Weather adjustment with interval program – Weather averaged over interval period

[BinaryOS]

Hi Ray,

Would it be possible for weather adjustment to better cater for interval programs? I guess weather would be an average of the last x days (the interval period). We have high evaporation rates and watering from the top is not ideal. Our vegetable beds are wicking beds, they stay moist and do not require frequent watering. It is reportedly best to allow the water reservoir to “dry out” (the soil is still moist at this stage). The interval program would best suit. Problem is right now for example the weather adjustment for a 7 day interval watering is going to be based on the last days temperature not an average of weather over last 7 days.

If its too hard/complex or just too time consuming I may need to use daily program and greatly reduces the reservoir fill level. Best would be an interval program as it would allow higher filling level of reservoir and assist with health of the system.

Thanks for your time, Cheers.

[Ray]

It sounds like this would require customizing the weather algorithm. At the moment we haven’t provided the ability to directly customizing weather algorithm through the app. However, you can change the weather script url to point to your own server, where you can host a custom weather algorithm. To change the weather script url, you can use http://x.x.x.x/su (where x.x.x.x is your OpenSprinkler’s ip address). To customize the weather algorithm, as a starting point, you can look at the existing weather script at https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-Weather.

An alternative option is to run a script that periodically sends command to OpenSprinkler to update its watering percentage parameter. This is probably an easier route as there is no need to change the weather script url. Instead you will use a script that calculates the watering percentage the way you want, and send it to OpenSprinkler through one of the HTTP GET command (check OpenSprinkler API document for the corresponding command and parameters).

[BinaryOS]

Hi Ray,

Thanks. I might head down the script route. Can scan for “days0=0” programs and have it modify the watering time to suit.

Regards,
Stephen

[Phil Maron]

Hi Ray, I believe that it would be very beneficial to allow customisation of the algorithm since to me, when I set a program to run every 5 days (for example), I am more interested in the weather in that interval period rather than just the last day. To me it would be ideal if the weather just automatically used averages over the interval period as this seems more intuitive to me. I’m no great programmer so I think it might be a little beyond me to do my own customisation.

[Ray]

Hi Phil, thanks for your feedback. What you described makes a lot of sense (i.e. using average weather data from the past x days instead of just the past 1 day). We’ve also received other requests to customize the weather algorithm. I’m afraid this will take some time for us to think through before going ahead to implement it, partly because there are many parameters that can be customized but we want to balance the flexibility vs. the number of parameters exposed to users.

[william.giordano]

Would like to see this feature as well, any status on possible implementation?

[Anonymous]

Ray, a great product. I also think it makes a lot of sense to have the feature available with one click under the advanced options tab for each program. It could allow the average weather data to be calculated over the same period of time as the interval of the program. And this duration could be unique to each program.

(In terms of balancing flexibility with the number of parameters available to users, I think these two parameters are one and the same thing given that more parameters available to users results in more flexibility.)

Best Regards, Michael.

[Author]

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