Actual Rain Issue?
I'm not sure it's showing actual rain. When I look at the log, it shows it receives the WU data but WU shows .19" rain (accurate) occurring around 1am, yet I don't see any reference to this in the log. I only use WU since here in CO, the NWS forecast isn't very relevant to the area.
One concern is this: After getting the data from WU, it shows
All available Data: [('2020-06-22 00:00:00', temp=23/1, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=41/1, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=0.28000000000000006/1, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=0/1, et0=None/0, pop=None/0, qpf=None/0, condition=None/0, pressure=101/1, dewPoint=9/1, userData=None, minTemp=15/0, maxTemp=32/0, minRH=22/0, maxRH=61/0, et0cal=None, et0final=None), ('2020-06-22 00:00:00', temp=None/0, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=None/0, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=None/0, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=None/0, et0=None/0, pop=None/0, qpf=0.03/1, condition=3/1, pressure=None/0, dewPoint=None/0, userData=None, minTemp=14/1, maxTemp=None/0, minRH=None/0, maxRH=64/1, et0cal=None, et0final=None)]
with the date from yesterday instead of today. (received 5:47am on 6/23)
This seems consistent with the dashboard that doesn't show the rain on the day it happens but it is there in history.
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks
Mike-
Nicholas,
With all due respect, that's an error in the algorithm that really affects many of us. Out here in the west, most people like to water early in the morning due to summer temps in the mid to upper 90's and high ET numbers due to often single digit humidity during the day. If we get an inch of rain between midnight and sunrise, we can end up wasting hundreds of gallons of water that morning. Basically we could be in the middle of a heavy rain that may have not been predicted and running a 133%+ watering program based on older data.
I realize that I could add a rain sensor to override the controller, but my fairly expensive weather station does a better job of that since it would catch a rain shortly after midnight that the rain sensor could miss. Plus why should I have to add hardware to get something that is readily available.
Thanks
Mike
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Has this been fixed? For the second time in the last few weeks, we had a significant amount of rain in the hours leading up to our scheduled watering at 7:00AM, but the programs were about to trigger with a 100% watering. I happened to snooze it a few minutes beforehand, so it didn't waste any water this time. However, I'm not always around (or awake) to do this, which is supposed to be one of the main reasons for using the RainMachine.
In both cases, WU reported the rain from my weather station and it appeared correctly in the Observed Rain. I don't have a rain sensor - I thought having a weather station should be enough.
Is there something else I need to do to get this to work correctly (such as setting the Rain Restriction for each program)?
Thanks
-- Andy
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Andy,
I haven't heard anything since and water is very expensive here. Fortunately, it doesn't rain very often overnight or early morning but I've had sprinklers running while it's raining in the morning. And we're considering a move to an area where that is more common so we may need to do something different.
Weather forecasts are a great tool to use for predicting watering but out here a 20% chance of rain could mean that 20% of the immediate area could get over an inch of rain and all around get zilch. It's beyond me why the program can't check the weather station, sitting 20 feet over my lawn, prior to watering; especially since it reaches out for an update prior to watering.
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I'll do that next time since the info has scrolled off from this one (where do I send screenshots?). I do remember that the QPF was .02 (not much rain was forecast for yesterday), but the Rain (Observed) was .18. That rain has fallen from about 4AM to 6AM. Even though I expected a weather update just before my 7AM watering, I forced an update about 6:30, which showed the above amount. I waited to see if the programmed amount would change, but it didn't and then about 30 seconds before 7AM, I set the snooze. The web home page and history now shows "Snooze set by user" for both programs for yesterday.
What's also frustrating is that I had hoped it would water today, but it didn't and is showing "water surplus" for all zones today. The graphic shows no precipitation forecast for today and .03 for tomorrow, and .04 for Sunday, so I don't understand that. At this time, there is NO watering forecast for the next 4 days! The last full watering was last Saturday, even though we only got about .30 inches of rain between Monday and Thursday of this week. I was fine with that for the most part, but yesterday it should NOT have watered and then today, or at least tomorrow, it should. It's been fairly cool here (partly cloudy with highs of about 60) and the ET has been averaging about .08 per day for the last week.
Hope this helps...
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First your actions like snooze, stopping/running programs manually won't affect water in soil from RainMachine point of view. So even if you snooze the machine will continue as if it watered because it can't determine why did you snooze. If you go to each zone in web interface, there is a Show Water Surplus button next to Field Capacity. That shows the amount of water in soil that RainMachine thinks it has.
I wouldn't snooze/stop watering even if sometimes might water in a day with rain forecasted or observed. RainMachine will balance in the next days reducing/increasing watering as needed.
We only apply observed rain after 24h (for yesterday). That's because we need a total of rain for the previous day and we deal by days as minimal unit. When taken over a longer period of time like a season/year this it will self balance.
P.S. Images can be attached here
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