Offer a flex scheduling option that turns on/off the capability for the controller to not water during daytime sunshine. Make option such that start time (i.e. 8 AM) and stop time (i.e. 6 PM) can be defined.
For flex scheduling the option would work like this:
Start time = 12:01 AM. Controller works to satisfy all zone demands continuously from this point. If it finishes before ‘sunshine ban start’’ (i.e. 8 AM), then great. If not, watering temporarily stops until ‘sunshine ban stop’ (i.e., 6 PM).
Hopefully zone demand can be finished by midnight.
@a0128958, great idea! We’ve discussed “before/after” scheduling, but this would involve some additional logic. Will share with the product team for future consideration.
A lot of municipalities here in Texas ban watering during ‘sunshine hours’ regardless of any other water restrictions.
I would think a hard part about this subject is what to do if all zone watering can’t be completed in 24 hours. Readjust next day’s flex scheduled zone watering? What if you can finish in the second day? How many days do you keep trying to readjust the next days’ flex watering commitments?
Also, another suggestion for the capability: offer option for flex schedule to look at weather and if cloudy/rain then ignore ‘sunshine hours’ ban (by user setable option).
This is a tough one. Same can be said to gallon restrictions in some areas. If you have a large lawn, do you ration water for each zone? Prioritize zones and let some zones die? Or reduce your lawn size and/or water demands of your landscape? I could see this turning into a “DVR problem” in that you want to record 4 shows but have to set a priority of which shows get recorded over others so there’s no scheduling conflicts.
Not sure I understand this idea. Could you elaborate?
The comments was made with the assumption that there’s available an option for ‘sunshine ban’ hours.
The comment was to go another step toward sophistication and offer another option that says ‘if weather is forecasting cloudy then ignore sunshine ban.’
I’m involved with the design of WiFi thermostats for some (but not all) of the ‘big boys’, and, I produce real time energy monitoring and logging systems systems. Your user interface and features challenges are similar to what I see.
(Your company is the only one I know of so far actually using blink to do the wif configuration - I’ve looked at it for WiFi thermostats but I’ve learned a lot about the challenges of the blink technology using your product.
And I think your company is very brave to insist that no one have a means to turn off firmware updates. No commercial tstat allows this to happen, BTW).
Sorry to continue the thread hijack here, but I gotta point out that the two most currently popular smart thermostats, Nest and ecobee3, automatically update firmware with no user interaction. Just like Rachio.
Nest is brilliant from a marketing point of view. We never used them for commercial applications for a variety of reasons.
We’re also halting our use of Ecobe tstats. We struggle with Ecobe’s insistence on random firmware updates for our commercial applications. We’re also nervous, observing their struggles with customer service, and flawed product design (solid state FETs for relays don’t work reliably and wear out prematurely, internal heating that causes elevated temp readings).
We’re moving to Network Thermostat. We’ll start using these after they finish their firmware updates. Wired ethernet connection, ability to turn off random firmware updates.
+1
Glad you guys are still looking into “finish by” times. Please consider working in a sunrise time +/- time option to work with it. Ex.: End program by, time, sunrise, or end x minutes before/after sunrise.
Then, I won’t have to revert to a hard time schedule instead of a flex schedule to avoid the risk of soaking school children at bus stop in my side yard after school starts.
I like this idea as well. A competitor’s product can do something like this as well based on sunrise time. The Iro could then subtract the total run time from the “finish by” time (i.e. sunrise or 8 am) and dynamically set the start time. This could work on both Fixed and Flex schedules.
Another feature that would be nice is to set the start time of one schedule based on the end time of another. I am toying with some fixed and flex schedules and it would be nice to start my flex schedule to start “5 minutes after fixed schedule completes”. I am not sure what happens currently when 2 schedules have overlapping run times on multiple zones so this may not be necessary…
Could also set one or more ranges of hours “allowed” to water. Something like 12am - 8am and 6pm - 11pm. We could then set any combination of allowed and disallowed hours per flex schedule. I suppose this could/should work for fixed schedules as well in case a seasonal adjustment puts the cycle into the “restricted” time it should pause and resume when back into the allowed watering window.
This is my vision of the capability too (bhochenedel’s above). In his case flex scheduling starts at 12 AM and all zones are scheduled during ‘open’ periods, up to 11:59 PM same day. Flex scheduling would block out time periods 8 AM - 6 PM and 11 PM - 12 AM, making 13 hours of the 24 available to satisfy all zone requirements for that day.
