Changing Master valves

[Robert]

I’m in a situation where I have two master valves and I need to be able to change which one is used not by the station, but by the program. For example, I’d like to run a program every morning where the master valve in use for all of the stations is 1, and then run programs for the rest of the day where the same stations are now using 2 as the master valve.

Best I can tell, this isn’t currently an option. Two approaches that come to mind would be if either the master valve could be configured with the program instead of the station, or if you could create “virtual” stations where stations are not physical devices but virtual devices that can be configured to turn on/off a group of actual stations – then you’d create two virtual stations for each physical – one with master 1 and the other with master 2. The first idea is simpler to configure, but the second may add some flexibility for other things (like if you want to run a combination of stations together at times but not at other times).

Thoughts? Questions?

[Ray]

Hi, I understand what you mean by ‘virtual station’, or I would call ‘logical station’ here. Basically a logic station can correspond to multiple physical stations. I don’t think we can add this feature any time soon as it will change a lot of things considerably. Here are two options that can be done within the current firmware:

– Option 1: instead of using the built-in ‘master station’ feature, simply think of a master station as a ‘parallel’ station that turns on together with other stations. To make a station parallel, just click on the station at the homepage, and uncheck the ‘sequential’ flag. Then in a program, enable that station for the entire duration of the program. This way, that station will turn on as soon as the program starts, and remain on till the end of the program. And you can associate a different station in a different program.

– Option 2: use the built-in ‘master station’ feature, but every valve will need to occupy two physical station ports. Say, ‘front yard’ station will be simultaneously connected to station 1 and station 2 ports. Then in the UI/app, associate station 1 with master 1, and station 2 with master 2. This way, whether you turn on station 1 or station 2, ‘front yard’ valve always turns on, however, each is associated with a different master. The benefit of this is that it uses the built-in ‘master station’ feature, which means the master on/off delay will all apply automatically. But the downside is that each valve will have to occupy two ports.

[Robert]

With Option #1, will weather adjustment or anything of that sort throw the timing of the master valve out of alignment with the rest of the program? I think the answer is “no”, but I’m not certain. I’ve toyed with the idea of using some of the manual “on/off” type tools and a script to deal with one of the masters (used infrequently) and then just use the other master for everything else.

Option #2 means I need to buy expansion boards. Might have to anyway. *shrug*

What I’m up to is the second master actually redirects things through a fertigation unit for when I want to fertilize.

[Ray]

Option #1: no, it should work just fine, because all stations in a program are affected by the same watering percentage. Say if the watering percentage is 50%, then all station water time is reduced to 50%, hence it’s still correct.

The only downside of Option #1 is that the master station is managed manually and is associated at per-program level. Say you use station 1 as master. If you manually turn on station 2, it won’t automatically activate station 1 as it’s not configured as a master station.

[Author]

Posts