JMC

KAUN is showing 0 now also. I got busy and didn't catch the exact time of the change. Over the last 2 days WB has caused my ISY to miss around an inch of rainfall. mike

I've been watching the Rain Today: value quite a bit today as well. At 9a.m. it was .04", at 10a.m. it was .01" and at 1p.m. it was .18". We'll see what happens for the remainder of today. mike

Yesterday's rain was being logged by WB until around 3p.m. when my ISY (watching KAUN) suddenly showed Rain Today: 0. I checked other stations in this area and they all showed 0 even though we had well over 0.25" at the time. Needless to say that messed up the ISY's calculations for irrigation requirement. Yesterday was the first time in quite a while I've had occasion to pay attention to rainfall on my ISY, mostly because it was the first rainfall we've had for a looong time. Has anyone else noticed anything similar? mike

Hi IM, I'm assuming that the ISY recalculates at or shortly after midnight and if WeatherBug resets Rain Today to 0 earlier than that then the ISY will pick up the zero figure automatically. Incidentally I reset my station to KAUN because it is much closer to my elevation than is Lincoln. mike

Timezone is correct. I will definitely monitor the next rain, which is forecast for next Wednesday. One thing I did not mention is that when the Rain Today reset to 0 neither Yesterday's Water Deficit nor Irrigation Requirement reflected the change. They remained the same as they had been when Rain Today had a positive value and the following morning their values were the same as I would have expected with zero rainfall. mike

Sorry for reopening an old thread but this subject seems to be the natural place for my question. I'm running 4.05 on ISY 994i pro, Windows 8. It's been working fine but I've recently noticed that Weatherbug is resetting Rain Today to 0 around 10pm. At first I thought it might be my particular station (KAUN) but this morning I switched it to KLHM and it did the exact same thing. Yesterday KAUN showed an accumulation of around 0.4" of rain during the day but when I checked after 10pm (I have my ISY as one of my home pages on Firefox) the Rain Today was 0. This morning I switched my site to KLHM and it showed an accumulation of 0.02" through the day but when I checked at 10pm Rain Today was 0. I have no idea if the problem is with WeatherBug or with 4.05 since we are only now ending an extended period with no rainfall and 4.05 never had a chance to adjust Irrigation Requirement for rain until this week. mike

IM: Today's high/low are being displayed correctly, low was 73 and high (so far) is 97. I don't know how to get an historical period from KAUN so I'm only giving today's numbers. PM is also giving me a very reasonable ETo calculation (0.2149"/day) for today. One possible answer I neglected to mention is a couple of very short duration (less than 1 sec) power outages did occur while the calculation was set to HS. Both were too short to cause the ISY to reboot but they did produce enough anomaly that I manually rebooted. It was then I noticed the ETo was 0 so I watched for change the next morning. After two days with ETo still at 0 I posted my comment. mike

After reading through much of the traffic on ETo calculation differences between the PM and HS methods I decided to try the HS to see what, if any, difference I might see. For reasons I don't understand, ever since switching to the HS calculations ETo and Yesterday's Water Deficit have been 0 each day. Considering that temps have been right around triple digits with low humidity and 0 rain this doesn't make sense. I switched back to PM and will see what effect that has. mike

I'll second the MP Rotator heads, they have dramatically reduced runoff which with my soil is a really big deal. I've looked at the Vegetronix sensors a couple of times but I would need at least 4 of them and getting their output into the ISY seems to be the major stumbling point. It sure would be nice to learn that someone has already solved that problem. mike

Michel: Accommodating soil moisture sensors sounds like the perfect solution for me. Tell me more. Michael: What kind of soil moisture sensor do you have in mind? mike

IndyMike, Not all that distant. That elevation would have been the WB station in Lincoln, CA. I'm about 15 miles from Lincoln and 8 miles from KAUN so distance isn't a great factor. The elevation difference is the main problem, especially for rain. Incidentally, I just retrieved a sample and it showed an elevation of 30 feet, which would be Sacramento Int'l Airport. That is about 35 miles from me and can have radically different climate. At least it isn't as bad as using KTRK, which has happened once that I know of. mike

