Advancing to another zone during programmed watering
Not a big fan of the most recent mobile app dashboard, and cannot find this control within it:
Occasionally, during the course of a programmed watering, I want to advance to the next zone before the current zone has completed,. How can this be accomplished?
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During a running program you can go to the zones tab (the watering can icon), there is a stop button next to each zone (the stop button in the lower right will stop all watering). Here you can stop a running zone and move on to the next, or stop a pending zone. If you have cycles set up, it will only stop the current cycle of that zone. So, if zone 1 is running and is on cycle 2/3 when you press stop, it will move on to the next scheduled zone and it will still come back to zone 1 cycle 3/3.
This is for android app, not sure if IOS is the same. Should be though
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Hi, Rick
And thank you, JJ.
That's right - when a program or a manual watering activity is running you can go to ZONES screen (water can icon - on both iOS and Android RainMachine application - they are virtually the same) and swipe up to view all your other zones listed and you can:
1) STOP ALL watering by tapping on the upper right text button
2) Stop current watering zone and automatically the next one scheduled in the program will start
3) Stop a pending zone (the one that is waiting its turn)
4) Change the watering time on the fly for each zone, even the currently watering one, using the (-) and (+) buttons.
5) Tap on each zone name to open zone properties.
Hope this will help.
Thank you.
RainMachine Support -
Some more thoughts on the new button idea:
On the iOS app, there isn't much room for more text in the area where the currently watering Zone is shown. So perhaps the button could be labeled just "Start Next Zone" or just "Next Zone".
Also, a duplicate of this Next Zone button would be helpful in the Program section where a currently running Program is shown.
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Hi Ed
If I understand correctly you want to Start Next Zone when a zone is currently running?
You know you can't do that when is currently running - you want to automatically stop the one it is running and start the next available zone, right? Because when you want to start another zone when one is running all you can do is to add it in the Pending state that will wait for the currently watering zone to finish and then start.
If, let's say, RainMachine implement this "Start Next Zone" I assume that we will be asked to enter for how long do we want to water the next zone. In a running program if you want to start the next zone all you have to do is to STOP the zone is currently running, but this is only available for programs because is assumed that you already set the zone watering times when you created it.I don't see a reason other than "stop current running zone -> start next zone" to add a button. for any other reasons, we have the swipe up and down actions on our mobile phones and you can go to whatever zone you want.
Thanks.
Josh -
Josh, I guess the scenario I was thinking about is this.
Either the homeowner or an irrigation contractor wants to check each zone's rotary heads for movement, coverage and leaks. He wants to avoid having to start each zone individually and selecting an appropriate run time. He finds it easier to just start the main program running and walks to each zone area. From there, he would want to quickly advance to the next zone to check those heads, etc. when he is finished inspecting the current zone heads.
It seems like a Next Zone button, which would immediately stop the current zone from running and start the next zone, would be quite handy.
I didn't know until you mentioned it, and I'm sure contractors may not know, that stopping a zone running in a program does the same thing. I think a button, even if redundant, would be a good addition. It is more intuitive than knowing that one zone's stop button starts the next zone.
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