Rain Delay only selectable Stations

[tigercjn]

Is there a way, like the master station set up so that some stations can be exempt from the rain sensor/delay time. The need is for undercover plants and also hot house applications.

[Ray]

That’s not supported currently. It’s a very good suggestion. I know some people are making use of opensprinkler to control other devices like home lighting, which should be exempt from rain sensor/delay settings. I will put this feature in todo list. Thanks for making the suggestion.

[10k]

I’d like to echo this request. About half of my sprinkler station are for sprinklers in the yard. When rain is detected, I don’t want to run these sprinklers. However, I have several plants and hanging baskets under the eaves and breezeway of my house that don’t get rain. They need watering even when rain is detected. A check box to enable or disable rain detection for the programs would be most useful.

Thanks for considering!

[declanslater]

I’m in the same camp! PLEASE ADD! This has been on the Todo list for like what, 9 months?

Thanks for listening Ray!

[badhairday]

Please add one more to the list. It would also be nice to be able to set the duration for each zone individually.

-Chris

[uoho]

Good to know there are more people with same deployment scenario and rain delay concerns.
In my case I’m watering my grass (2 valves), backyard flowers (1 valve) and vegetable garden (1 valve) with the pensprinkler DIY set (1.42u with 1.8.3 firmware)
When it rains, I manually set the raindelay through the web interface. From some months ago I need to expand the automatic watering to the small front yard of my house, but this area is mostly covered by the porch and needs to be watered without considering rain delay.

Im afraid there it won’t be any update for <2.0 HW versions anymore (right?) so I'm thinking the way to control the frontyard valve independently. My first approach, the easiest in terms of effort/benefit, is to do it throught crontab in a home linux server (my raspberry pi I use for another project) which will periodically set a one time program the web API of opensprinkler to set a run-once program or a manual activation-deactivation. Obviously it's not that easy, since any of this operations would require to previously deactivate the rain delay (if set) or go to manual operation mode during frontyard watering. In other words, I would need to control the logic of raindelay from my linux server for all the valves, not only the porch one.

Could you suggest me any idea to address this problem?

[Ray]

You are right that there is unlikely to be any further upgrade to 1.x generation hardware — due to the limited program memory and RAM size of atmega328, any additional feature will be at the cost of removing an existing feature. So it’s gonna be very tricky to optimize everything.

The workaround you described is certainly an option. Another way is to modify the firmware source code to customize how the rain_delay status is applied. Specifically, in OpenSprinkler.cpp, find function:
void OpenSprinkler::apply_all_station_bits()
inside the function, check the following two lines:
if (status.enabled && (!status.rain_delayed) && !(options[OPTION_USE_RAINSENSOR].value && status.rain_sensed))
bitvalue = station_bits[MAX_EXT_BOARDS-bid];
this is where rain_delayed and rain_sensed status get applied on station control bits. If you know which stations you’d like to ignore rain delay for, you can modify the code and hard-code the station indices to allow them to bypass rain delay status. Then recompile and flash the program to the controller. This solution is not very elegant, but it does achieve what you need with minimal impact on program and RAM size.

[uoho]

Hi, Ray

thanks a lot for taking your time answering my post. Really appreciate your interest.

I’ll try to dive on github to find all files and I’ll have a look.

[Anonymous]

Hi Ray,

firstly congratulations on OpenSprinkler – great system. I too would like to selectively ignore rain delay on certain stations. In addition to the scenarios others have outlined here, I have a further relevant scenario. My watering system has several water tanks involved. When it rains and my main tank fills, I open a solenoid/value via OpenSprinkler to pump water up to my larger storage tank. It would be great to rain delay most, but not all stations, selectively.

[rhys]

Hi Ray,
Thank you for such a terrific product. I very recently purchased an OS v2.1u and was lucky enough to save a reasonable amount on the shipping (I’m in South Africa) as my wife happened to be in Chicago when I decided to buy it 😀
It didn’t take long to solder the components to the board and have it up and running with no issues.
This has got to be the best irrigation controller I’ve used and especially love it when I’m out in the garden with my wife and she comments that “the flower beds are looking a little dry”, out comes the phone and on comes the water 😛

Just curious about this topic (Rain Delay only selectable Stations) as it’s about the only feature I’d dearly love to have at the moment as I have a zone that is under cover and does not get any rain so if I activate the rain delay (absolutely love that feature) this particular zone would not get watered.
I see this feature seems to be in the OSPi already http://rayshobby.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=337&hilit=rain+delay and was wondering how close the OS is to getting this option too?
I did see your comments above about coding in a bypass for the specific station and may just look into that as we’re just coming into our rainy season here, but if it will only be a short wait for this to be added to the OS then I may just wait.

[Ray]

I know an OpenSprinkler user Mark B. is currently working on implementing the selective rain delay feature into OS firmware. Will post an update as soon as this is completed. Thanks!

[ClaytonRoss]

Hello all
I am new here.
I just want to +1 the selective Rain Delay.
I have a few 24VAC relays on the end of my triacs doing other jobs, Like my pool pump , and fountain pump that i want to keep on schedule even on those rainy/Cold days
So Get Cracking Ray 😆

[Ray]

‘Rain delay on selected stations’ has now been added and included in the newly released firmware 2.0.5. Please check this forum post for details:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=608
Thanks!

[Angeaa]

When rain is detected, I don’t want to run these sprinklers. However, I have several plants and hanging baskets under the eaves and breezeway of my house that don’t get rain. They need watering even when rain is detected. A check box to enable or disable rain detection for the programs would be most useful.
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[rhys]

Firmware 2.0.5 added the feature of selecting which stations should ignore the rain delay.
I have a similar setup with plants under an awning that will never get rain so I’ve got a program set for the relevant station and have set the “ignore rain?” flag for that station, so now those plants get their water allocation as per my program setting regardless of whether it has rained or is raining.

[Author]

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