HD-12 says it's watering but it's not
HD-12 was installed in August 2017 and has been working reasonably well since then. Daily programs fired reliably and firing off zones manually always worked without an issue. That all changed last week. The unit now has not watered in several days and when I manually water a zone, the app says the zone is watering and counts down the timer set in manual mode like everything is fine. However, the zone is not activated (easy to see this) and the water monitoring system (Flume, which I can easily confirm is working properly) says that there is no water flowing. Last night, Hd-12 shows 100% daily watering but Flume shows no water last night from 1:00AM-~2:30AM (when the daily program normally runs)
Environment:
Phone: iPhone XR running iOS 13.3.1
RainMachine Firmware: 4.0.1129 (latest version according to RM website)
iOS app: 4.6.106
Active Zones: 10 (none currently functional)
NOAA weather: active - website reports "Success" for this and the physical unit says
I've tried
1) running multiple zones manually but get the same results - app says it's working but no water is delivered and Flume confirms this
2) running the whole daily program - app says it's working but no water is delivered and Flume confirms this
3) checked that no zones are paused - all show as active and allow me to run them (at least as far as the RM app is concerned) but with same results (no water, no HD-12 app errors). Website also confirms that all zones are active ("no current active restrictions")
4) did soft reboot of iphone app
5) did hard reboot of iphone
6) checked website version of app and watering history there shows watering at near 100% of scheduled each night for the last 7 nights
7) checked rainmachine forum but found no one having similar problems
8) contacted RM support with issue (ticket# 25980) 9:24AM 4/19 but no response so far (it was just 24 hours ago and RM support is likely covid compromised so I'm hoping to find some answers here while waiting on RM support)
BTW, the RM website (https://my.rainmachine.com/web-ui/) is great for seeing everything at a glance.
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Official comment
Hello, If you have any issues with your RainMachine controller, pleases contact us through ZenDesk using the link below or emailing us at help@rainmachine.com and we'll be happy to help.
https://www.rainmachine.com/help.html
Best Regards,
Rolando
RainMachine Support Team
See if your question has been asked before: https://support.rainmachine.com/hc/en-us
Contact us https://www.rainmachine.com/help.htmlComment actions -
Steve,
The terminal block that controls the power being applied to the zones is a fairly robust piece of equipment. It is hard for it to fail without a serious feedback passing through it. It is our experience that it is normally the common wire in symptoms like this. That being said it isn't impossible for it to be the machines fault so we should test it. If you have a multi meter that is the easiest way to test this theory. You can run a zone and test the voltage coming out to make sure the machine is supplying enough power. I find continuity tests to be the best for this type of problem. You would set the meter to the lowest resistance and then connect the zone one wire to the red lead and the common wire to the black lead. If you get a resistance there is a complete circuit and the wiring is ok but if you don't get a resistance there is a break in the line and that is why the zones aren't coming on. We responded to your ticket this morning but we didn't yesterday because we were closed. We are open 6 days a week and Sunday is the only day we are closed. If the steps I described here and in the ticket don't work for you or you are unable to test the wiring let us know in your ticket and we can take steps to setup a repair of the unit for you. I hope this helps you and I look forward to getting you back onine.
Jarrod S.
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I have a very similar (or perhaps exactly the same) issue as what was reported by the original poster. I also have the HD-12 which worked flawlessly for about 4 months. One day I suddenly noticed the lawn was not getting watered. Here is what I've tried while troubleshooting after noticing the issue:
1) I tried to run manual zones and found that unit would not power on any of the zones.
2) I did a factory reset and reloaded firmware updates. This did not fix the issue.
3) I used my multi-meter to check continuity between common and the positive zone wires and found resistance as expected.
4) I checked for voltage between the common terminal post and the positive post for each zone I was manually turning on. There was no voltage. This seems to be the problem.
While the display on the unit, WiFi connection, and phone app are all working as they always have, the unit's hardware/circuitry is not allowing voltage/power to pass through to energize the active zone. Is there an input power fuse on the circuit board that may be blown that I could check and replace?
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I'm also having the same problem. Took a few cycles to notice, as my program runs in the night, but everything appears to be 100% normal and working except that the lawn isn't actually being watered. Trying to manually do it through the app or the device itself, everything looks normal, but no sprinkler activity at all. When I go out to the valves and manually activate a zone, it works fine, so it's not a water issue. It's like the HD-12 has just blown an internal fuse or otherwise decided not to turn on zones anymore (while reporting that they are active).
Any help would be appreciated!
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This happened to me as well. I was using the Finish By Sunrise offset feature. There is a major bug in this feature that occasionally causes this. It seems that if the runtime is long (at least on mine) this would happen. You can see it if you have the Watering History Log emailed to you, it will show no watering when the phone app says it did water.
I removed the Finish By Sunrise offset and just did the standard fixed start time and everything works fine.
This bug has been around since the Finish By Sunrise feature was introduced so needless to say I am very disappointed in the length of time that it is taking for this to be fixed. Actually I would like to see a more simple approach where we can choose a Finish By a Time so that watering can be completed prior to shower time which is not based on Sunrise. I have suggested this feature back in Oct of last year and so far all that I have see is that they are "Gathering Feedback" on it.
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I obviously haven't been messing with the wiring since it was installed, and it appears solidly connected to the machine (and wire nuts look good on the master valve end as well). It worked two weeks ago, so I'm doubting that wiring damage occurred. Just seems that the HD-12 isn't outputting the power. For a machine I've only used 3 seasons, that would be a fairly disappointing (and expensive) result. Have a ticket in, hopefully can find the root cause and maybe they can help me out...
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After doing checks with customer support, same conclusion: no voltage between C wire and output zone terminals when zone is activated. Just stopped outputting power. Device is 3 years old, with light use in the northeast. Not sure what repair/RMA cost is going to be, but hopefully not bad or I'm going to have a hard time justifying it over just putting the old manual RainBird controller that worked since they built my house 15 years ago...
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Just a thought - do you guys have 2 white common wires, one connected to each of the 2 common terminals? If so, is the resistance/voltage test result the same for both wires?
And, of course, be sure to check whether a bare section of a common wire is touching/shorting one of the other terminals or zone wires inside the HD-12.
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Just the one common wire hooked up on mine. No wires touching, nice clean install and nothing physically touched/changed in the 3 years it's been installed. Just acting like it blew some sort of internal fuse, and no longer outputting power when activated. Input power looks good. Everything worked two weeks ago, I was using the app and starting/stopping zones so I could troubleshoot and replace a few cracked sprinkler heads in the system. Program runs at like 2am, so took a while to notice that the auto program wasn't resulting in the water that the system said it was spraying on the lawn. Mostly noticable because a little sprinkler head that doesn't always go down without me giving it a little tap was always down, and I didn't see the remnants of the spray pattern that JUST touches the driveway in a couple spots in the morning...
Replacement unit comes today, hopefully I can swap it out and I'll be right back in business!
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My HD-12 suddenly stopped watering although all programs are correct. I use two programs that run one after the other. All zones are programmed correctly, but it doesn't turn on the water control valves.
I can water every zone manually using my phone app, so i know there isn't any wiring problem or bad sprinkler control valves.
Have spent hours for days checking and rechecking every thing on the device and in my phone app.
It is maddening that i cant figure out what in wrong.
Have had the HD-12 for 15 years with no problems..
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