 12 zones
Why it matters

Green landscape. Less water.
Built for a drier decade.

Outdoor watering is the biggest controllable use of water in most American homes — and up to half of it never reaches a plant, lost to wind, evaporation, and runoff from timers that don't know it rained. HydroIQ waters to what the soil actually needs, zone by zone — cutting irrigation use by around 20% in our early deployments while keeping plants thriving.

~50%
of outdoor irrigation water is wasted to wind, evaporation, and runoff from inefficient watering.EPA WaterSense
30%
of household water goes to outdoor use on average — up to 60% in arid regions.EPA WaterSense
37%
of the U.S. sat in drought at 2025's peak — watering limits are now a fixture, not a Western emergency.NOAA / NIDIS
~4B
people — about half the world — already face water stress at least one month a year; demand is projected to rise 20–25% by 2050.WRI Aqueduct

Day-of-week watering caps are now routine from Nevada to New Jersey, and Nevada and California have made decorative-turf bans permanent. Watering to actual soil need — not a fixed clock — is how a landscape stays healthy inside whatever your district allows, on the water that's actually available.

Sources: U.S. EPA WaterSense; NOAA / NIDIS (U.S. Drought Monitor); World Resources Institute Aqueduct 4.0. HydroIQ's ~20% reflects our alpha gardens and the published soil-moisture-control literature (EPA cites at least 20% for soil-moisture-based control). Production results will be measured and published quarterly from beta.

What HydroIQ actually does

A controller, a soil probe, and a closed loop. Plain and simple.

No marketing-speak. Here's the actual sequence the box runs, every day, on every zone.

Reads your soil

Soil moisture, temperature, and nutrient level (EC) in the root zone, sampled every 15 minutes by RS485 soil probes. In-line pH sensing is handled at the fertigation manifold, not in the soil.

Waters when it's actually dry

Compares the live read to your crop's water need at its current growth stage — using the established crop-science standard (FAO-56). No Sunday-at-6am schedules. Manual override any time.

Doses nutrients and verifies EC

Optional Bloom fertigation channel meters cartridge nutrients while measuring the line EC before and after each dose, so a silent injection failure or wrong cartridge is caught and flagged. (Full closed-loop dose control is on the roadmap.) In-line pH sensing for fertigation is planned, not yet shipping. No mixing buckets, no monthly tank chemistry.

Plant-health monitoring (planned)

An optional camera (planned, coming with the cloud subscription) will capture several stills a day for plant-health monitoring. Stills only — no video, ever. Cloud pattern-recognition (leaf curl, pest, growth lag) is on the roadmap.

Under the hood it's established irrigation science — FAO-56 evapotranspiration, soil-moisture depletion tracking, and closed-loop dosing. The methodology is public; the implementation is ours. See the technical detail →

Hardware

Built to survive a season outside. Then another.

One controller, three configurations. Industrial drip-irrigation valves, IP67-rated outdoor enclosures, surge protection on every port, 12V DC input. Designed to outlast the crops it waters.

HydroIQ alpha controller installed in a New Jersey garden, Year 2-3, mounted to a chain-link fence with live temperature, humidity, and per-zone moisture readings displayed on the OLED

Hydro Controller

Base $349 · Pro $599 · Enterprise $1,999

The brain. Eight native zones, with an expansion path to dozens of zones via wireless field nodes and accessories. Drives standard latching drip solenoids, 12V DC input.

  • Wi‑Fi connectivity for cloud features. Schedules and dosing run locally without internet — the box doesn't need a signal to water your beds.
  • Patent-pending surge protection on every port — no ground rod required, so it installs anywhere a power outlet does.
  • Three configurations: Base (residential), Pro (residential + fertigation channel bundled), Enterprise (commercial fleet + multi-site).
  • Photo: actual alpha unit at the NJ Site 1 fence, Year 2–3, with live readouts on the integrated OLED.
Production hardware photo coming soon.
Final unit in late-stage development.

Hydro Node

Production pricing announced at our Kickstarter

The wireless arm. Solar+battery field unit for beds that sit far from the Controller. Drives up to 4 latching valves and reads up to 4 soil sensors per node, talking to the Controller over long-range wireless (LoRa), up to ~3 km line-of-sight (target).

