Fault detections for solinoids

[DRollond]

Hi,

Having had the unit for a few years I noticed my plants starting to die back. I normally do an annual test of my watering lines but had not got around to it this year. Well I went and checked and every single solenoid read 0mA. Turns out the previous gardener used those horrid gel filled crimps on the wires and they were open circuit. When inspected they just slipped off. Further investigation revealed one actual failed solenoid (it was OC) six stations in total not working.

Now I notice it has a current display so it would be very simple for it to monitor the current and send an alert if the current was above or bellow a threshold when the zone was supposed to be on. It would need to be optional for people driving low current relays and what not but for solenoids and pumps I would suggest anything over 100mA to 700mA.

It would also be nice if there was some kind of alert when the unit went off the network.

I hope to install a second or more units at a remote block of land and some kind of fault detection and alerting would be nice.

[Doug Carlson]

Another supplemental method for monitoring for possible faults would be to include the run current in the log file entries. The system already shows the run current at the bottom of the screen. If that were included in the log file, a quick check of the log entries would provide indication that a solenoid had failed open circuit.

[Ray]

Yes we do have ‘logging current’ on our to-do list and will hopefully implement it soon.

[Author]

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