IndyMike, I've been up to my ears in getting my HVAC controls converted so I haven't been paying scrupulous attention to the irrigation. My soil tester doesn't have a brand on it, other than Made In China of course. It's called 3-Way Meter and measures soil moisture, soil ph and ambient light. It measures moisture on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 to 3 being dry, 4-7 being moist and 8-10 being wet. At a reading of 1 the soil is seriously parched and at 10 it is suitable for mud pies. I have a half dozen selected spots where I check moisture, 4 along the highest points of the lawn and 2 in the lowest. I'll try attaching the saved files with the climate data from KAUN. I haven't tried attaching a file before so it should be interesting. mike 20130401 Sample.xml 20130402 Sample.xml 20130404 Sample.xml

IndyMike, Thanks for the valuable info. Incidentally the only reason I started this particular thread is that I discovered my system applying water less than 48 hours after a heavy rain and when the soil was nearly saturated. It is this tendency to resume irrigation too soon after rainfall that I'm trying to prevent. I always do my soil moisture test at the highest point on the slope, preferably near an edge where it is most susceptible to wind. I agree on the 2nd watering. In fact, that scheduler not only looks at Irrigation Requirement (after the morning irrigation has been accounted for), it also limits the watering to days where the high temp exceeds 95 degrees F and when wind is not over 5 mph. Yes, MP Rotators are definitely very susceptible to wind. I have data for 4/1, 4/2 and today. I couldn't get yesterday's because I'm not familiar with getting historical data and my system was down for a major HVAC control rebuild. When I get finished it will be completely Insteon (right now I have nothing). mike

HI IndyMike, To explain lava cap it's best I start by saying I live in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Auburn is about 35 miles NE of Sacramento on I-80 and I'm at just over 1,200' elevation. There is a dense, very low absorption and very rocky layer in the soil around here that is anywhere from on the surface to 12-18" below the surface that we call lava cap. That stuff is the main reason that a jack hammer is a standard gardening tool here. On my property it is very near the surface and the absorbent layer I mentioned is soil that I have put down. The lawn has varying amounts of slope (nothing is level around here) and as soon as water reaches the lava cap it begins to run off below the top soil. At least I'm assuming that's what happens when the soil is moist but not saturated and there is water collecting on the sidewalk that isn't coming from overspray. I use the 0.25" per cycle as a safety factor and run an extra cycle in the evening if called for to make sure the lawn gets enough water. I use Hunter MP Rotator sprinkler heads, a mix of MP2000 and MP3000 and I'm using the factory provided data to determine how long to run the system to get 0.25" of water. Each irrigation cycle runs each zone in the system twice to get the 0.25". I began collecting the data you suggested this morning. I'll try to remember to collect each morning for the next few days. mike

IndyMike, Hopefully the KUAN in your charts is a type, my station is KAUN. Thanks very much for the polling interval info, my system was polling on 60 second intervals and I reset it to 1800 seconds (30 minutes). Hopefully that will help the DNS issue. I'm using the following settings: Irrigation Region: Best Guess Absorption Factor/Soil Type: 83%/Loam Sand Water Applied per Irrigation Cycle: 0.25" Allowable Depletion: 0.0208" (calculated by ISY) Grass is being watered. I know the soil type is wrong but it seems to work best for me. My actual soil type is 6-8" of highly absorbent top soil on top of lava cap. I set the small amount of water applied because it is about the maximum I can apply before runoff. The offset I mentioned was an error, the actual offset is 7" and it is purely arbitrary. My irrigation program looks at 7" the same way it looks at 0" without the offset. Basically I'm trying to achieve the performance pattern in your 2nd (ISY Calculated Irrigation) chart's red line and avoid the green line. It appears to me that the offset will do the trick but time will tell. The early morning program looks for Irrigation Requirement > 7.45" and applies 0.25" of water if the condition is satisfied. The evening program looks for Irrigation Requirement > 7.3" and applies another 0.25" of water if the condition is satisfied. This arrangement allows up to 0.5" of water to be applied in a 24 hour period and also avoid the runoff problem associated with the lava cap if the 0.5" were applied at one time. mike