  • Long-life rechargeable battery — months of operation on a single charge.
  • Long-range LoRa link, up to ~3 km line-of-sight (target); multi-hop mesh range-extension planned.
  • For multi-bed properties, vineyards, estates, and small farms.
Camera, weather station,
and fertigation module
visuals coming soon.

Accessories

Modular — bundle to your beds

Modular add-ons that plug into any Controller. Mix and match by what your beds actually need.

  • Camera — outdoor-rated (planned: daily stills + cloud plant-health analysis, coming with the cloud subscription).
  • WX weather station — on-site rain, temperature, wind, solar radiation. Feeds the ET model.
  • Fertigation module — 2–4 dosing channels, in-line EC sense, peristaltic dosing pumps. Required for Bloom subscribers.
  • Sensor 2-pack, flow meter, zone expansion kit, solar battery kit.
  • Accessory pricing finalized at launch — available bundled with the Controller or added later.

What you'll see in the app.

Production app in development · Beta release alongside production hardware (2026)
Zones
8 of 8 online
Z1
62%
Z2
78%
Z3
45%
Z4
71%
Today's plan
Auto
06:30
Z1 Tomatoes
8 min
07:15
Z2 Peppers
5 min
18:00
Z3 Beds N
12 min
Skipped: Z5, Z6, Z8 — soil still moist after Mon rain.
Bloom dosing
2.1 EC
N-P-K
72%
CalMag
45%
Micros
88%
Last dose: 14:12 · ΔEC +0.4 (target met)
Sketch only — production app currently in development.
Who it's for

From a backyard bed to a few acres.

The same soil-driven control scales from a single raised bed to a small commercial block. If you grow it, HydroIQ can water it — on demand, zone by zone.

A lush backyard kitchen garden with a hoop trellis and mixed vegetables
Backyard & kitchen gardensRaised beds and in-ground plots
Rows of grapevines heavy with ripe clusters in a vineyard
Vineyards & orchardsPer-block precision over distance
A greenhouse interior with rows of ripe tomatoes growing in soil
Greenhouses & tunnelsClosed-loop fertigation indoors
Lush rows of pepper plants on a small vegetable farm
Small farms & market gardensMulti-zone fleets via Hydro Node

Photos illustrative of the growers HydroIQ serves.

Compatibility

Will it work in your setup?

The short answer is usually yes — HydroIQ was designed around standard drip-irrigation hardware, not against it. Specifics by category below.

Valves

Works with standard latching drip solenoids — the standard for battery- and solar-driven drip. If you have common 24VAC valves, a low-cost coil-swap kit replaces the solenoid coil — same valve body, new coil. Standard 1/2″ and 3/4″ drip valve bodies are supported.

Soil sensors

Industry-standard RS485 Modbus probes (moisture, EC, temperature, and pH). Our 4-in-1 soil probes ship with Pro and Enterprise. You can also bring your own — the bus is open. Bluetooth/Wi-Fi-only probes aren't supported (latency and battery problems in practice).

Connectivity

Wi-Fi out of the box. Cloud is optional — the Controller runs schedules and fertigation locally without internet. Cloud features (AI-assisted scheduling, remote access, camera analysis) require a Grove or Canopy subscription. Off-grid beds beyond Wi-Fi range are reached via the Hydro Node accessory over long-range wireless (LoRa) — the Node carries the bed-level data back to the Controller in your house or shed.

Power

12V DC input (off any standard 12V wall adapter), or run the Controller itself off-grid on solar + battery with the add-on kit. Node accessories run on solar + a long-life rechargeable battery for off-grid beds — months between charges in typical Northeast conditions.

Crops

1,000+ pre-loaded crop profiles with FAO-56 Kc coefficients across vegetative, flowering, fruiting, and harvest stages. Vegetables, berries, tree fruit, vineyards, herbs, ornamentals. Custom profiles via the app for anything we missed. We're not the agronomy moat — see the section below.

