Choice to enable Master Valve per zone
Gathering Feedback
I've seen a couple posts close to this but I have a desire to have some of the zones operate without engaging the Master Valve. I've seen other want to be able to control the Master Valve separately as well.
I have a 1500g cistern that I use to collect rainwater and is supplemented with pumping from our creek or from the waterline we have run from the well. For each of these sources I'd like to be able to open the valves or run the pump for say 4hrs on 2 hrs off throughout the day. This would allow for recovery of both water sources without me having to manually visit my pump house to turn these on or off.
Even for the time being - is there a way to control a zone without the master valve engaging through the API or via SSH?
- Sam
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I would also welcome this functionality to click a checkbox for every channel.
All outputs of my HD16 lead to 24V relays. So one could switch a lighting or a fountain pump for the pond with not currently used channels of the RM. This could make additional remote controls or timers unnecessary. Thank you!
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This feature would be great, but I think the more general solution includes:
1) allow more that 1 circuit to run at a time (as implied by the ability to have a master and a separate zone, but make it arbitrary). This may have special constraints multiple valves draw too much water (constrained by sum of zone flows).
2) allow any zone to trigger a second zone (to run a pump, master, valve, drain, etc). This may be constrained to never allow 3 zones if power is limited (if zones cascade to 3 valves, etc). This may also fall under the constraint of multiple circuit flow limit as noted in 1) above. This may imply a "master" flow rate is counted in a special way sinces it doesn't add to the flow through sub zones.
This could be setup as allowing 0 to 3 zones on a controller to be "master" for different purposes. That would reduce the bit-depth for each zone to associate with another simultaneous zone. I don't think the bit savings help, so the 2 points above seem the most general.
An alternative would be selling accessories or sharing information to provide this capability external to the controller. A simple ebay 24vac dpdt (double pull double throw) relay for $3 from ebay can allow 1 output to connect a signal and 24vac power supply to 2 devices without any interference with the rain machine or enabling power to a master valve. There may be better variations/ideas for features or external accessories, so followups may help many with similar needs.
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This is one of the first things I asked for when I purchased the HD-16 back in 2015. I only use a master valve for the zones in my garden because those valve boxes are in back, connected by a poly pipe from the main valve banks in front of the house. I did not want that poly pipe under constant full pressure the entire watering season. However, not being able to assign which zones need the master valve opened means the master valve sits on for no reason for all of the hours that my 6 lawn zones and other drip zones connected upstream from the master are watering (which is unnecessary wear on the master's solenoid, pressure on the pipe).
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It sucks neither Rachio nor Rainmaker will give us this functionality... Rainbird & KRain do but lack some of the smart features found in Rainmachine.
The scenario i am trying to achieve activating the master/ pump would be simple if assigned to the program (not the zone). This feature would help many of the users who are asking in your forums. Many of which have been asking for years.Example Schedule:
Program A - Mon,Wed,Fri 6am water zones 1-8 for 10 minutes, no pump/master activeProgram B - Fri 4pm water zones 1-8, activate pump/master ( in my case this would activate the injection system, but for many others it could be their well when using multiple water sources)
Program C- Fri 5pm water zones 1-8, no pump/master active
So programmatically you are simply modifying your code to allow the pump/master as an option when setting up a program. Any zones within the program would run in sequential order as normal. Thus no overload 1 master + 1 Zone at a time when active.
Make sense?
Again this should be no more than a few lines of code to achieve and would satisfy the needs of all your customers with injection systems or with multiple water sources. In turn making your controller even more desirable to consumers like myself who desire the best products available. So what do you say? Make a few code changes and publish an update in a few days… and just like that many happy customers.
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It would be much much more then a few lines of code, but regardless lets get some more focus on this topic by up-voting it by everyone.
The developers are always busy with improvements, but they are dictated by the communities posts here and the amount of attention they get. It also makes of difference on how long the upgrade/development will take. Thanks for your continued patience.Brandon
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Brandon- this is a ridiculous way to decide what enhancements to make. Votes on this site? 99 percent of owners don't even know this forum exist, yet you can bet that many of them have the same issue. The problem is basic. The fix is basic. We're not trying to shoot off a rocket to the moon-we just want control of the zones/pump.
