(new install) daily program did not run, logs contain no entry

[zim]

New install of OS3.0/DC. Manual test of zones worked fine. Set up daily program (every day of the week selected and confirmed) for 630a.

Checked today to verify the program ran (and/or decided not to run b/c of rain), and the log is completely empty for today. I did narrow the reporting range to today.

Before I narrowed the range, it did show the manual tests I did yesterday.

Should I expect the log to show something?? ie. if it decided not to run b/c of the forecast, should there not still be an entry?

Did I miss something in the install/programming process?

thanks!

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[Ray]

The first thing to check is at the homepage, see if the time displayed there matches your local time. If not, make sure you set the location correctly. Go to Edit Options -> System, there you can set your location.

Next, check if you may have a rain sensor enabled. If so it’s possible that the program got skipped because the rain sensor was activated at the time it was about to start.

[zim]

I changed the time and disabled the weather adjustment. It ran as expected, at the expected time. So I believe I can rule out time.

So the question that comes to mind is

– if a program is supposed to launch and (insert reason here) it decides not to run, will there be a log entry? ie.
—- my system reports weak Wifi (which is another mystery) .. if it was trying to get weather and could not would it abort? and again, would it log the reason?

EDIT: Also no rain sensor
EDIT2: the UserManual says it logs “zone runs as well as rain delay, sensor status changes, and watering percentage changes.” .. which makes this all the stranger (to me)

[Ray]

I am really confused by your description. You said “It ran as expected, at the expected time” — that sounds like after you changed the time and disabled weather adjustment, the issue is fixed, is that correct? Or did you change the time before you discovered the issue?

1. I am not sure how a program is supposed to log a record if it didn’t run — in your case, if the time was incorrect, it would not be running the program at your set time. This is not because the program was skipped for any reason. It’s simply because the device time was different from your wall clock time. How is the program supposed to log a record in this situation?

2. The firmware checks if the current minute matches the program’s start time, so it has a full 60 seconds to detect if a program should run at this minute or not. Even if the WiFi signal is weak, it won’t take more than 5 seconds (the http request has a 5-second timeout) to get back a result, either success or failure. Also, weather update is disabled if a program starts running, so as soon as the program starts running, weather update will wait till the program finishes running.

“UserManual says it logs “zone runs as well as rain delay, sensor status changes, and watering percentage changes.” .. which makes this all the stranger (to me)” — can you articulate which part of it is strange to you? ‘Zone runs’ are logged when a zone finishes running. If a program didn’t run, that means zones didn’t run, so it won’t log any record, right?

[zim]

System installed (by me) Friday. Program added for 630a, 7 days/week. Weather enabled. Time/date info was configured for my time zone, and was correct.

My first automatic program (per above) did not run. and nothing in the logs. No evidence of the program being seen, aborted, canceled by weather, etc. Totally empty log (for that date)… Log did show my manual testing on Friday, but blank for Saturday.

For debug, I disabled weather and changed the time to 1237pm (was debugging ~1230pm) .. program then ran and logs recorded it.

I did not update anything about the “time”.. the time was correct all along. There was a program for 630a (configured the day before) and it did not run, and there was nothing I could find in the logs to indicate why not.

The “stranger” part to me was the total lack of log info (as the manual suggests the logging is pretty verbose). Again, my log was empty for Saturday. Wondering is there any corner case where a program is “seen” and aborted where no log entry is generated?

(sorry, I’m repeating that, but trying to be thorough to each question).

[Ray]

The firmware does NOT log the reason why a program was skipped. It only logs actions that have happened, not those that did not happen.

If your program was set to ‘Use Weather Adjustment’ and the watering percentage happens to be 0, then the program won’t run. It sounds like your program initially was set to Use Weather Adjustment, and you subsequently removed that options. So perhaps it didn’t run because the watering percentage was 0 that day.

[zim]

Perhaps a verbose logging option? ie. would love to see all scheduled events in the log. If they happen to end up at 0%, I’d prefer to see that to help debug that I didn’t make some other error (ie. else I end up wondering why my expected program didn’t run… which appeared to happen with my very 1st attempt 🙂 )

I confess that might be a trick for the graph, but maybe not the table?

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