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    Automating the garden

    Ok, I am grabbing the weather once an hour from the internet from a local wheatherstation. Once every day a calculate the evaporation of the garden.

    What would be a good algorith to decide when to water the garden? Anyone already using something? Anyone suggestions?

    What I have been experimenting for the last year is:
    Start with setting the waterlevel-variable to zero
    Every day
    Take the waterlevel-variable
    add the fallen rain of the day
    Substract the evaporation
    next day
    (watering would have to be done if the waterlevel dropped below zero)

    This does not work. The waterlevel keeps increasing. Apparently, over the long run, there falls more rain than evaporates every day. So, should I only take the last days into account? Like
    if the total evaporation of the last 5 days exceeds the rainfall
    the garden should be watered
    end if?

    I would really like to know what others are using or suggesting.

    Thanks,

    Richard

    #2
    mcsSprinklers recalculates evaporation and precipitation rates hourly and applies them each minute to determine the moisture content. The hourly calculation will take care of the variance within a day based upon sunlight and other ET parameters. It will cycle a zone when the moisture is below a user-specified threshold. At the completion of the cycle it will have the moisture level at 100%. It will not go above 100% so additional water in the form of rainfall will be treated as saturation and lost through drainage. It will add/subtract moisture each minute based upon evap and precip calculations when a zone is not on. When it is on then the level is based upon the irrigation flow rate for that zone.

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      #3
      Man I wish I had sprinklers!

      Comment

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