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HD-16 Fails to Run Expected Program Yesterday Morning

Atkinsongf

July 16, 2021 02:54

Latest software 4.0.1135 has been installed since it was a BETA version.

All zones work fine when run manually, so no electrical issues.

This issue has occurred a number of times over the last several years, presumably since I use the "Finish Relative to Sunrise" function. Mine is set to finish 60 minutes AFTER sunrise on the mornings for which it runs. Maximum program run time is 375 minutes, so it should always start after midnight, sunrise here is never earlier than about 6:15 AM.

I have reported this issue multiple times over the years, as have others experiencing it. The last two software updates supposedly have corrected it, but not in my case.

Please address, as I really do need reliable watering. Yesterday morning was supposed to be a 97% water run for this program. When this occurs there is no mention on the watering history page that the program was to run, and was stopped due to water surplus or minimum watering time.

Please get to the bottom of this issue!!!

Thanks

Galen Atkinson

Comments

23 comments

RainMachine Nicholas July 27, 2021 16:02

Thanks for report, we are looking into this. The issue seems to happen around summer solstice but our simulations couldn't find a bug, so it's related to watering duration and some set offset. We are gathering data and looking to release a fix.

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Atkinsongf July 29, 2021 22:27

The summer solstice is coincidental, I believe. But it would be the time when longer watering cycles and earlier sun rise times collide, however, the issue with needing to start prior to midnight the day before in order to finish at the prescribed time relative to sunrise is not a factor in my case, as the length of the watering cycle is not long enough to require the start time that early, even in the earliest sunrise case.

I believe that there is a corner case where the start time could occur before the rainmachine computes that it should have started, and thus the watering cycle gets skipped. My rainmachine collects weather data 4 times a day, around 1:20 AM and 6, 12, and 18 hours later. If per chance the rainmachine watering cycle was scheduled to start at 1:30 AM, but the 1:20 AM weather data update indicated that it should have started at 1:15 AM, what would the rainmachine do about that watering cycle?

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Atkinsongf August 11, 2021 14:01

Again this morning my rainmachine did not start its watering cycle.

Details:

1) 375 minute long program. Rainmachine calculated the need to run a 92% cycle.

2) Programmed to finish 60 minutes after sunrise.

3) Sunrise is about 6:45 AM Central time now.

4) If my math is correct, that should yield an approximate 345 minute run, started about 2 AM.

See log details attached below. I wonder about the entry at 2021-08-11 02:57:43,215 which I bold faced below stating that the Program 1 will start in 540 seconds, yet that is approximately one hour later than it should be. Clearly the machine is confused about the start time.

Let me know what to do, or what other information you need.

