This applies to a Gen2.
- What happens first to the master valve if the schedule is about to run
The Master Valve (if configured to turn on) is the first valve turned on when a Schedule starts. About 250-500 milliseconds later the first Zone is turned on
- When does the fault detection kick in?
The fault detection is ALWAYS on. It works by looking for a disruption in the power supply to the Controller (the actual event, if you want to Google it, is called a brownout). When the Controller detects a brownout it saves off the state of which valves were active when the brownout occured and resets. The reset turns off all the valves and when the Controller has reconnected to the Cloud it sends out a message indicating a fault occured, and which valves were active when the fault occured. The actual message is formatted so that the Master Valve fault, and up to two Zone faults, can be indicated at once. Two Zones can be active at the same time due to Water Hammer.
- If they activated at the same time or very close, I could see this type of scenario where the master valve may be seen as the faulted solenoid when the first valve solenoid is the actual fault. If that is the case, maybe a delay between the master valve and the next zone would solve the conflict.
There is already a delay, but you would still see the issue where multiple valves have indicated a fault, but only one is actually faulting. In my experience looking at the logs, many peoples faults aren’t dead shorts from the Zone Port to Common which would caues a brownout almost instantly. It can be almost 2-3 seconds later before the fault actually occurs, at which point all Zones are “active” from the Controller perspective. Thus when the message comes out it would indicate faults on multiple valves. The Controller doesn’t have anyway to distinguish which valve actually caused the fault.
I’m also looking at making the brownout event messaging a little better.
