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I want to run 2 valves at the same time, is this possible? do I just need to have 2 programs run at the same start time to do this? or do I need a completely separate open sprinkler to do this?
thanksIf by “run 2 valves at the same time”, you mean run 2 stations/zones at the same time, then yes, you can. The stations that you want to run in parallel must have the sequential attribute set to off. You do not need a separate program, but you may have other considerations when you create programs that have a mix of sequential and non-sequential stations in order to get the overall behavior that you want.
@james2: did you figure it out? You can click on the ‘gear’ icon next to each station, which will bring up the ‘station attribute’ dialog. There you can set or clear the ‘Sequential’ flag.
I think I have, but have not done a complete real world test yet. I should be testing this week.
Thanks for the help.I want the option to have two programs at the same time (one controlling my valves which I want sequentially and one to control a fertilizer injection pump). How do I do this? When I set the same start time, only one program is running and the other program “queues up” to start when the first is complete. Thanks!!
Running two programs at the same time is not supported. If the two programs involve the same set of zones, it’s unclear how you want the zones to run: let’s say zone 1 is in both programs, this is a conflict, what do you want zone 1 to do?
I have been playing around with the demo site, and I love this system, but I need to be able to run 2+ zones at the same time. Ideally, I’d like the option to run non-sequential programs. I have 4 zones in my garden (two soaker hoses and two sprayer zones). My ideal setup is
Program Garden – starts at sunrise every day – ignoring rain
-Zone Garden Spray 1 – 1 hr
-Zone Garden Spray 2 – 1 hr
-Zone Garden Soaker 1 and Zone Garden Soaker 2 run at the same time for 3 hours.Program Yard A – starts at sunrise Mon, Wed, Fri – monitoring rain
-Zone 1 – 1 hr
-Zone 2 – 1 hr
-Zone 3 – 1 hr
-Zone 4 – 1 hr
-Zone 5 – 1 hr
-Zone 6 – 1 hr
-Zone 7 – 1 hrProgram Yard B – starts at sunrise Tue, Thur, Sat – monitoring rain
-Zone 8 – 1 hr
-Zone 9 – 1 hr
-Zone 10 – 1 hr
-Zone 11 – 1 hr
-Zone 12 – 1 hr
-Zone 13 – 1 hr
-Zone 14 – 1 hrRight now I have two RainBird controllers to accomplish this, and I guess I could keep the garden controller, but I’d REALLY like to consolidate to a single OpenSprinkler 3.0 + ZoneExpander.
Ray – The way I think it should handle overlap (a non-sequential program commanding an already running zone) is that it queues the next action. So if Program A was running Zone 1 and had 30 minutes left on the clock, and then Program B was programmed wanted to run Zone 1 for an hour, it would wait for Program A’s command to finish, then run Zone 1 for an hour.
If that is too much of a tear up, could we make independent groups with their own zones and programs? So I could have the “Garden Group” and the “Yard Group”?
There is a work-around you can use to achieve this: you can connect a zone wire simultaneously to two zone ports on OpenSprinkler (either by splitting the wire, or by connecting two wires to the same zone wire). That way, you have two zones (say, zones 1 and 7) actually controlling the same physical valve. You can leave one of them (say Zone 1) in sequential mode, and the other zone (say 7), in parallel (non-sequential) mode. This way, either zone 1 or 7 can turn on that physical zone, but zone 1 will be used in sequential programs, and zone 7 will be used in parallel programs.
The only downside of this is that it requires twice as many zones as the number of physical zones. But expanders are relatively cheap so it shouldn’t be a huge issue.
Creating independent groups is on the firmware todo list, but it’s not a trivial thing to implement and it requires changing the user interface considerably.
Ray,
I’ve seen a number of posts pertaining to your sequential groups idea. Is it something you are actually working on? I’m trying to run multiple zones at once to reach a target flow rate so that I can keep my pump running continuously instead of cycling on and off. I haven’t been able to figure out how to set up multiple programs to accomplish this with Weather Adjustment turned on.
Yes I’ve thought about a way to implement sequential groups, though more recently I saw a post requesting the concept of ‘parallel groups’, which got me into thinking a more systematic / general way to accommodate both types of requests.
Yet another idea is to completely change the programs to use the program scheduler like OpenSprinkler Bee:
https://opensprinkler.com/product/opensprinkler-bee/
where each program can contain multiple tasks, each containing an arbitrary set of zones and a duration. This will provide the maximum flexibility and allow you to program the zones any way you want. The downside is that it’s quite manual and tedious, and it’s not done automatically like the current OpenSprinkler program scheduler.Are parallel groups the only way to implement a water flow control for a group of valves? (As a safeguard against one of the valves getting stuck on.)
> Are parallel groups the only way to implement a water flow control for a group of valves? (As a safeguard against one of the valves getting stuck on.)
No. Just use one zone for that control valve and remove the Sequential attribute.
Then when creating a program, give it the sum of all the other program times (they will run in sequence, while the control valve zone will run in parallel with all of them).
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