- This topic has 3 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 3 days, 5 hours ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I use OpenSprinkler to water my shade house amongst other things. I have a shadehouse watering program which runs the two shade house valves sequentially for six minutes each every second day and this program has worked perfectly for years.
Now it is getting hot in Australia, I wish to give the shadehouse a quick mist every hour during the day in addition to its normal watering. Thus, I have created a program to operate the same two valves for 15 seconds each hour from 9am to 5pm. The program is
– Enabled
– Date Range not enabled
– Start Time 9am
– No weather/sensor adjustment
– Interval 1 day, Restrictions none
– Stations – Front Shadehouse 15s, Back Shadehouse 15s
– Repeating every 1h, Repeat count 8If I run this program manually, it waters each half of the shade house perfectly. When it runs automatically, only the front waters. The back does not water but it drips indicating that the back solenoid opened for a brief period, maybe a couple of seconds, but not the 15 seconds requested. The log shows as below which seems to indicate that the back watered even though it did not plus it indicates that the valves ran simultaneously even though the valves are set to run sequentially.
– Front Water Shadehouse 26s 5:00:01PM 5:00:27PM
– Back Water Shadehouse 26s 5:00:16PM 5:00:42PMI have
App Version: 2.4.112
Firmware: 2.2.1 (7)
Hardware Version: 3.3 – AC
I only upgraded to firmware release 7 today in the hope it might fix something but no improvement.Are there limitations on short duration valve openings or any other reason my program is not running correctly?
Hi, could you submit a support ticket at support.opensprinkler.com attaching a copy of your controller’s configurations? It’s difficult to diagnose the issue without having the full configuration parameters. For example, if you enable Notifications (e.g. Email, MQTT, IFTTT), when a zone finishes running the email notification can take a few seconds, which can delay the start of the next zone. Having a copy of your configurations would allow us to import it on a test controller and attempt to reproduce the issue. Thanks.
For those interested in the outcome, Ray quickly diagnosed this issue as being caused by having all possible email notifications turned on. The time to send the notification emails is being taken from the 15s irrigation time causing all my issues.
If I turn off the email notifications, the short duration watering works perfectly.
I also have very low WiFi signal so I will test with better WiFi connection and different email notification settings to see what I can achieve.
After further testing, I have discovered two ways forward.
If I move my WiFi point to improve the WiFi signal to OpenSprinkler, the short duration programs work with all the email notifications turned on. The time to send all the emails does shorten the watering duration a few seconds from that requested but this is easily managed.
If I leave the WiFi point as is with the WiFi signal to OpenSprinkler classed as “Unusable” plus turn off the program start, station start and sensor update notification emails just leaving on the station end notification email, this also works well with just a few second watering duration shortening. Having all the email notifications from the regular misting program has proven very annoying so I have reduced them down to just these two email notifications and I likely will turn them off entirely in the future due to notification overload.
Ray has confirmed that a future firmware will move the email sending code from the sprinkling timing loop and this firmware will fix the issue fully, but in the mean time, it is easy to have short duration programs by just not having ridiculous amounts of email notifications and/or having a decent WiFi connection.
Thank you Ray for your prompt and expert assistance.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.