What Weather Station is Best

[uberseer]

I'm interested in putting in a weather station and having mcsSprinklers utilize it to control watering. I'm looking for the system that works best with mcsSprinkler.

Also, is anyone utilizing soil moisture sensors that interface with mcsSprinklers? If so, which ones and how do you like them?

What do y'all recommend?

Thanks

Bob

[Rupp]

Bob,
You can add one-wire soil moisture sensors to any machine. If you use Weather-Display you can add one-wire sensors to any weather station. The sensors are relatively cheap here:

http://www.hobby-boards.com/catalog/...products_id=45

[Michael McSharry]

Rupp,

Are you using this sensor? Does your weather display software contain contain calibrations that account for temperature, humidity and soil type and then what filtering is applied so that the reading may be usefull? For irrigation control a sensor that can measure moisture content at hourly intervals is needed. While you can poll the raw data at 1-wire speeds you will get llittle more than noise without taking into account the environment in which the sensor is installed. If you look at page 4 of http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=101056 you can see the behavior of the hobby-boards sensor is such that it will not be very useful for irrigation control.

Bob,

The only person I know that is using a moisture sensor on this board is using the Davis product. Battery operated sensors are installed at various locations and RF used to communicate to a central station.

Warren and I have talked on this subject in the past with respect to adding a moisture measurement into the Rain8. No decision has been made. I would recommend that you not go down that route for irrigation control because a sensor is just a single point reading and this reading is very localized and may not reflect well the general content of the soil in an area. Water migration channels develop in the soil and these channels change over time.

As far as a weather station there are the following measurements that you will want to have available in the order of importance.
1. Solar Radiation
2. Rainfall
3. Temperature
4. Wind Speed
5. Humidity

I am not very familiar with the various stations that are available. I know the low-end units tend to not have Radiation. Davis is at the upper end of the consumer units and it does. The Cambell unit used by large scale farms is at the commercial upper end with a $6000 price tag.

mcsSprinklers is designed with redundancy and backup. The standalone version allows it to be run on two computers in active/active or active/backup mode. All versions contain data revisionary modes where it tries to use the best available data. The primary sensor data and forecast data is expected to be delivered via from sources external to mcsSprinklers. When this source becomes unavailable then mcsSprinklers will use its internal data collection mechanisms as a backup. When using internet data for local weather information there are three sites than be used with the logic organized to use the primary whenever available and either of the other two when the primary is not available. When none are reporting then it will use the data from the forecast site.

When considering the application in the Homeseer environment there are two mechanisms to get weather station data into mcsSprinklers. One is to use xAP over the LAN. Something like xapmcs1Wire or xapmcsTemp0x could be used as a connector to bridge the 1-wire bus to the LAN. Note that multiple 1-wire busses can be implemented in this manner so local redundancy can be accomodated. The other choice is to use Homeseer devices that are populated by other sensor inteface scripts or plugins. mcsTemperature provides various 1-wire and file-based input mechanisms going this route. In the 1-wire world there are many other Homeseer plugins and scritps that import 1-wire data. While I do not have any first-hand experience, there are several that have posted that they no longer use WeatherDisplay for the interface because of its high CPU utilization. I think the same is true of some version of the HA7.

The solar sensor it the most important contributor to the ET calculation. I have made my version of this sensor by installing a temperature sensor at the top of my mast and then have a clear jar over the sensor. This tends to capture the sunlight and amplify it to give a measure of the solar intensity. mcsSprinklers is able to handle this poor-mans solar sensor.

The weather stations that are wireless will typically also be poor choices for mcsSprinklers because they update wind at a very low rate to conserve battery. If wind is not an issue where you live then this many not be that significant. The other sensor measurements are not time-sensitive so something like every 10 minute updates will be adequate for mcsSprinklers.

I built my weather stations from parts and used 1-wire sensors for the core technology. For the consumer units such as Oregon and LaCrosse I believe data log files are used as the mechanism typically used to interace these to Homeseer devices. Make certain that there is some form of computer interrface and that the data on this interface is refreshed at an interval that is usefull.

[pete@malibubeach.com]

Just a couple comments: regarding wireless units, the Davis Vantage Pro 2 does NOT suffer from the infrequent wind updates you mention. While it does have a battery, it gets most of its power from a solar cell so it can (and does) update the wind speed every few seconds. And it also provides everything else you mentioned ncluding an internally computed ET. But it is not cheap (~$700, as I recall, for the one that has the solar sensor).

