The Edyn Water Valve aims to deliver the perfect amount of garden refreshment at CES 2016

Edyn has long promised a water valve to go along with the slickly designed Edyn Garden Sensor, and at CES 2016, Edyn’s finally showing it off. With the ability to sync up to the sensor and deliver the exact amount of water your plants need, the water valve completes the Edyn system, making garden care that much more hands-free, and will be available for retail this Spring.

As expected, the design of the water valve looks great. Pictures had been released with the original Edyn Kickstarter back in 2014 and the whole system was designed by the Yves Behar led Fuseproject firm known for the August lock and Jawbone Up wearables. The water valve’s price was $60 for preorder back during the Kickstarter campaign, and no retail pricing has yet been announced. Given the precedent of the sensor, though, I’d expect the final price to be similar. The Sensor’s preorder and retail pricing were the same.

The Edyn Water Valve will work with any above ground irrigation or hose fed system. It’s not compatible with built-in irrigation systems, so it’s not competitive with the likes of the Rachio Iro, the GreenIQ Garden Hub, or the Blossom Smart Irrigation Controller. It’s more along the lines of the upcoming $67 Wise Orchard waterer. The Edyn Valve will work independently of the Sensor, but you’ll obviously see more precise watering with the two working in tandem.

Well, hopefully that’s true. I had my hopes set pretty high for the Edyn Garden Sensor, shown at CES last year. The mix of specs, a great design, and a clever looking app made it seem like this was garden device perfection. When I reviewed it this Spring, I found the incomplete and buggy app let it down in a few ways, and worried that the lack of responsiveness might actually cause problems if synced to the upcoming water valve. The sensor didn’t recognize it had enough water for a couple of hours after I watered it. With that delay, the automated valve could end up watering way too much.

Fortunately, it seems like Edyn’s taken note of the apps shortcomings, and have announced several changes to improve the features and responsiveness on the software side of things. More dynamic data, in addition to a supposedly improved plant search, better plant recommendations, and fixed memory leaks that caused delays and glitches are all coming shortly to the app in an update. Together, these fixes should go a long way toward alleviating my concerns.

In all, I’m glad the Edyn Water Valve will give me another reason to dive into the Edyn system again. It had so much promise before, and I’m hoping that this time, it’ll come that much closer to its potential.

Check out the rest of our CES 2016 coverage here.