Climate

Validated in Northeast US humid-temperate conditions (NJ alpha sites, three seasons). FCC and UL certification planned for 2026; CE/UKCA in Year 2 for EU expansion. Cold-tolerance and dust ratings for Western/Southwest US in the test plan.

The agronomy

We didn't invent crop science. We applied it.

There's an entire 70-year corpus of agronomic research sitting in FAO bulletins, university extension archives, and USDA databases. The math that says this tomato in this soil in mid-July needs this much water at this depth has been worked out by people far more credentialed than us.

HydroIQ is the box that finally implements it cheaply, on your fence, for your beds. We use FAO-56 Penman-Monteith for evapotranspiration. Kc coefficients from the published crop-coefficient tables. AOAC-equivalent NPK chemistry for Bloom cartridge formulations. OpenET for regional priors. USDA NRCS soil maps for the install defaults.

What we don't do: we don't pretend "smart NPK sensors" work — in-soil probes measure bulk EC and dielectric, not specific nutrient species. For real NPK you need a lab test or a wet titration, which is what Bloom subscribers get (3 included per year). The marketing might be greener if we faked it. The science is clearer if we don't.

What we lean on

  • FAO Irrigation & Drainage Paper 56Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration; the Kc/Kcb crop coefficient method we run.
  • USDA NRCS soil surveyDefault field capacity and wilting point per soil texture, used for available-water-content estimation.
  • OpenETRegional 30m-resolution ET data; useful as a sanity check on the local soil-driven schedule.
  • Cooperative Extension ServicesState-level crop-specific recommendations (Rutgers NJAES, Penn State Extension, NCSU Extension, UCANR, etc.). We don't compete with these — we cite them.
  • AOAC Official Methods of AnalysisSource for nutrient titration standards we follow in Bloom's quarterly soil tests.
For installers + distributors

Built for the people
who install it.

HydroIQ ships through the same drip-irrigation channel you already work with. We're not asking you to learn a new ecosystem — we built the Controller around the valves, sensors, and install practices the trade already uses.

✓
Real partner supportwarranty replacement from US inventory, an installer certification program, and a dealer kit at launch. No private-label gymnastics, no co-op marketing requirements, no exclusivity demands.
✓
Trade-friendly by designbuilt around the valves, sensors, and install practices you already use — with an installer certification program and dealer kit at launch.

See the full dealer program →

Request the dealer pack

For irrigation supply distributors, landscape contractor associations, and regional installer networks. Request the dealer pack — program details, installer training schedule, and a sample of our alpha-season results.

Email partners@hydroiq.us

Response within 2 business days from Hardy Shostak, Co-Founder & CCO.

Pricing

Plain prices. Hardware is yours forever.

No annual hardware re-purchase, no firmware paywalls, no surprise tiers. The cloud is optional and cancellable; cancelling never bricks what you bought.

Hydro Controller

Base ($349), Pro ($599 with bundled fertigation channel), Enterprise ($1,999 with 16-zone native + multi-site). One-time purchase. 12-month warranty (Enterprise: 3 years), non-transferable.

$349–1,999one-time

Grove (cloud)

The cloud layer for a single property. Unlocks the full crop catalog and automatic over-the-air firmware updates, plus remote access from anywhere. Adds AI watering insights — cloud recommendations that learn each zone over time and tune your schedule beyond what the controller computes on its own (rolling out as the cloud platform ships). Month-to-month is 3×; billing starts when your hardware ships, cancel anytime. Your Controller always keeps running on local schedules.

$19.95per month, billed annually

Canopy (full intelligence)

The complete AI + automation layer — for serious single-property growers and multi-site operators alike. Everything in Grove, plus anomaly & leak alerts (stuck valves, flow anomalies, sensor drift), water-savings analytics (what you applied vs. what the weather actually called for), and automated seasonal reports. Manage one property or many from a single remote dashboard with fleet firmware management (live today); the analytics suite is rolling out.

$99.95per month, per site

Bloom (fertigation auto-refill)

A separate fertigation add-on — not a cloud tier — that pairs with any plan once you have the fertigation module. Cartridge nutrients delivered as needed, 3 lab soil tests a year, and a cartridge discount. The Bloom channel meters nutrients and verifies irrigation-line EC before and after each dose, so a silent injection failure or wrong cartridge is caught and flagged. (Full closed-loop dose control and in-line pH sensing are on the roadmap.) Cartridges are yours — cancelling doesn't claw back what we've shipped.