That said, when using the Ambient VWS software that interfaces to it, it interfaces nicely to HS, updating all the readings every 3 seconds (at least that is how mine is configured).

It sounds like your plug-in does a lot more than simply look at the rainfall for the last 24 hours and see how sunny it is. Is there a lot of benefit in this sophistication for a normal back yard sprinkler system? Is it configurable to know about different types of plants and sprinklers---that is, rainbirds awatering the lawn as opposied to drip system watering the roses?

Once I get my back yard back together, this will move pretty high up my project list.

Pete

[Rupp]

Michael,
I do not use those sensors but know others that have mentioned using them on the Weather Display BB. I personally just water every 3 days unless it rains and my 1-wire weather station records rain and cuts the common to my weather station. It's as simple as that. I'm just not convinced I have to worry about an hourly measurement of my soil moisture to have a beautiful lawn. In the south you need to water a lot. That's the bottom line.

[Michael McSharry]

Pete,
The numbers that are thrown around the industry show up to 35% savings from inwtelligent irrigation. I'm on a well so I do not see a water bill to appreciate any savings that may occur. Water usage is one area where the HA hobby may be able to provide some money savings and positive effect on the environment.

mcsSprinklers simply tries to make intelligent irrigation easy by using a GUI-level rather than a scripting-level user interface. It bundles many capabilities from which a user may pick and choose. Ease of selection of a control strategy provides considerable power with very little user effort.

Consumer-grade irrigation systems are architected like Rupp's. A timer unconditionally runs on some fixed schedule and the power to the valve is modulated to provide the external control. This modulation is typically done with a little $10 rain pad that absorbs rainfall and when damp will cut the power.

Rainbird expects to introduce a PC-interfaced controller in 2006 that uses the PC to calculate ET and modulate the valve power based upon this calculation. Their belief (or marketing hype) is that ET will provide a better measure of when water is needed vs. when the pad drys out.

Smarthome had sold a self-contained controller that has the sensors necessary to perform the ET calculation so no PC was needed. They discontinued it. I do not know if it was because the company went belly-up or the sales volume was not adequate.

If your situation is one where a single master on/off is all you need to account for environmental conditions then a standard time-based controller is your cheapest route. If you want greater resolution in your control then a product such as the Rain8 that provides zone-by-zone control is a good choice. I recommend irrigation controllers rather than simple relays because relays typically do not contain a supervisory processor that can assure a valve control is not left on for too long.

Rupp,
The question Bob asked dealt with compatibility with mcsSprinklers and in my experience the hobby-boards moisture sensor is not usable for the reasons I previously stated. I do agree, however, that there are many ways to skin a cat and a traditional irrigation controller will get the job done. If we all used traditional ways of doing things then this Message Board would be rather bland.

[GARYAUTOHO]

Weather Station

I Have A Davis Station High Quality
A Bit Pricey

[Pete]

AAG One Wire & MCS Sprinklers

I am using the AAG One Wire weather station, Rain guage tipping bucket, lighting sensor and various temperature/humidity sensors hooked up to a Temp08 and a Temp05.

Last year tried to hack into my Rainbird controller and purchased the wireless add on to the Rainbird. Called Rainbird a few times but they were no helpful. The controller is straight forward for turning on/off the sprinklers but not too flexible in the scheduling and as you have only one LCD - not informative regarding the programming.

Decided decided on a different route using Michael's MCSSprinklers and Rain8Nets.

Towards the latter part of the 2005 season our water bills went up to close to $300 per month. We have been here in our new home about 2 years now and never had a water bill above $40.

While I am using the existing sensors for wind etc I am taking advantage of the calculations that Michael's application does for watering...so in a summary watering will occur when:

1 - meets local town watering ordinances (time, timeframe and day of the week)
2 - soil moisture content calculated from MCSsprinklers
3 - wind speed
4 - local rain

[bunkers]

Personally, I think the Davis Vantage Pro2 line is the best out there for the money. Yes, its at least $100-150 more than the competition. Check out ambientweather dot com.

A lot of folks also seem to have the Oregon Scientific WMR968 or the La Crosse WS2310 models, but you kind of get what you pay for, IMHO. When researching these other stations, I found a lot of reports of folks who reported poor quality and broken stuff in the first couple months ... that scared me away. That combined with excellent support from Davis vs. lousy support from the likes of Oregon Scientific.

