Some issues and question

[tom36germany]

Hi everyone,
first of all I like to congrat for that fantastic open source project and great effort you all put in to that project.
3 Month a go I purchased the DC version of OS + man extension board. It came from the US to Thailand in the lightspeed of 2 weeks.
Great and fast – excellent. Thanks a lot to the OpenSprinkler Team !!!!

All works well so far and I even control some of my Yard light´s with the system as the build in timer / WU (sunset to sunrise) matching perfectly my needs.

However,

(Question 1) : Here in Thailand we face the issue of recent power fails (sometimes just for a few seconds). So I face the problem
that the running program(s) for water and light not resume once the grid is back. I have to restart the program
for the current day manually.
Is there any change to that the program continues automatically once the OS controller got back his power supply?

(Question 2) : Using Win 10 and Chrome as my OS and standard browser (I know that’s both not the best choice 😉 ) I was wondering why the
Status change for each channel can only be seen by “reload” the webpage of the OS user interface. I not face that issue on IOS and on
Android. Means I manually start an output -> it will show me the green light and status of the relevant output but when I stop the same output
or even all stations i have to manually reload the webpage.

(Question 3) : Is it advisable and possible to change the white background of the OS – UI (e.g. with a nice picture) ? If yes where I have to
Include the relevant path – Not sure me as an amateur with some knowledge can do that, but would love to try 😉 – Expecting that the relevant HTML
file (that I have to modify) will be on the SD card, is it ?

(Question / Hint 4) : Well the most of the UI is self explain and most of the menus are greatly created. I just wondering where is the
“go to home screen – or lets call it station overview” Button ? On the PC not the issue but on the phone / tablet it´s sometimes a hassle to click
20 times the “back” button to go to the main overview. Or am I so blind that I have overseen it somewhere?

Apologize for my bad English and thanks in advance for your help.

I will post some picture of the setup in the relevant section (pictures and creative use) of the Forum.

Tom

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[Ray]

Hi, thanks for posting. See below for answers:

(Question 1) Power break: currently the firmware cannot resume the program run if there is a power break. There are two work-arounds to address this issue: one option is to make use of the ‘repeating start time’ feature and break a program into multiple shorter sessions. For example, instead of watering for 30 minutes all together, break it into 5 minutes and repeating 5 times. So the total run time is the same, but this way, even if there is a power break, you at most lose a 5-minute session and the remaining sessions will still run. Another option is to simply add a UPS (uninterrupted power source) that allows the controller to continue running across power break.

(Question 2) Win10 and Chrome: the app is designed to refresh automatically every few seconds, so not seeing update after a while is not normal. We will investigate this issue. If you have a mobile phone, I suggest you also try to download and install the OpenSprinkler mobile app and see if that works better.

(Question 3) Replacing background color: we haven’t thought about it. Good suggestion. I think reducing the window size can help reducing the amount of background color you see (keep in mind that although the web app runs fine in a browser, it is primarily designed for mobile platforms, so reducing the window size can better simulate a mobile platform).

(Question 4) there is no dedicated ‘go to homepage’ button. Generally you can use the ‘back’ button to navigate back, but I can see how if you have navigated among many other pages it can take many clicks to go back to the homepage. I will discuss with Samer about possibly adding a home button in the popup menu.

[Samer]

Just to add to question 4, the status bar acts as a home button most of the time.

[moreejt]

I have found that using the back button normally wipes out whatever I was doing and am training myself NOT to use it. For example, if I am editing a program on my desktop browser it uses some popup/lightbox feature for times. If I change my mind and dont want to edit the time there is no cancel button. I instinctively hit the back button and all my changes are erased.

> Just to add to question 4, the status bar acts as a home button most of the time.

That’s good to know. It’s also not intuitive. Perhaps adding a small home icon into the status bar would help.–though A home icon in the top bar makes more sense.

[moreejt]

there is also no way to cancel editing of a program since they are all edited inline on the page with all of the others. I’m guessing that I’m supposed to use the back button there?

And since we’re on the subject. I find the two menus confusing. Why are there two menus? The top menu on the home page is for editing opensprinkler for admin and the other is for managing the programs but multiple sections in one menu makes more sense to me. The top menu is where I am used to going to do everything in most other mobile apps these days.

[Ray]

I will let Samer answer the question about the two menus, but my recollection is that one menu would just appear too long on mobile phones. That’s why we split them into two different menus.

[Author]

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