How To Open $ionicPopover from Controller programmatically without a mouse click event:

var self = this; // store reference to 'this' controller object

this.openCustomPopover = function ($event) {

        $event = document.getElementsById('myElementID'); // html element ID 

        $ionicPopover.fromTemplateUrl('popovers/myhtmlpopover.html', {
                scope: $scope
            }).then(function (popover) {
                console.log('in the popover then function');
                self.popover = popover;
                self.popover.show($event);
            });
        }

You can call this function from your controller without a true click event, by faking the $event object.