Average Water Level > 100%

[vk2tds]

I am in the process of installing a sprinkler system in Sydney, Australia. We are in the middle of summer and a drought and experiencing fires far worse than those in the Amazon. Not surprisingly we have water restrictions, limiting intelligent sprinklers to 15 minutes per day per sector.

So, I have a program where I set each sector getting 15 minutes.

Yesterday the weather was such that the Average Water Level was 103%, and today it was 108%. Yesterday’s 15m became 15m27s. Today’s became 16m03s.

Not sure is the Average Water Level should be limited to 100% or not, but maybe there should be some code such that timings are a maximum regardless. Just checked and I am using Zimmerman for weather. Easy fix for me to force to 100% but a generic solution would probably be worth while

Thanks, and great work.

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[vk2tds]

Looking through the code, it appears that Zimmerman can be between 0 and 200%. The manual doesn’t document the extents.

For me, a configuration limit for the computed % Watering factor would be great, so that I could configure it. I could set it at a max of 100% with 15 minutes of watering or a max of 150% with 10 minutes of watering, and comply with the local water restrictions. I am happy to do the coding if that helps.

[Ray]

The details of the weather algorithm are documented in the support article here:
https://openthings.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000823370-using-weather-adjustments
the reason it’s not included in the firmware is that the weather adjustment methods are decoupled from the firmware — it’s hosted on the OpenSprinkler cloud server and new weather algorithms may be added at any time without modifying the firmware.

You can customize the weather algorithm by hosting it on your own server and change the weather url to point to your own server. The weather code and instructions can be downloaded here:
https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-Weather

[vk2tds]

Hi Ray

Thanks for this. And sorry for the delay. I wanted to check the fix I came up with and see how well it worked. Once again, great work on OpenSprinkler. The more I use it, the more I really do love it.

In order to fix my issue with the weather algorithm providing greater than 100% (and in fact up to 200%), I have made a single line modification that is working for me. Rather than implementing a different weather algorithm, I have modified my code for getweather_callback() in weather.cpp. This is working really well for me, and dropping the water usage as appropriate.

        if (wt_errCode==0 && findKeyVal(p, tmp_buffer, TMP_BUFFER_SIZE, PSTR("scale"), true)) {

v = atoi(tmp_buffer);

                if (v > 100) v = 100; //vk2tds: Regardless of the value returned, limit it to 100%

if (v>=0 && v<=250 && v != os.iopts[IOPT_WATER_PERCENTAGE]) {

I just wanted to close the loop, and let others who may have this issue how I solved it. Thanks

[Ray]

Great, thanks for the update!

[Author]

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