Rain questions

[Nick Kloski]

Hi all...first off, let me thank you for such a great product, Ray!

Now some questions:

1)  When I go to the "weather" tab on the opensprinkler homepage/webserver, I see that that link takes me to an: http://igoogle.wunderground.com webpage.  iGoogle will be killed as of November 2013, so FYI, this address might need to change eventually, right?

2) What does the weather link being there have anything to do with the sprinkler operation?  I see that you can add a dedicated rain sensor the the setup, and that can cause the system to disable watering, but does the weather feed have anything to do with the system operation?

...I would love to see a simple weather-dependent toggle that, in any given program allows for:  "Turn this program off if the forecast says rain today"

...that way one can still run some programs for greenhouses that will still water regardless, but others will not run if there is a forecast chance of rain that day.

Is that possible to do?

Thanks!

[Nick Kloski]

One other thing...the reason I brought this up...having something turn off the watering based on weather, WITHOUT having to install anything extra like a rain sensor, might well qualify this device as something that local water districts might recommend by the nature of the water saving they would create over the course of a year. That would vault this project in a whole additional direction, I would think.

A friend of mine routinely spends $7 per day in the summer months watering her yard, and some of those days are needlessly concurrently watered by her old system. It would not take too many of those days to recoup the cost of the device if subsidized by the water district.

Just a thought!

[Ray]

On Saturday, October 6, 2012 7:38:10 PM UTC-4, Nick Kloski wrote:

Hi all...first off, let me thank you for such a great product, Ray!

Now some questions:

1)  When I go to the "weather" tab on the opensprinkler homepage/webserver, I see that that link takes me to an: http://igoogle.wunderground.com webpage.  iGoogle will be killed as of November 2013, so FYI, this address might need to change eventually, right?

This link is set in the javascripts hosted on rayshobby.net. If the service is discontinued at some point, I can modify the javascripts to point to a new link. You don't need to do anything on your side.

 

2) What does the weather link being there have anything to do with the sprinkler operation?  I see that you can add a dedicated rain sensor the the setup, and that can cause the system to disable watering, but does the weather feed have anything to do with the system operation?

The plan was to use weather data to help regulate watering. But as you know, google silently discontinued their weather API, and so my previous development now has to switch to use wunderground service. I haven't had time to learn their API yet. Currently the weather link is just for the user to quickly check the weather condition, it's not used to regulate watering yet.

[Nick Kloski]

Great, thanks, Ray!

I think this product is great, and I would love to demo it to some people I know who work with a local water district.  If they could see a feature in the system that would help them save water, it would be much more intriguing to them....the various water districts I have known (a couple) have had programs where they would subsidize new technologies in order to help them save water.  If this system had a program-specific setting that was what I described above (don't water if the forecast calls for rain) then your opensprinkler would by its nature offer possible water savings for them to consider that subsidy.  

Yes, you can add a rain sensor, but that adds more cost and more installation complexity, where most people would be fine with a non-exacting system based on Internet weather forecasts...those who really wanted things to be exact could still use a normal rain sensor, etc.

I think this product is one step away from being "recommendable" to large water districts, and if it had the inclusion of a feature that would actually decrease water usage for any connected house, that would be a really compelling thing for a lot of people (and a good marketing statement as well..."can recoup the cost of the system over the course of a year!"....would certainly apply to my $7 per day friend.).

Just a suggestion, thanks!  

[garygid]

The water district might like a feature where they could run a program
on rain days that would use the Web to tell all the subscribed sprinkler systems
to not water that day, or water less. Perhaps set a suggested water percentage.

Or, they might have a water-percentage server for the different areas that they
serve, and individual sprinkler control systems could get the value appropriate for
their location, and modify their watering to suit the owner.

[garygid]

Would you please explain how the Rain Delay works?

With no rain delay, but the rain sensor detecting Rain, watering, or at least
the logging of watering, seems to continue.

If I set a 24 hour Rain Delay, should that setting "stick"?

Should watering be inhibited for 24 hours after the rain sensor
shows no rain?

I could not find this explained in your very good user manual.
Thanks, Gary

[Ray Ramirez]

How about the darksky API? It returns a JSON formatted response.

https://developer.darkskyapp.com/docs/forecast

A "free" developer API key is good for 10,000 queries a day. You could poll every 9 seconds and still stay under the limit. You would have to store longitude, latitude, and the API key (32char) in EEPROM,

- Ray

On Sunday, October 7, 2012 2:26:39 PM UTC-7, Ray wrote:

[Ray]

On Thursday, October 11, 2012 3:01:25 PM UTC-4, garygid wrote:

Would you please explain how the Rain Delay works?

With no rain delay, but the rain sensor detecting Rain, watering, or at least
the logging of watering, seems to continue.

If I set a 24 hour Rain Delay, should that setting "stick"?

Rain delay and rain sensor control are both applied in the apply_all_station_bits function. They are not logged in the scheduler's inner loop. Because the user can start, stop rain delay, or overwrite rain sensor control at any time, these are rather difficult to log without a more sophisticated logging system.

Should watering be inhibited for 24 hours after the rain sensor
shows no rain?

The delay time can be set on the rain sensor itself. 

[garygid]

If the Log message is generated when the valve is turned off,
it can easily know how long the valve was on, and will not log
anything if the valve was never on.