@vince6464: rain sensor is a rain-activated switch. When it detects rain, the switch closes (or opens, depending on its specific type), and that can be detected by OpenSprinkler. If rain sensor is activated on settings, the controller stops watering on zones (unless if a zone is set to ‘ignore rain’), as long as the sensor is activated.
@robi: there is a big difference of OpenSprinkler with other controllers — OpenSprinkler is completely open-source, so you can modify the code to implement any feature you want. It’s not possible for us to address everyone’s need, that’s why we make it open, so if you have some programming skills, you can modify it anyway you want; if not, this provides a good motivation to learn some programming basics.
Back to your question about rain delay: there is no technical barrier to implement this feature, I just didn’t think it was necessary. We can certainly add it to the firmware, but there are some details to sort out, because often users want the feature implemented in different ways. For example:
– let’s say a rain delay is enabled when rain sensor activates, do you want the rain delay to be enabled as soon as the rain sensor is activated, or it’s done as an extension after the rain sensor is deactivated? In other words, if the rain sensor is activated at time X, and deactivated at Y, do you want the software rain delay to be from time X or Y?
– note that the rain sensor is not always reliable — sometimes it gets activated for a few seconds and then deactivated, which indicates a false triggering. Most likely we don’t want to enable a rain delay as soon as the rain sensor is activated, rather, instead, we should check if it keeps activated for some amount of time (window size), before we trigger a rain delay. What should be an appropriate window size?