$29.95per month + cartridges
Your year-one cost
Adjust below — we'll show your full first-year out-of-pocket.
Controller
Plan
Bloom (fertigation)
Zones to convert (9V latching kit)
8
Your water rate ($ / 1,000 gal)
$8.00
Hardware$349
Valve coil swap kit (8×$14)$112
Subscription · 12 mo$239.40
Year-one total$700
− est. water savings−$64
Water saved per season~8,000 gal
Net first-year cost$636
How we compute these: Water savings = ~20% of zone water use (≈25 gal/day per zone over a ~200-day season) priced at the US-average residential water rate (~$8 per 1,000 gallons, water-only). The dollar figure is modest because home-garden water is cheap — the bigger win is the water itself: a typical 8-zone setup saves on the order of 8,000 gallons a season. Enter your local rate above for an exact figure. Fertilizer savings (Bloom only) are an estimate that varies with what you currently spend on liquid fertilizer. Production results will be measured and reported quarterly starting beta launch.
FAQ

Questions, answered.

Does HydroIQ work with my existing valves and sensors?
Usually yes. Our controllers work with standard latching drip solenoid valves — the standard for battery- and solar-powered drip systems. If your existing valves are common 24VAC models, we offer a low-cost coil-swap kit ($14/zone) — same valve body, new coil. We support industry-standard RS485 Modbus soil sensors as well as our own. The compatibility checker (linked in the footer) walks you through your specific setup.
What happens if I cancel my subscription?
Your hardware keeps working. Local schedules continue, manual control works, fertigation runs on the last-known dose. Only cloud-dependent features (AI scheduling, remote access, camera analysis) deactivate. The Controller never bricks. Bloom cartridges already shipped to you remain yours; we don't claw them back.
How does it decide when to water?
The decision runs on the controller itself, deterministically — no cloud required. It tracks how much water your soil has lost since the last irrigation (the FAO-56 soil-moisture-depletion method), compares the live soil reading to your crop's water need at its current growth stage, and waters a zone only once it crosses the depletion threshold. In our own gardens this approach averaged around 20% water reduction and a 12–34% fruiting-yield improvement across two NJ sites and three seasons. Cloud AI analytics that tune schedules per-zone over time are a separate feature coming with the cloud subscription. Every decision shows its reasoning so you can override.
Why is month-to-month so much more than annual?
Annual is the real price. Month-to-month is 3× to discourage seasonal sign-up-and-cancel — it would otherwise be unprofitable for us to support growers who churn after one growing season. Annual locks the lower rate; cancelling at the end of an annual term is fine.
How does the camera handle privacy?
The optional camera is planned, coming with the cloud subscription. By design it captures stills only — no video, ever — capturing several stills a day, with the cloud plant-health analysis (leaf curl, pest, growth lag) discarding each image after processing. Live view will be on-demand only and capped at 30 minutes. The camera physically faces your beds — not your house, not your neighbors. You can disable it at any time without affecting the Controller.
Can I deploy this commercially?
Yes. The Enterprise Controller, long-range LoRa field nodes (multi-hop mesh range-extension planned), and the Canopy multi-site portal are built for fleet deployment from the ground up. Designed to support 200+ zones per Controller cluster. Beta partnerships with HOAs, landscape contractors, and small-farm operators open in 2026.
Where are you in the launch timeline?
Production hardware is in late-stage development, with manufacturing partner selection in progress and FCC and UL certification planned for 2026. HydroIQ is in beta now at outside test sites, with a Kickstarter planned later this year to fund the first production run. Join the list for early-backer access and beta invites.
Early access

Get on the list.
First 100 get priority.

HydroIQ is in beta now, with a Kickstarter planned later this year to fund the first production run. Join the list for early-backer access, build updates, alpha-data field write-ups, and beta-program invites.

hello@hydroiq.us · partners@hydroiq.us (dealer pack)