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Yes, you are 100% correct! Look back through the forum posts Rainmachine owners have been asking for such a feature for years. Brandon says it’s more than a few lines of code. Maybe it is maybe it isn’t. They are already enabling and disabling zone one on the controller programmatically when setting it up. They simply need to add a global function to enable/disable within program scheduling. It really isn’t that hard.
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As far I know, it is already...https://support.rainmachine.com/hc/en-us/articles/228620647-RainMachine-Open-Source-
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I think this feature would kill competition because would take rainmachine to the next level. It would not only be an irrigation controller but a a home automation system for the garden. I only use 6 zones along with the master valve (pump relay) and would love to use the other zones for lightning and other things but the always mandatory pump relay is killing rainmachine full potential
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My father bought a RainMachine Pro-16. It's a great product, especially because it's cloud independend and has a REST API. My father uses two different types of water supplies for his irrigation system:
1. a water supply from the water company for a reverse osmosis system
2. a pump with the MASTERVALVE for some sprinklers
So everytime when the reverse osmosis system is used, the mastervalve is opened although this is not needed. Instead the mastervalve should only be opened when the sprinkler valves are opened. So it would be a great feature when it's possible to enable the master valve per zone.
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I also need the ability to use the master valve with some zones but not others. I've been turning the master valve on for every zone (only needed for 2) and now I have a very messy leak under my concrete driveway. This might not have happened if I had not had the master valve on for most of the zones where it was not used.
Users have been asking for this for years. When will it be implemented? I don't buy the notion that this will confuse users. All you need is a setting to either enable the master valve for all zones (default) or require it to be programmed individually for all zones. That way there is no change for those who want to use the current master valve behavior, and those of us that want control by zone will be quite happy to deal with the extra (minor) complexity since we actually need this functionality.
I don't see why this is such a big deal. Rain Machine is a great product, but the team often seems unresponsive to real world customer needs.
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Please make this happen. I can't believe that after 3 years this basic option still isn't implemented. I just move from OpenSprinkler which I loved and supported this fully, to what I believe is a much better product. It's crazy to think I need to open a master valve everytime I do something when it's not needed.
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Thomas,
for each channel that needs the master valve, I have wired a relay in parralel with the zone's solenoid valve to the rainmachine output. I have 3 zones that require the master valve, which means 3 relays.
Then I wired 24v through the N.O contacts of the relays to the master valve. So if any one of the 3 zones are activated, that zone's relay will also activate the master solenoid valve.
Hope that makes sense.
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When I started advocating for software control of master valve per zone, I considered an alternative like you describe above. I also considered using a 24VDC relay with bridge rectifiers connected to each zone that would control external power to the master valve. I haven't tried, but recognize challenges in variations of this setup. Signals from each zone could prevent or enable the power to the master valve with a normal-connected or normal-off relay. A bridge rectified voltage from any channel could power a 24VDC relay. Lower voltage and power circuits could control the power to the master valve. Variations may be more compact and cheaper to allow several channels to control a desired relay and master valve. There needs to be a little luck or understanding of power limitations, relay characteristics, diodes etc to make this work with minimal cost, good reliability, and compact add-ons. Utilizing software enhancements seems more optimal, but I haven't dug into the necessary coding to add the feature. Interest and volunteer effort are valuable here. Perhaps a more detailed software development task plan or a more detailed hardware parts list will help?
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My RainMachine is going back to Amazon for lack of this feature. I've got 9 zones, 5 in front and 4 in back. The 5 in front are directly connected to city water with no master valve. The 4 in back get their water from an irrigation pump that draws from a lake and the MV output operates a solid state relay to run the pump when these zones are active.
I had assumed that this controller was advanced enough to replace my 30 year old RainBird controller that is programmed with a knob ... I was wrong. The RainBird allows each zone to require (or not require) the master valve / pump output. Clearly that's what I need. I'm not interested in wiring up a bunch of external relays to make something happen that a 30 year old controller will do out of the box. I went over to the Rachio forum and they also can't do this. Have the product managers never examined their competitors products ... even the old ones?
I can see from this thread that people have been asking for this for years and there are no responses from RainMachine. So back it goes as it's clearly not likely to ever happen.
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