Setting up a basic watering schedule

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:

  1. First, let's create a variable that'll be used a bit later. Select Variable List from the Window menu.
  2. With the Variable List window frontmost, click on the New… button.
  3. A new variable, probably named “variable” will be created. If the name isn't already highlighted in an edit box, double click on it. Type in “houseSeason” (or whatever you want to call it). This variable will hold a value of “spring”, “summer”, “fall”, or “winter”.
  4. Double click in the Value column beside “houseSeason”, and type in “spring” (without the quotes).
  5. Select TIME/DATE ACTIONS (or a sub-folder) in the outline view on the left side of the main window.
  6. Click the New… button above the Time/Date Action list.
  7. Give your Time/Date Action a name (I'm calling mine “Spring Watering Schedule”)
  8. Give it a time to run (I like to run mine at 3:00am) in the Time: section
  9. In the Date: 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.
  10. Click on the Condition tab at the top.
  11. On this tab you'll further refine when this trigger fires. Select the If variable radio button, and select “houseSeason” (or whatever you called the variable above)
  12. Select the 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.
  13. Now, you want to tell the time/date action what it needs to do. Select the Actions tab.
  14. Select Control Sprinkler from the Type: menu.
  15. Select your controller's name from the Device: menu (leave “Run Shedule” selected in the Action: menu).
  16. You should notice that the zone names you've set up for your device show up in the table below the 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”.
  17. The other two don't have any special requirements, so I'm just gonna water them for 10 minutes each. Adjust accordingly. You're done with the “what to do” part of your time/date action for spring.

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.

generic_sprinkler.txt · Last modified: 2019/01/26 00:10 (external edit)
 

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