1. If I want to add an LCD, do I have to use the “hack” of Stanoba or is this implemented in the unified firmware (I run 2.1.6 the latest????)
-> The current official firmware does not support LCD. There is a pull request in github that has implemented LCD, which you can try out.
2. Does the openweathermap also provide data on predictoed rainfall. It does not show in the app, but would be really useful to see.
-> I believe it does use predicted rainfall. Samer would be able to answer this question with more certainty.
3. About weather algorithm: we’ve received many suggestions on how to improve the weather algorithm and everyone seems to want to customize it differently. So it’s not clear what’s the best way to fulfill everyone’s need. One of the main reasons of making this a fully open-source project is to give the users the freedom to customize any part of the firmware according to their need. The weather script is also published in the OpenSprinkler github repository. You can customize itm, launch it on your own server, and change the weather script pointer to your own server. In fact, since you have OSPi, you can even implement the weather algorithm within the firmware, without resorting to another server. We have to use a weather server because OS 3.0 does not have the ability to receive and parse complex XML data; also, for non-technical users, it’s convenient to modify the weather algorithm or fix bugs without any need of updating the firmware. For OSPi, however, you do have the ability of running the weather algorithm locally on OSPi.
4. About watering percentage changing too rapidly — yes we are aware of this issue and will attempt to address it in the next firmware, by calculating an average over the past xx hours, instead of merely using the instantaneous numbers. In the past, when we were using WUnderground API, it didn’t use to change so rapidly. Now that we are completely using OpenWeatherMap API, we need to make some adjustments.
The ‘plugins’ are for third-party firmware. The official unified firmware does not support plugins.