What crazy things are you doing with HA?
- Thread starter MichaelT
- Start date
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
Does that dial turn with the cycle?
My irrigation system software has 96 zones. Each zone has two timers for watering different times of the day and each timer has its own watering duration. For each zone I have a settable rain cutoff amount. This is active for today and yesterday. (I gather rain info from my Davis weather system.)
I have a Omega Engineering pulse water meter that provides 75 pulses per gallon. So, on each zone I have a user selectable expected water flow amount with a settable tolerance range. (We use a lot of micro water heads which have a tendency to change flow rates.) If a zone fails to water within the proper range, my system will send me an email alert.
I record the times each valve is activated and deactivated.
Each zone can be set for automatic watering or can be disabled.
I also have a low temperature cutoff so the system won't come on when the outside temperature is too low.
I have a Omega Engineering pulse water meter that provides 75 pulses per gallon. So, on each zone I have a user selectable expected water flow amount with a settable tolerance range. (We use a lot of micro water heads which have a tendency to change flow rates.) If a zone fails to water within the proper range, my system will send me an email alert.
I record the times each valve is activated and deactivated.
Each zone can be set for automatic watering or can be disabled.
I also have a low temperature cutoff so the system won't come on when the outside temperature is too low.
Paul,
Interesting irrigation system. Would you describe more detail? What hardware and software are you using? I sm wanting to do something similar and have about half that many zones. One thing I would like is to do is control zones from cell for testing - would save a lot of steps.
Interesting irrigation system. Would you describe more detail? What hardware and software are you using? I sm wanting to do something similar and have about half that many zones. One thing I would like is to do is control zones from cell for testing - would save a lot of steps.
Jim,
I use National Instruments LabVIEW for my software. It allows a non programmer like me to actually write complex code. lol
I use a DIO board to switch the relays on a couple of CIO-ERB48 (48 - 2 amp relay) boards.
I have several (currently 10) ancient (in computer age terms) Hewlett Packard hx-4700 wireless PDAs that I use for HA control and can control each zone from near the zone. This is especially useful when I want to check out the watering capability of each individual zone. (We use micro watering heads which don't always keep the same flow rate.)
Most irrigation systems are the "water the grass" type. To me, this is not the challenge I want to solve. My wife loves flowers so any one particular area may have three or four different zones. For example, it may have one zone for watering hanging plants (may need to water these a couple of times a day), a second zone could be ferns and hostas (which are shady plants and require MUCH less water - maybe two or three times a week), and a third zone could be perennials which may need water every other day. So, even though all these plants reside in close proximity, they each have different watering requirements. And since we water through the micro head technique, the water is only applied to the base of each plant.
Another thing that I wrote was a "Water Multiple Zones with One Button" idea. In my main program, I can select any or all zones from a list of the 96 zones. In the event the weather is extraordinarily hot and/or dry (like we've had this summer) I can choose a button on the PDA called "Force All Zones On" and it will sequentially step through the selected zones and irrigates based on the main program preset time interval for that zone.
I use National Instruments LabVIEW for my software. It allows a non programmer like me to actually write complex code. lol
I use a DIO board to switch the relays on a couple of CIO-ERB48 (48 - 2 amp relay) boards.
I have several (currently 10) ancient (in computer age terms) Hewlett Packard hx-4700 wireless PDAs that I use for HA control and can control each zone from near the zone. This is especially useful when I want to check out the watering capability of each individual zone. (We use micro watering heads which don't always keep the same flow rate.)
Most irrigation systems are the "water the grass" type. To me, this is not the challenge I want to solve. My wife loves flowers so any one particular area may have three or four different zones. For example, it may have one zone for watering hanging plants (may need to water these a couple of times a day), a second zone could be ferns and hostas (which are shady plants and require MUCH less water - maybe two or three times a week), and a third zone could be perennials which may need water every other day. So, even though all these plants reside in close proximity, they each have different watering requirements. And since we water through the micro head technique, the water is only applied to the base of each plant.
Another thing that I wrote was a "Water Multiple Zones with One Button" idea. In my main program, I can select any or all zones from a list of the 96 zones. In the event the weather is extraordinarily hot and/or dry (like we've had this summer) I can choose a button on the PDA called "Force All Zones On" and it will sequentially step through the selected zones and irrigates based on the main program preset time interval for that zone.
drozwood90
Senior Member
HOLY S417! 96 zones! I don't think I could come up with 12, let alone 96!
I've almost finished my writeup on my PAWS system. If I can figure out how to make a Google DOC totally public, I'll post a link. It's a 4 zone portable watering system.
--Dan
I've almost finished my writeup on my PAWS system. If I can figure out how to make a Google DOC totally public, I'll post a link. It's a 4 zone portable watering system.
--Dan