Galen

2021-08-10 21:02:24,896 - INFO  - wunderground-parser:87 - WUnderground: station data retrieved for KTXBURLE55
2021-08-10 21:02:24,898 - INFO  - wunderground-parser:95 - WUnderground: forecast data retrieved.
2021-08-10 21:02:25,607 - INFO  - noaa-parser:115 - Fetching Hourly data from https://noaa.rainmachine.com/xml/sample_products/browser_interface/ndfdXMLclient.php
2021-08-10 21:02:26,920 - INFO  - noaa-parser:119 - Fetching Daily data from https://noaa.rainmachine.com/xml/sample_products/browser_interface/ndfdBrowserClientByDay.php 
2021-08-10 21:02:33,664 - INFO  - rmMixer:123 - *** DATA IN THE PAST: 2021-08-09 00:00:00
2021-08-10 21:02:33,667 - INFO  - rmMixer:124 - *** Received data: ('2021-08-09 00:00:00', temp=30/1, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=76/1, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=1.3899999999999999/1, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=0/1, et0=None/0, pop=None/0, qpf=None/0, condition=None/0, pressure=101.52/1, dewPoint=25/1, userData=None, minTemp=25/0, maxTemp=36/0, minRH=55/0, maxRH=98/0, et0cal=None, et0final=None)
2021-08-10 21:02:33,678 - INFO  - rmMixer:131 - *** Added Existing data: '2021-08-09 00:00:00', temp=30.210000000000001/1, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=73.799999999999997/1, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=0.51500000000000001/1, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=0/1, et0=None/0, pop=0/1, qpf=0/1, condition=14/1, pressure=101.51000000000001/1, dewPoint=24.620000000000001/1, userData=None, minTemp=24.850000000000001/1, maxTemp=35.979999999999997/1, minRH=53.390000000000001/1, maxRH=95.560000000000002/1, et0cal=5.3760792272118536, et0final=5.3799999999999999
2021-08-10 21:02:33,682 - INFO  - rmMixer:132 - *** All available Data: [('2021-08-09 00:00:00', temp=30/1, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=76/1, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=1.3899999999999999/1, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=0/1, et0=None/0, pop=None/0, qpf=None/0, condition=None/0, pressure=101.52/1, dewPoint=25/1, userData=None, minTemp=25/0, maxTemp=36/0, minRH=55/0, maxRH=98/0, et0cal=None, et0final=None), ('2021-08-09 00:00:00', temp=30.210000000000001/1, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=73.799999999999997/1, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=0.51500000000000001/1, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=0/1, et0=None/0, pop=0/1, qpf=0/1, condition=14/1, pressure=101.51000000000001/1, dewPoint=24.620000000000001/1, userData=None, minTemp=24.850000000000001/1, maxTemp=35.979999999999997/1, minRH=53.390000000000001/1, maxRH=95.560000000000002/1, et0cal=5.3760792272118536, et0final=5.3799999999999999)]
2021-08-10 21:02:34,053 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 1 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,060 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 2 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,068 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 3 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,078 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 4 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,087 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 5 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,096 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 6 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,105 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 7 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,114 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 8 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,124 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 9 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,133 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 10 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,142 - INFO  - rmSimulator:614 - * Correction: Zone 11 et0Delta=-0.10, qpfDelta=-0.07, rain=0, realPrecip=0.00, qpfUsedLimited=0.07
2021-08-10 21:02:34,283 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=16.4539877679 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:34,503 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=16.3801444978 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:34,700 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=16.3065468395 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:34,914 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=4: AW to next day tmachine=79.7471621727 waterNeeded=1.67618965228 minRuntime=120
2021-08-10 21:02:34,953 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=11: AW to next day tmachine=541.222810316 waterNeeded=3.79195133516 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:35,110 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=15.3765625129 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:35,313 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=14.4902239339 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:35,512 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=13.6241884674 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:35,722 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=13.892976421 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:36,078 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=15.6306548301 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:36,299 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=15.9994364614 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:02:36,498 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=14.3742462209 minRuntime=600
2021-08-10 21:27:36,813 - INFO  - rmThreadWatcher:438 - **  Automatic Update: Starting update check as interval to next watering program is bigger than 3600
2021-08-10 21:27:37,256 - INFO  - rmMainManager:513 - ** Automatic Update: No updates available
2021-08-11 02:57:43,215 - INFO  - rmParserManager:509 - ** Forcing parsers run because program 1 will start in 540 seconds
2021-08-11 02:57:44,179 - INFO  - wunderground-parser:87 - WUnderground: station data retrieved for KTXBURLE55
2021-08-11 02:57:44,182 - INFO  - wunderground-parser:95 - WUnderground: forecast data retrieved.
2021-08-11 02:57:44,895 - INFO  - noaa-parser:115 - Fetching Hourly data from https://noaa.rainmachine.com/xml/sample_products/browser_interface/ndfdXMLclient.php
2021-08-11 02:57:45,952 - INFO  - noaa-parser:370 - probability-of-precipitation 12 hour: reject date 2021-08-10 19:00:00 as it's in the past
2021-08-11 02:57:46,058 - INFO  - noaa-parser:119 - Fetching Daily data from https://noaa.rainmachine.com/xml/sample_products/browser_interface/ndfdBrowserClientByDay.php 
2021-08-11 02:57:51,225 - INFO  - rmMixer:123 - *** DATA IN THE PAST: 2021-08-10 00:00:00
2021-08-11 02:57:51,228 - INFO  - rmMixer:124 - *** Received data: ('2021-08-10 00:00:00', temp=30/1, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=75/1, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=1.3899999999999999/1, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=0/1, et0=None/0, pop=None/0, qpf=0/1, condition=None/0, pressure=101.78/1, dewPoint=24/1, userData=None, minTemp=23/0, maxTemp=36/0, minRH=53/0, maxRH=98/0, et0cal=None, et0final=None)
2021-08-11 02:57:51,240 - INFO  - rmMixer:131 - *** Added Existing data: '2021-08-10 00:00:00', temp=31.260000000000002/1, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=57.549999999999997/1, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=3.1600000000000001/1, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=0/1, et0=None/0, pop=0/1, qpf=0/1, condition=23/1, pressure=101.5/1, dewPoint=21.149999999999999/1, userData=None, minTemp=24.050000000000001/1, maxTemp=36.189999999999998/1, minRH=38.710000000000001/1, maxRH=77.980000000000004/1, et0cal=6.3670538442991429, et0final=6.3700000000000001
2021-08-11 02:57:51,243 - INFO  - rmMixer:132 - *** All available Data: [('2021-08-10 00:00:00', temp=30/1, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=75/1, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=1.3899999999999999/1, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=0/1, et0=None/0, pop=None/0, qpf=0/1, condition=None/0, pressure=101.78/1, dewPoint=24/1, userData=None, minTemp=23/0, maxTemp=36/0, minRH=53/0, maxRH=98/0, et0cal=None, et0final=None), ('2021-08-10 00:00:00', temp=31.260000000000002/1, minTemp=None/0, maxTemp=None/0, rh=57.549999999999997/1, minRh=None/0, maxRh=None/0, wind=3.1600000000000001/1, solarRad=None/0, skyCover=None/0, rain=0/1, et0=None/0, pop=0/1, qpf=0/1, condition=23/1, pressure=101.5/1, dewPoint=21.149999999999999/1, userData=None, minTemp=24.050000000000001/1, maxTemp=36.189999999999998/1, minRH=38.710000000000001/1, maxRH=77.980000000000004/1, et0cal=6.3670538442991429, et0final=6.3700000000000001)]
2021-08-11 02:57:51,624 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=16.5153702535 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:51,882 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=16.3395792688 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:52,120 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=16.2982714001 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:52,346 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=4: AW to next day tmachine=82.2457898329 waterNeeded=1.72870780734 minRuntime=120
2021-08-11 02:57:52,431 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=11: AW to next day tmachine=548.718693297 waterNeeded=3.84446949022 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:52,563 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=15.3479810692 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:52,790 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=14.2449204035 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:52,994 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=13.9505915965 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:53,210 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=13.892976421 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:53,565 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=15.6306548301 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:53,803 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=15.9994364614 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 02:57:54,005 - INFO  - rmSimulator:657 -      minRuntime Restriction pid=1, zid=2: AW to next day tmachine=60.0 waterNeeded=14.3742462209 minRuntime=600
2021-08-11 08:27:34,671 - INFO  - rmThreadWatcher:438 - **  Automatic Update: Starting update check as interval to next watering program is bigger than 3600
2021-08-11 08:27:35,075 - INFO  - rmMainManager:513 - ** Automatic Update: No updates available
2021-08-11 08:50:03,262 - INFO  - rmMainManager:239 - Upgrade checked.

