Snooze not working properly after rain detected by connected rain sensor
My third season of having the 'RainMachine' and it is still a wonder how many working bugs there is, not visual, do not care about the million of those, but about watering and watering scheduling errors. I usually do not post any longer, but this one needs to be looked in to.
To start - it is the wettest year we have had. A lot of snow and the ground is just wet. Ponds, rivers everything is full. My systems first program takes effect on May 1st. This year I put in a 'Snooze Delay' for 21 days. A few days later I let the dog out and the system was 'On' and watering. I thought I put in the incorrect value and set it again, this time for 17 days. A few day later again, the system was watering when I let the dog out. I knew this time I had set it properly. Tried again,again a week later it watered. What the heck.
The next time I made notes and took screen shots of the system when set. I then took a screen shot when the rain sensor tripped stating it detected rain. I watched carefully every few hours, for the next few days, then bingo. When the rain sensor no longer detects rain, it zero's out the snooze and sets up a different snooze time to midnight that day. This is what I have programmed in for the rain sensor - that when it no longer detects rain to 'snooze until midnight'
Set a snooze for 21 days - day 2 it rains - day 3 the sensor dries out - day 4 it waters - wow.
Yes - it took me the whole month to look at this and find out why - not top on my list. I purchased this device so I would not have to look at it. During the last two seasons I have spent more time with it than I have with my significant other.
Screen shots are made small - there is a 93% savings of watering and not 100% as it watered some on the 24th before I could shut it off.
First screen shot from the 27th - you can see that the snooze will stop both the 28th and 30th - a rain sensor can not predict in advance. It had rained out over an inch on the 27th.
Second screen shot - the 29th - you can see it did not water on the 28th, as the sensor was still wet. But on the 29th, the day of this shot, only the snooze is active and now the 30th it will water, the sensor is no longer active as stating to delay because of rain.
For a fix - I have disabled the rain sensor while I set the snooze delay for another week. Yes - it wants to water as it can not take soil moister yet, which is still very damp. No need to water yet this year and no 'Off' button on the unit - I had thought the snooze would work, guess again. Maybe I should put that switch override in series with the sensor as I had with the old system.
Third shot I will show - it shows the time left on snooze after the rain sensor dries out on the 29th - if you look at the time stamps of the pictures, it all makes sense. 05:22 is the time left until midnight.
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Hy, Jeff
Yes. We acknowledge this issue and it is a wrong implementation.
The Rain Sensor snooze option it triggers the device main Snooze feature and it overrides it.
It shouldn't do that if the main Snooze time is bigger than the one selected under the Rain Sensor restriction options.
We will have to fix that.
Thank you for your report and we're sorry about this caused you troubles.
Thank you for your understanding, Jeff
PS - out of topic: to view the screenshots larger you have to right click on the image and choose "Open image in a New Tab"Thank you,
RainMachine Support
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