Passwords required for app, program interval & rain sensor

[gnbwd]

Firstly, Salbahra, a big thank you for your work on this app, it is very appreciated and to Ray for Open Sprinkler more broadly and indeed this forum. Being able to program a controller remotely is such an improvement on what I have been doing in the past.

I purchased an OPSi a couple of weeks ago and its now in place and I can get manual override working and one program has run successfully, hopefully the second tomorrow.

I find your Sprinklers app (on both android and IOs) relatively easy to use and generally very helpful in how the settings are presented .

But I do have a couple of questions/issues.

1) I am struggling to understand what you mean by ‘Program Interval’. I see from your response in Dnnn’s thread that ‘…the interval is the gap to repeat the program’. I am not sure I understand what you mean by this. It sounds like if I enter 120 (minutes) into the ‘Program Interval’ setting the program on that day would repeat every 2 hours for that day (as my six programs have a program duration of only 30 or 45 minutes). Given I can’t ignore the setting, leaving it as zero, it also sound like if I only want the program to run once per day (which is what most people would expect) I need to enter the number 1439. I’m sure I’m missing something obvious here….

2) When the app has difficulty connecting I get prompted to enter a password, to try again, or possibly to save the password. This is confusing as the app works other times and I assume it has saved the needed password to access the OSPi. I don’t know which password the app is referring to; the Raspian OS login password or the Interval program password? I’ve entered both at various times. I assume the app is only referring to one password? As the app can make a connection (I have the app on an android mobile and an Ipad and both can connect) it looks like at some stage I have entered a password the app needs. I suspect when the app can’t connect its due to Wi-Fi issues (my signal is a bit marginal where the OPSi is located). But now I’m wondering whether the app needs a password to actually access the OPSI or not, how could it, when you have an option to ‘Ignore passwords’ in the app? Is the password just for restricting access to the app or are there multiple passwords? Clarification on the use of passwords in the app would be appreciated.

3) Both my apps have ‘Normally Open (rain sensor) ticked. But my rain sensor is setup for the Normally Closed type. When I submit a change, the app just displays the ‘work in progress’ circle onscreen indefinitely. In contrast in the same session I am able to make other changes, like vary the rain delay, so the issue doesn’t appear to be that I don’t have connection. Likewise I am unable to successfully change the status of ‘Ignore password’ or ‘Use rain sensor’. I have connected my rain sensor and it is working as a unit (2 pieces communicating with each other). The documentation with the rain sensor is clear about configuring the unit for open or closed operation. Any pointers as to what might be causing these issues?

Thanks again for your work on this app.

[Samer]

Thank you for the feedback. In regard to the password error I understand your point and will see what I can do to clarify this in the future. Right now the password error likely has nothing to do with a password. When doing AJAX requests, the error code can get masked as 0 which makes it somewhat of a guessing game. In the past, the issue was typically related to the password being incorrect when making changes to the device however I see how confusing it can be when no change is made and an error about password appears.

Again, I will take a look at this to see what can be done to clarify it.

In regard to the program interval it simply means how long to wait before running the program again. The firmware anticipates this for every program and the only way you can run each program “once” is to extend the interval to a duration equal to a day since programs are a daily event.

The symptoms you describe relating to the settings not being saved sound like an old copy of OSPi. Can you please update and let me know if this fixes your issue.

Thanks.

[gnbwd]

Thank you Salbahra for your response.

Program Interval – now I think understand. I would never have worked this out without more information, as the variable relates to requirements of the system/firmware, most users would not be aware of. For my requirements, with three of my six programs that are of 30 minutes duration (3 by 10 minutes per station) I need each of these programs to run once per week, so I have entered 23 hours and 30 minutes as the program interval and 23 hours and 15 minutes for the other three programs that are of 45 minutes duration (3 by 15 minutes per station). I hope this is right.

I have now updated the interval program following the instructions at http://rayshobby.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=Python_Interval_Program_for_OSPi#Updating_the_program. This appeared to work well. I should have thought of this as I had only written the latest image I could find to the micro SD. In doing this I also accessed the Interval program by web interface, turned the rain sensor on and set the normally closed option by unticking the normally open box. My app now reflects this correctly. The Interval program also displays a rain sensor message, no rain sensed …. despite the fact it is raining lightly. I can successfully turn the rain sensor on and off via the settings in the app. Also when I tick the ‘ignore password’ setting and submit, it now confirms the setting is changed. However with the password ignore, when I return to ‘change options’ the box does not retain the tick. I’m not sure whether that’s an issue or not?

Thanks for confirming the password issue more broadly. However when setting up the app from scratch I would still like to be certain that what is being requested is the password for the Interval program (default opendoor)?

Greg

[Samer]

Answering your final question, you are correct, the password is the interval program password that defaults to “opendoor”.

To touch on the interval again, it doesn’t matter what it is so long it’s longer than any feasible time within your start and end time duration. For example, if you have a start of 2:00AM and an end of 5:00AM you can put the interval to 3 hours (180 minutes) and be confident the program won’t run more than once (assuming you have a station run time of at least 1 minute, in this example). The interval is the amount of minutes to wait before running the program again within the confines of the start and end time.

The ignore password box not updating might be a bug. I will look into this, thanks!

[Samer]

The ignore password was indeed a bug in the interval program. I have submitted a fix here: https://github.com/Dan-in-CA/OSPi/pull/55/files. Once merged, you should be able to update and have it work without issues.

Thanks.

[Author]

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