Can I set a delay between programs?
I have some pipe hammering/banging in the transition between zones (the noise comes from the area of my backflow preventer). I know that I can set a "delay between zones" within a given program (and I have done that), but is there any way to set a delay between programs so that as one program finishes and the next starts, there is a delay between the last zone in one program and the first zone in the next program?
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Hi, John
A delay between programs is not a current feature of our RainMachine devices.
It's a suggestion and we will forward it to our developers and also we are waiting for other users to vote for it :)All watering activities are saved in a watering queue and the order of this queue is based on the start time of each activity.
As a workaround: all programs are showing their total watering time. Take that time and add it over your first program start time, then add as many minutes you need to delay the start of the next program and this way you can calculate the start time of the second program.
Example: Your first program total time is 55 minutes and the program is scheduled to water at 06:00 AM. You want 10 minutes delay until the second program will start.
So: 55+10 = 65 (1hour and 5 minutes) that you will add to the start time 06:00 AM -> 07:05 AM the start time of your second program.Hope this helps for now, John.
Thank you.RainMachine Support
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Thank you for responding. I don't think your suggestion will work for me. The ENTIRE point of using a RainMachine is that it varies the duration of watering based on the environment so it is NOT possible to predict how long the first program will go (or the second program or the third program), thus there is no way to schedule the second program to start 1 minute after the first program unless you give up the dynamic scheduling which (for me) is the entire point of the RainMachine in the first place. That is the problem here. There is no viable work-around unless you schedule things a long time apart, but then that has me watering at undesirable times on some days and requires doing a lot of manual schedule alignment which is a pain to maintain when you want to adjust things which again kind of defeats the purpose of getting a system that should be a lot simpler to maintain than my old one.
It seems like a goof on your part not to have a delay between programs. Since you went to the trouble of implementing a delay between zones, clearly it was recognized that there's a reason to have a pause between one zone and the next. But, did you really assume that people would never have two programs running back-to-back?
I don't really see this as a feature request that you should be taking votes for. I see it as a bug in the delay between zones feature where sometimes the delay I set for every program doesn't work and two zones run consecutively without a delay between them.
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Hi, John
Yes, you're right.
Apologies.
About the bug, you have with the "Delay between zones" option not being engaged every time one your programs. We will need you to upload your device diagnostics so our developers could have a look because the "Delay between zones" option is a fixed time applied automatically after each zone from the program, excluding the last one since the program finished.
Based on your scenario the "Delay between zones" program option should add the time to the last zone of the program, too. This is something we should look into and it is already sent to our developers.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, John.
RainMachine Support
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