Support for mixed indoor/outdoor zones

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Shrinks

June 03, 2018 04:17

I have recently built a greenhouse and have added 3 zones of drip irrigation inside it.  This is hanging off a Rainmachine controller that handles 12 more traditional exterior zones.

Well this all works fine... until winter comes along.  The design of the interface has several very useful features that are global to the entire unit.  For example, you might have watering restrictions that keep the unit from watering in December/January/February.  This makes sense for landscape, but not for a greenhouse.  It would be more useful if this restriction was applicable on a zone-by-zone basis.

Freeze protection is another example.  I live in the South and my pipes are below the freeze line, but I do not want to water exterior zones during freeze conditions.  Interior zones though are totally different.  Greenhouse zones will be below freezing and still need to be watered.

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  RainMachine Nicholas June 04, 2018 07:05

  I think that this would be best handled by a IFTTT rule as it might complicate our interface too much. Probably adding enabling/disabling programs from IFTTT would be a solution for your requirement. We will be adding it for our development list.

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  Shrinks June 04, 2018 13:57

  My first thought on the UI was just to have a checkbox in each zone similar to "use weather data".   In other words: "use freeze protection" and "use watering restrictions".  If you wanted to be fancy, you could have several named watering restrictions and have a selection box per zone as to what restrictions apply.

  I'm not terribly interested in IFTTT.  I worked 25 years in internet security.  Allowing external access to devices on my network is a risk I've seen exploited too many times.  Allowing external access from an app that has stored credentials ... no.  Just no.

  I had considered hacking something via the API... though the idea of disabling/enabling zones is cumbersome no matter how it is done.  You end up needing to do some ad hoc watering and have to re-enable the zone to do it.  (I know: that's not terrible, but just cumbersome.)

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  Shrinks June 04, 2018 14:18

  The more I think about it: having different sets of restrictions really makes sense to me.  I can imagine multiple ways where folks might want differing restrictions per zone.  For example: those people that live in areas with expansive soils might want to water the zones around their house foundation year round -- yet not water the grass during months that it is dormant.  I think there would be many situations where this might apply.

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  RainMachine Nicholas June 04, 2018 14:38

  We  understand your concern about external access, that's why our product philosophy is keep as much of functionality inside the unit. Most of the cases mentioned could be done by using a program start and end date and then grouping zones into programs by period. 

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  Shrinks June 04, 2018 19:48

  Wow, so... I had never noticed program start/end dates in there.  That does pretty much cover everything except freeze control.  I briefly played with the API a year or so ago but I don't remember much on it's capabilities.  I will look into hacking the rest with the API.

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