EtherRain MCS Setup

[Michael McSharry]

Use HS Device Management to change the range for 0 to 1 to 0 to 100 (or 200). This is a status only device. Remove prefix, add suffix. See attached.
I will do this programatically on the next update.
I will look at you debug files a little later.

[Michael McSharry]

I made the updates to format the soil moisture devices. Need to delete the existing ones to have mcsSprinklers setup the VSP for them. Also made startup fill all the Room and Floor properties without needing any Save operations. Removed excess debug. http://mcsSprinklers.com/mcsSprinkle...19_9_0_HS3.zip I expect to submit to updater unless something else shows up. HSPI_...exe and MCSSPRINKLERS_2009.dll need to be extracted from the zip.

[tome10]

It's late, ill install tomorrow night. I was looking around, the soil outside is still soppy, and the system wants to water in the morning so I inhibited. So how do I adjust the evaporation? Full Sun is .75, shady area is .50? So I need to adjust my .75 to .65 to slow down evaporation estimation?

[Michael McSharry]

The primary concern is the sensors supporting the ET calculation. The secondary is the shade and soil factors. Each hour the ET calc is done with result in the debug log and for the sensors in the database. UV or solar radiation is the most important followed by temperature, wind, then humidity. Look at your end of day ET. It should likely be around 0.3. Your ET threshold should be near 0 so that in Summer you will have irrigation every 3 days or so if no rainfall.

Manually set the soil moisture until you are synchronized.

[tome10]

Where do I find the ET Threshold?
Found the daily ET device, it’s at .17, .21 for weekly historical something.
So I didn’t find the threshold device.

[Michael McSharry]

Threshold is on Area page when you select Calculated control strategy. It is the soil moisture threshold as a percentage. The model used by mcsSprinklers is that 1 inch of water is 100%. You set the zone run times so that 1 inch is distributed when an auto cycle runs. If you want a shallower distribution that is run more often then reduce the run time and increase the threshold percentage. There is considerable discussion in Section 5 of the manual about Calculated ET irrigation control.

An ET of 0.17 is reasonable, especially if your region has had a historical average of 0.21. This number should be monitored as you dial-in your irrigation control. If you have your soil moisture threshold at 0% then if the ET remains at this level each day then the cycle will be every six days without additional rainfall. Also monitor your daily rainfall totals so assure that the sensors are reporting reasonable results. The next effect of ET and Rain is shown graphically for the week on the Zone Status page for each zone. If your soil is not drying out then your zone factors should be adjusted

10.4.5 Soil Efficiency and Rain Factors

The Soil Efficiency and Rain Factor entries allow tweaking of the soil moisture content algorithm. Soil Efficiency relates to the ability of the soil to retain water with is a result of a combination of soil type and crop type. Higher values indicate that the soil will tend to retain moisture or the crop is efficient in holding moisture and does not allow moisture loss through its structure. A nominal value is 0.75. The Rain Factor relates to the degree that rainfall is allowed to reach the zone. A nominal value is 1.0 and a value of 0 indicates that the zone is covered and rainfall will not reach the soil level.

[tome10]

I installed the new version, and everything loaded correctly. How do you know the Round Robin is working correctly? I see a "Cycles: 0" on the zones status page. Is that supposed to reflect a '3' since I set up a 3 cycle round robin?

[Michael McSharry]

All scheduling is based upon the setup times or criteria. Round robin is like a sub mode with internal limitations so in the middle of a round robin cycle the status may not be quite what is expected. Observe its behavior vs the status you are monitoring to understand the relationship you are trying to monitor. The run log and serial io pages show the actual valve control. The daily number of cycles should give you what you want, but I not certain. Soil moisture should also be going up as the zone runs, but it may be the case that it is not set to 100% until the last cycle is done.

[tome10]

I reset the moisture to 100 Wednesday night, and the system said it was going to water on Saturday morning. I don't know how many Syringe cycles is ran yesterday, but looking around this morning the system says 100% moisture, and the last run was yesterday at 4pm, and they were all 3 minute cycles which means it was a syringe cycle. Syringe shouldn't reset the moisture to 100% should it?

And, is there any way to make the events more robust and not break when the devices are recreated? Maybe use the X10 type addresses in the events somehow? I don't plan on deleting them anymore, but I don't understand what changes that the same device can't stay in the event. That seems more of a question for the HS guys.

[Michael McSharry]

The debug file contains the information as to the scheduling. It in concert with mcsSprinklers.ini should be info to understand what happened. Syringing should only run once per day if the criteria is satisfied. If you are using Syringing I suggest you use Site page setting to only update soil moisture in Auto and not in Manual modes. I believe that moisture content is not updated during Syringing, but this will assure it. The debug log will show what it actually did.

HS3 ties events to device reference so if you delete devices then you break the events. Originally HS used the device code but found they were not guaranteed to be unique.

[tome10]

It was set up to update moisture on a manual cycle. Now I have to understand why syringing is operating at around 4pm. I have syringing operating after the temp rises above 88mph. So, it's only getting above 88 at 4pm? That doesn't seem right.
Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to program the plugin to only set the moisture to 100 if the runtime is equal or greater than programmed runtime I have normal cycle as 10mins. Syringe is supposed to be a smaller watering. I have mine set up for 3mins with 120min hold. Reasoning is that if I run a manual normal cycle the moisture doesn't get updated. Then again, you stated that Syringing doesn't update the moisture, so, maybe there's a bug?

So anyways, I created and looked in the debug file, and these are the only two entries for Syringing. I was looking for the time when 88 degrees was reached, as surely it was earlier than 4pm. Is there a way to find out when the temp reached above 88? There's only a few entries for temp, and the highest it goes is 78. It just seems the debug report isn't complete.
8/30/2019 8:45:00 PM 637027947003374005 | mcsSprinklers Debug | SetSyringing Trigger= True,State=,3,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, Temp=78 .vs 88/-9999, Time=8/30/2019 12:00:00 PM
8/30/2019 8:46:00 PM 637027947602486228 | mcsSprinklers Debug | SetSyringing Trigger= True,State=,3,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, Temp=78 .vs 88/-9999, Time=8/30/2019 12:00:00 PM

[Michael McSharry]

The debug is not intended to be a full history of every logic path, but selected information that helps to understand operation. It is not really designed for user consumption, but for someone who has access to source. Based upon the snippet you showed it looks like you have syringing setup to run at a specific time vs temp or ET. This setup is in mcsSprinklers.ini. Of greater interest is the soil moisture calc as that seems to be the actual difficulty you are having.

[tome10]

Well at some point I lost all of the weather device entries, so the ET Calculations were not working, and the Temp was not updating for syringing to work properly. It's interesting that it ran at 4pm though. On a side note, what would be considered a High Hourly ET? I tried tracking the UV and Hourly ET devices in my HSTouch project, but I couldn't. But appatently Weather XML has a UV device I enabled, and it seems to mirror the EPA device, so I tracked that instead, but the Hourly ET would be nice to be able to track.

SYRING=3
SYRINGCOLD=
SYRINGDELAY=120
SYRINGET=
SYRINGTEMP=88
SYRINGTIME=12:00

[Michael McSharry]

You can view the hourly ET values in mcsSprinklers from the General Status page for the ETx100 status device. Click on its calendar and then click on a day. It will show the hourly detail. Consider daily ET of 0.24 for 12 hours of sunlight so 0.02 for each hour. Midday will be higher so perhaps 0.04 for highest hour.

[Michael McSharry]

It's interesting that it ran at 4pm though.

If you provide the debug file for the day it ran at 4pm then I can likely tell you why it ran then.