Atkinsongf September 01, 2021 18:16

Another failure to water this morning (1 Sept 21). Rainmachine had estimated the need for a 100% cycle, and that was no doubt accurate, as we have had no rain for a few weeks.

No indication of any attempt to water in the history.

When are you guys really going to get to the bottom of this YEARS LONG issue?

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Atkinsongf September 08, 2021 14:46

And another failure to water this morning (8 Sept 21). As in last week, a 100% cycle was scheduled and never executed.

It appears that for some reason, the planned start time for the cycle is always showing as later than what is required when this occurs. On the home page the estimated start time always shows what the start time was for the previous successful run. In today's case that was after 4 AM. In order to start a 100% that finishes one hour after sunrise, the start would have had to occur before 2 AM.

After the failure to execute this morning, the estimated start time for the next run (on 11 Sept) is the time to the minute that would be required to run a 100% cycle and finish at the prescribed one hour after sunrise - even though the estimated run time will only require a 76% run time.

For some reason, it appears that the estimated start time is for the previous run, and when the length of run is longer than it was previously, it misses the start time, and does not run at all.

This is completely unacceptable, as my lawn cannot afford to miss being watered even once during Texas summers. Please assign someone who is knowledgeable to this issue. I would be happy to assist in any way that I can by providing data, describing the issue, loading and running an alpha software version to collect more data or test potential corrections, etc.

Galen

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RainMachine Nicholas September 09, 2021 06:10

This is being investigated, maybe you will be willing to join beta updates since you seem to encounter this bug often. We will probably release beta this month that will have changes to "End by ...".

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Atkinsongf September 15, 2021 15:46

I am absolutely willing to try a beta update!

And my rainmachine failed to water again this morning - right on schedule to fail!

In EVERY case, whenever the length of watering time is scheduled to be longer, necessitating an earlier start time than the previous one, no watering occurs. It seems to me that duplicating this should be straightforward.

Once again, I will manually start a watering cycle this evening in place of the automatic one that failed to run this morning.

