Hi Angelo,
After a few years of functioning well, some issue has popped up with my watering plan. I have one pump and a bunch of valves which open one by one on a increasing delay of 20 seconds per valve.
The plan is set to start at 20h or 21h (I have been playing around a bit to try and debug this issue). During winter I don't pay too much attention to the system (because it's too cold to grow anything in the greenhouse), so I'm not really sure when this has started. Since this spring I noticed the pump is starting with a random delay of 10-13 minutes. Also the valves don't open at their set times but also have a similar, but random delay. The problem is now the pump will be working sometimes with no valves opened, pushing the limits of my cheap pipe system😂
Please, if you have some time, can you check this log? The plan itself seems fine: 20:00:00 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO WateringPlan Startpump evaluation: water1
20:00:00 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO WateringPlan Startpump evaluation: pump1
20:00:00 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO execute water pump check 2022-05-13 20:00:00
20:00:00 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO execute water pump check 2022-05-13 20:00:00
20:00:20 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO WateringPlan Startpump evaluation: water2
20:00:20 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO execute water pump check 2022-05-13 20:00:20
20:00:40 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO WateringPlan Startpump evaluation: water3
20:00:40 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO execute water pump check 2022-05-13 20:00:40
20:01:00 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO WateringPlan Startpump evaluation: water6
20:01:00 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO execute water pump check 2022-05-13 20:01:00
20:01:06 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Read sensor data: TimeTrigger - 2022-05-13 20:01:06
20:01:06 hydrosys4.hardwaremod - INFO Sensor TimeTrigger reading: 0.00
20:01:11 hydrosys4.automationmod - INFO Starting Automation Evaluation, Sensor: TimeTrigger
20:01:11 hydrosys4.autowateringmod - INFO Starting Autowatering Evaluation
20:01:20 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO WateringPlan Startpump evaluation: water7
20:01:20 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO execute water pump check 2022-05-13 20:01:20
20:01:38 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Read sensor data: tempsensor1 - 2022-05-13 20:01:38
20:01:39 hydrosys4.hardwaremod - INFO Sensor tempsensor1 reading: 21.20
20:01:40 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO WateringPlan Startpump evaluation: water5
20:01:40 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO WateringPlan Startpump evaluation: water4 20:01:40 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO execute water pump check 2022-05-13 20:01:40
20:01:40 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO execute water pump check 2022-05-13 20:01:40
So everything as planned, pump running for 100s, valves opening and closing per 20 seconds, last 2 valves open just to release occasional pressure from the pipes.
In this case, the pump actually started at 20:11:48. But as you can see, pretty random for all valves/pump 20:10:34 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Pulse time for sec = 20
20:11:48 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Pulse time for sec = 100
20:13:43 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Pulse time for sec = 20
20:13:54 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Pulse time for sec = 20
20:14:57 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Pulse time for sec = 20
20:14:49 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Pulse time for sec = 20
20:14:57 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Pulse time for sec = 20
20:14:57 hydrosys4.selectedplanmod - INFO Pulse time for sec = 20
I have attached the full log. The system is not connected to the internet. Do you have any clue?
Hi Angelo, Just a quick heads-up: changing the sensor intervals didn't really fix the issue, the delay has not improved. However, with the PowerPin set-up I have a workaround that solves my issue, so thanks! Will keep you updated if I ever find the cause of the delay.
Hi, thanks for checking! Interesting approach with the PowerPin, I have made this change and indeed this already fixes my worries about having the pump working without valves opened. In fact I have a raspberry pi 3B+. I made changes now to the sensor intervals and will keep you posted on the effects.
I'm made a double check with my system, which is currently running on 3.40e. I notice a delay of few seconds between the schedule and actual activation, but it was due to the reading cycle of the several sensors in my setup. Your case with delay of minutes is quite interesting. Actually I cant see from the log any reason causing the delay. (unless you set something on the FertilizerPlan).
Anyway if the problem is to activate the pump when the valve is open, there is a specific function in the SW to do it. You can set the pump pin number in the PowerPin field of the valves, in this way you don't need to care much about the delay.
I suppose you are using the raspberry PI zero. In such case you can try to increase the reading interval of some of the sensors to few minutes (>5) and use different reading intervals for different sensors, and see if the valve activation delay gets better.
Hey! I'm on release 3.21. Everything is set to 1 drop.
Hi there, I'll try to have a look. By the way, what is the SW release? Lately I made a change in the delay algorithm, which now is multiplied by the number of drops.