Creating a simple watering schedule, is, well, simple! Here's the scenario for this How-To: I want to have a different watering schedule for each season: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. I want the right schedule to run based on the value of a variable I have in Indigo, that I'll change manually when the season changes. I have a single sprinkler controller, with 3 zones: Front Yard, Side Yard, Back Yard.
So, given this scenario, and after you've defined your sprinkler controller in Indigo, just follow these steps:
Variable List
from the Window
menu.Variable List
window frontmost, click on the New…
button.Value
column beside “houseSeason”, and type in “spring” (without the quotes).TIME/DATE ACTIONS
(or a sub-folder) in the outline view on the left side of the main window.New…
button above the Time/Date Action list.Time:
sectionDate:
section, I'm gonna select the Days of week
radio button, and unselect Su, M, W, F (a day is selected when it's dark - all days are selected by default). Leave the Repeat:
set to “Every Week” and Start on:
set to whatever it's set to (probably the current date). You're now done with defining the when part of the trigger: this basically says that Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings at 3:00am, this trigger is going to fire. The next thing we're gonna do is tell this Time/Date Action to only fire when it's spring.Condition
tab at the top.If variable
radio button, and select “houseSeason” (or whatever you called the variable above)equals:
radio button and type in “spring”. You've now refined the schedule so that it will only run when the value of the variable “houseSeason” is “spring”. We'll take care of summer, fall, and winter in a moment.Actions
tab.Control Sprinkler
from the Type:
menu.Device:
menu (leave “Run Shedule” selected in the Action:
menu).Device:
popup. For this scenario, it's “Front Yard”, “Side Yard”, and “Back Yard”. Because it's spring and I have spring flowers that I've just planted in my Front Yard, I want to water those for 15 minutes, so I type in 15 beside “Front Yard”.
Congratulations! You've now got your spring schedule done. So, how do you do the others (summer, fall, winter)? Just follow the above steps above for each season, changing the Time/Date Trigger tab so that it only waters when each season calls for watering (maybe more in the summer, less in the fall, and a lot less in the winter), changing the variable value on the Condition
tab to summer, fall, winter respectively, and changing the Actions to the appropriate durations for each season.