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Atkinsongf September 26, 2021 03:51

Once again..... this morning's 72% run failed to run. The previous run on Wednesday was a 52% run, and executed fine.

This is VERY predictable. When a subsequent run is of greater magnitude and thus must start earlier to finish on time, there is a failure to run. I believe that it is as simple as that. There is some variable retained from the previous run in regard to the start time that is not suitable for when the next run is longer in duration. The start time value on the HOME page is indicative of this, as it says that the next planned run will execute at X:XX AM. That time is always (or perhaps the vast majority of the time) a value that the previous run started at (or should have started in the failure to execute case). That time will almost always be TOO LATE to start when the percentage is greater for the upcoming run than that of the previous instance. Under these conditions, the program will fail to execute. It appears that the system computes a start time that is in the past in this situation and thus does not execute under this circumstance.

I repeat my willingness to assist with data, observations, etc of any sort to get this corrected. My background is as a systems engineer on highly complex software intensive systems, with 40 years of systems test experience on these systems. My ability to describe issues, characterize observed erroneous phenomena, hypothesize areas to investigate, collect and analyze data under specified test conditions, and to verify potential corrections is as good as that of anyone that you will find.

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Raphi October 07, 2021 05:39

Hi,

I am having the same issue exactly.

I have a Mini-8 running version 4.0.1003. My program is set to finish 5 minutes after sunrise and for the last few months is just skips scheduled runs randomly.

I haven't followed this up as much as Atkinsongf, but this morning's program was scheduled to run 82%, while previous was 52%. So the observation made by Atkinsongf seems to hold also for me.

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Atkinsongf November 08, 2021 23:16

Got 4.0.1144 this morning. After self installing it never reacquired my wifi without a reboot. Once that occurred, by the time I got to my computer, it was online and ready to go.

Looked at the release notes, and the last note indicates that this issue has been corrected - no doubt a real corner case. Time will tell whether it really does. Since it is really late in the year and not watering much, it may be months before we really see whether it's fixed or not, but I will let you all know here, in either case.

Thanks

Galen

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Atkinsongf March 25, 2022 17:01

So far, so good. During the winter months, when the system didn't trip the cold threshold, the system has watered per expectations without fail. As it is warming up and the watering is occurring on a more regular basis, I will continue to monitor this issue, but it really appears that the issue has been corrected with 4.0.1144. This took a long time to get corrected, so not really impressed by that, but do appreciate that you have continued to work the issue and developed a fix.

Thanks!

Galen

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Atkinsongf April 10, 2022 01:37

Well, I may have spoken too soon, as this morning no watering occurred, despite the rainmachine indicating that it was going to run a 77% cycle, after having run a 65% cycle on Wednesday, the previous correct run. I have kicked off a manual run this evening, as the yard is definitely needing the water, and will monitor going forward to see if today was an isolated instance or a continuation of the same old bug.

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Atkinsongf April 14, 2022 03:33

And to confirm, the 88% cycle that was to run this morning also did not run. I really had my hopes up that you guys had this corrected, but apparently not.....

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Atkinsongf April 20, 2022 16:22

On Saturday, April 16, the 52% cycle ran as designed. No issue, but this was a shorter run than the previous, which always works. This morning (April 20), the 95% cycle did not run. Again it was a longer cycle which requires an earlier start time, which would have been somewhere around 2 AM. I tell you, my observation is that subsequent cycles are using the start time from the previous run to decide when to start, and when the needed start time is earlier than the previous one, it is already too late and the cycle simply does not run.

Why is it SO HARD to compute the anticipated start time? For me that would be TIME OF SUNRISE + 1 HOUR - LENGTH OF PROGRAM (390 minutes for me) * COMPUTED PERCENTAGE REQUIRED. You compute the percentage required every time the weather update is acquired over the internet. Why aren't you computing the start time with the same frequency? Or simply compute the start time one time - at the point where the earliest start time is possible, and lock the resulting start time and percentage required down at that point.

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Atkinsongf April 20, 2022 16:24

I really don't think that you guys care to fix this one, unless you stumble into the issue doing something else. I have offered to be a BETA tester for this issue. I have offered to send any requested data. I never hear back.

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Raphi April 28, 2022 05:47

I didn't have a chance to to check this all winter, since I didn't have to water up until this week.

I can confirm having exactly the same issue on Mini-8 running version 4.0.1036.