When I get myself a weather station, it'll probably be the David Vantage Pro2 (wired version - mainly to save money vs. wireless ... and increase reliability somewhat, with no batteries, solar or wireless interference to mess around with).

One drawback of the Davis vs. others besides increased unit cost is that you need to buy an additional piece of software for the Davis (Weatherlink) to serve up the data to your PC ... which is yet another ~ $138, whereas the other two include the data interface and basic PC interface software in the base price of the unit.

The cool part is that since ~ version 2.6.50 , McsSprinklers now supports weatherunderground.com weather data as a source, which includes a huge network of private weather stations worldwide.

This means: you can buy ANY of these stations, get a free subscription with weatherunderground.com and host your station data (current and historical) on the internet ... and set your station ID in McsSprinklers (selecting weatherunderground as your data source in the Others page) ... and then your using your own weather station data !

Thats what I want to do ... because in Colorado, my weather is so (crazy) irregular, that even the nearest stations aren't really right for whats going on in my backyard.

I also have a few neighbors interested in possibly buying McsSprinklers ... so if they do, we could all share the neighborhood weather data from my backyard station -- and it would be very accurate compared to using other sources ... esp. the wind and rain data, which in Colorado are very site specific and localized.

[Michael McSharry]

I expect to make the Davis Vantage Pro a native weather station for mcsSprinkles in the next month or two.

The startup configuration for mcsSprinklers is to use weather data that is available on the LAN or populated by other HS sources via virtual devices. After a timeout with no LAN data being provided then mcsSprinklers goes onto the Internet to get the data.

Most users are operating in the backup mode from the outset so mcsSprinklers detects lack of weather updates and goes to the internet. When a local weather station is installed via Homeseer or via LAN through xAP then data will come locally until something happens to the weatherstation's ability to deliver the data and mcsSprinklers will go to the LAN.

Scott is correct about the abilty to use WeatherUnderground as the interface mechanism with any local weatherstation today. By adding native weatherstation support then the local data will be used directly and another backup station can still be available via the internet.

[bunkers]

Very cool ... I wasn't aware of the local support you were providing or your upcoming plans ... nice.

Do you know if the additional software (Weatherlink) is required to get data out of the Davis and onto your PC?

[bunkers]

And by the way ... at a recent "Water Wiser" seminar I attended in Castle Rock, CO -- they had a variety of advanced ET based sprinkler controllers there. Ranging from $250 to $600 ... and none of them seemed to have more than 40-70% of the control the McsSprinklers has, nor the integration options either. About half of them required a monthly fee for ET data ... and the other half either used static historical ET data or the internet for data.

They had a list of "approved controllers" which they will rebate 50% of the purchase price for, up to $300 [ on $600 ].

The Rain8Net & McsSprinklers combination wasn't on the list -- but I thought (what about techno-dudes like myself?!). There were a couple guys in the class asking about using their computer as a controller and the folks teaching the class just looked at them like they were talking about going to the moon or something ... and really didn't know of anything beyond there standalone ET controllers they had. I talked to them during our break and hooked them up with the information they needed/wanted. They were very thankful to run into me it seemed.

After going down to the city water building and personally inundating them with information about the rain8net and mcssprinklers combination, they gladly accepted my rebate application.

My point was: "for almost half the price your $600 units ... mine can do more, doesn't have a monthly fee and talks to other things on my computer if I want it to" ... so of course it qualifies, right?! ... She was speachless ... boy was I a proud geek that day ... walked out of there with my approved form and started spinning the ol' propeller cap like crazy.

They also mentioned something about being certified by the Center for Irrigation Technology (CIT) -- so my question would be ... at some point, maybe McsSprinklers should get submitted to this group for certification / approval ... eventually. Just another thing the big boys use to say YOUR competing product isn't legit?

[Michael McSharry]

Scott,
This is nice info. Who made the list of approved devices that quality for rebate? I looked at the CIT site and see..

Our fees for projects are negotiated individually, depending on the type of service and contracting agency

Since I went through the permit process to build my house and came out of it $9000 poorer I know that what FEEs mean. When there is sufficient interest then it makes sense to go this route to move up on the food chain.

You also painted a very nice image in my mind of your experience. You would make a good novelist.

I don't expect to use the Davis WeatherLink software, but I do not think you can buy the data logger hardware unbundled from the WeatherLink software and the hardware is needed to establish the interface to the computer.