Manually advance zone, change station run time, sequential groups, …

[Greg G]

Hi, I have been using OpenSprinkler for a few weeks now to irrigate 6 red clay tennis courts and it’s working out good so far! I have a few questions or feature requests. None of them are super important to me, but they would make things a little easier. I don’t think any of these requests have been implemented so far, but let me know if they have (or perhaps they will be in the new 2.1.9 firmware?).

1) a) When the system is currently running it would be nice if we could manually advance to the next zone or disable the running zone, and choose which following zone to run, rather than [the current way of] waiting for the next zone’s scheduled start time.

b) Also, it would help to be able to edit the zone times of the currently running program (perhaps even the currently running zone) and have those changes go into effect immediately, rather than the next instance of the program.

These things were possible on the old Toro TMC-212 controllers which I had previously used and I have seen a few other forum members show interest in manually advancing to the next zone in another thread. It would be helpful for me because sometimes the tennis court conditions can change quickly. I may set up a “run once program” and I’m not sure how much water a court needs until I start watering. Sometimes if estimate the wrong station run time by 30 seconds, it can make a difference. (Of course I can just stop operation, increase/decrease the station times, and start it again, but these 2 ideas would make things faster and simpler). Also, these changes would help with advancing zones during winterization or blowout.

2) I know have seen Ray post about possibly adding the option for “sequential groups.” Count me in as someone who would benefit from this! I purchased 2 controllers, just like I had with the Toros, (rather than 1 controller and 1 expansion board), so I could get 2 groups of zones to run simultaneously, without having to set up complicated concurrent run times. It would be nice if I had the option to run even more groups of zones simultaneously, without having to add more controllers.

3) Lastly, (I guess this would be a more software/app UI suggestion) when editing a program, I could possibly benefit from a confirmation dialog for “run program,” where there are the 3 choices at the bottom: “Run Program, Save Changes, Delete Program.” It hasn’t happened yet, but I feel like I might clumsily click “Run Program” instead of “Save Changes” at some point while editing a program, which might give any potential people on the court a very brief shower before I quickly try to disable operation.

Anyhow this is an awesome project/product! We don’t have internet at the club yet, but when we do get it (hopefully next year/season) OpenSprinkler will be even better! Even without these proposed changes I am already seeing the great potential of OpenSprinkler as opposed to the limits of old Toro controllers.

Thanks Ray, Samer, and all the others who make this possible!

-Greg

[Ray]

Thanks for the suggestions.
1) manually advancing zones or editing zone times: yes I think this has been requested before and I’ve put it on the todo list for the future.
2) sequential groups: planned for the future as well. Though firmware 2.1.9 did not implement this, the expansions made in fw 2.1.9 would make it possible to add a lot more zone attributes (group id would be one) in the future.
3) confirming Run Program: yes, this is a good suggestion, I will ask Samer to add this to the UI.

[Greg G]

Great! Sounds good. One more app UI idea I just thought of…when editing a zone in a program, it would be useful to have a previous and next zone button, maybe toward the top of the dialogue. (I edited a screenshot to get a basic idea of how it might look.) It could just be an arrow, or it could say something like “previous” or “next.” Actually, it could be a swipe left or right too, but I think a button is more in keeping with the current design of the app. The button only would probably be my preference.

I would find this extremely useful since I edit my zone times frequently. Having a “next” or arrow button, where I basically stay right in that dialogue box mode would be more efficient than having to go out of the dialogue, having reorient my eyes to find the next zone on the list, and then tap it.

Anyhow, the app is great! I love being able to see all the zone times at once on the Edit Programs screen (something not possible with an old irrigation controller like I had). When editing a station time it’s very cool to have the ability to click the plus or minus for a quick time change. But then there is also the option to click the number, and then the number pad comes up, to facilitate a more drastic time changes. I also like how if you click on the number to edit, it goes back to zero, so a time can quickly be zero’d out. These implementations are perfect! I feel my “next/arrow button” would further capitalize on these efficiencies.

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