Really frustrating

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RainMachine Nicholas April 28, 2022 06:11

Hi Atkinsongf, Raphi,

This is how we compute the start time, the bug that we fixed were related to some race condition that was happening. We have the test cases include what you report (previous day lower run time than current day) but we don't trigger the bug. Is there any Web UI/Mobile that you use to monitor this while program approaches start time ? Maybe something gets modified by an API call. If you see the pattern (previous lower run time, next higher) can you actually disconnect unit from wifi (temporarily change the wifi password in RainMachine using Settings) ? Maybe an NTP time sync happens although this is rare and would sync if time differences would be >10 minutes. This issue is not widespread, less that 0.005% of users using sunset/sunrise reported it since before the fix.

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Atkinsongf April 28, 2022 22:02

Thanks for getting back to us Nicholas.

I am attaching some screen shots from the online web application that seems to have correlation to when the issue occurs.

In the 1st picture, it shows that I want the run to finish one hour after sunrise, which currently is around 6:45 AM.

In the 2nd picture, the situation that I see is as follows: The run yesterday (April 27) was 0%, as we had rain on April 25 and 0% makes sense. The time of day for the end of that program would have been 07:44, an hour after sunrise, which is what I would expect. The next run is also 0%, so this really cannot demonstrate the issue.

However, when the issue occurs, the situation is for example, the previous run takes 3 hours and is successful and completes at 07:44. The next run on time shown in the 2nd picture would say 04:44, as that was the start time for the previous 3 hour run. If, however the subsequent run requires longer than 3 hours (let's say 4 hours), it does not run, as I believe that the machine gets to the point at 04:44, and does not have sufficient time to run, and thus gets into the error state. At this point, no watering log is created (even indicating that 0 water ran) or anything. It is just like it was a day that no watering was planned.

Galen

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Atkinsongf April 28, 2022 22:23

Nicholas,

Some questions....

1) Is there something in the log data that I should look for when this phenomenon occurs next?

2) Regarding the NTP theory... I can simply pull the USB wifi dongle from the top of the rainmachine when I predict that it will again occur. What additional data do you need in this instance?

3) What would I see in the log data indicating that a time error occurs? Would I see that the time steps backwards? I don't ever recall seeing anything indicating that an NTP time update has occurred, but I would think it would have to following a power cycle of the rainmachine.

4) Does Rainmachine have its own NTP server? I don't seen anywhere in the settings where I can provide a URL for the NTP server, so it must be hard coded. The time shown on the settings page is correct, so the device is getting its time correctly from somewhere. How often does it check the NTP server?

Please let me know of any information that you are looking for to help characterize this issue. There has to be something unique about how Raphi and I are trying use our systems. My internet provider is AT&T and has generally been rock solid, although it has gone down and recovered before during the night (presumably some system update / reset activity on the AT&T side), but nothing noted on the nights when my sprinklers are programmed to run.

Galen

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ngordon May 26, 2022 14:08

I have been experiencing this on two Pro-16 devices in the same zip code at two different homes multiple times over the past few weeks. I am also using the "end by" feature to finish 1hr after sunrise. If this is a known issue, can I simply set static start times for now?

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Atkinsongf May 29, 2022 02:44

While I don't know for sure the answer to your question, ngordon, I suspect that a hard start time will work, as this issue appears to only occur when the start time has to move earlier to finish on time from the previous run. I would give it a shot and report back.

That being said, in an effort to continue to document this issue, I have had another occurrence of it today, where the previous run on Wednesday, 25 May ran as planned starting a little before 6 AM and finished at one hour after sunrise as desired, and today's scheduled run that was to be longer due to hotter and drier weather needed to start about 1 AM, and did not.

By the way, Rainmachine responses to questions here, as you can see, are VERY hit or miss. Rainmachine Nicholas has responded, but does not follow up in any regular or expeditious manner. It sure feels like they don't really care to fix this issue, unless they stumble onto the problem, as I have provided a lot of information regarding the scenario under which it is routinely seen.

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Atkinsongf June 09, 2022 03:13

Another instance of failure to water occurred this morning. Previous watering was a 27%, and today was 92%, necessitating that the program start a few hours earlier in order to finish on time.

Interestingly enough, the previous watering prior to the 27% was 0%, and the 27% did run. The 0% ran as well, indicating that no watering occurred for each zone as you would expect.

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Atkinsongf June 12, 2022 02:57

Two consecutive failures to water now. Another instance this morning. Previous to today was to have been 92%, as stated in previous posting. Today required 100%, thus necessitating starting earlier to finish one hour after sunrise. Predictably, since the previous calculated start time was later than required for today, the program did not automatically start, and did not water without manual intervention.

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