IndyMike, The station I use (KAUN) is a NWS airport station that started reporting rainfall data about a year ago. So far the reported rainfall has been tracking actual conditions very well. I'm really reluctant to change from it because of one of the factors you mentioned, elevation. I'm at least 1,000' higher than any nearby station except KAUN, which is about 400' higher than where I am. I'm not concerned with the ETo calculation, I'm totally ignorant in that area. The discarding of rainfall data that should (in my mind) drive Irrigation Requirement negative is a problem though. I've checked the soil with a soil moisture tester numerous times and following a heavy rain the system wants to start irrigation again in a day or so while the soil moisture is still off-scale (mud). I've inserted an offset into my programs by not calling for irrigation until Irrigation Requirement exceeds 10.3". That should allow the system to delay restarting irrigation too soon. I'll be using the soil moisture test regularly and make adjustments accordingly. Michel, my router is a Motorola combination cable modem/router in a single device. the ISY now connects directly to it without going through the switch. I've rebooted it twice in the last couple of days with no change. We'll see what the offset in my programs does. mike

12 inches of rain yesterday may not equal 12 inches of water but it is much closer than 0. In any event I can resolve the issue by simply inserting an offset into the Irrigation Requirement value and then accounting for it in my programs. I noticed that one of my error messages, -100 is not in the list you referenced. As far as the DNS problem (-140000) I can only offer that at any given time there could be 5 to 8 different devices on my network accessing the internet and none of the others reports any problem. Incidentally, I did move the ISY to a direct connect to the router instead of through the switch as before. It didn't seem to make any difference.

A negative Irrigation Requirement is important for the module to eliminate the effect of a very heavy rainfall, which will take many days during which no irrigation is wanted. By resetting Irrigation Requirement to 0 when it is negative effectively discards previous days rainfall and allows irrigation to be called for long before it is actually needed. I can work around the problem in my programs by simply avoiding the Irrigation - Cycle Complete statement until Irrigation Requirement reaches 12" or so. Then there won't be any danger of having rainfall data discarded and is what I will probably do. On the networking issue: Can you provide me with the full meanings of the -140000 and -100 error codes? mike

That being the case the value of the irrigation module is diminished to the point where it doesn't make any sense to even use it. For example: Take a starting condition where Eto = 0.1 Irrigation Requirement = 0.1 Water Deficit Yesterday = -1.9 (2: of rainfall) On the following day Irrigation Requirement will be 0. Using Et0 = .4 with no further rain the day after that will have an Irrigation Requirement = .4 which will probably trigger the irrigation system to apply more water less than 48 hours after a 2" rain, wasting a lot of water and risking damage to the plants being irrigated. If, however, a negative value is permitted for Irrigation Requirement then if Eto remains at about 0.4 it will be the 5th day following the rain before the irrigation system will apply more water, and that is about the actual need. mike

Lee, My understanding is that while Irrigation Requirement will not display a value less than zero, the actual value is stored for calculations. If that were not true then the amount of any rainfall or water application which exceeds the existing Irrigation Requirement would be lost. For example, this time of year in my area the typical Eto is less than 0.25" per day but rainfall exceeding 2" in one day is not uncommon. Those two would result in an Irrigation Requirement of -1.75" and if that value were not retained for future day's calculations, irrigation could be called for only a day following the heavy rainfall. The same would apply following a very heavy application of water. If that is the case then the value of the irrigation module is decreased significantly. mike

Follow up: I have a spare Cat 5 connection between the garage where the ISY is and the room where I keep the router so the direct connect was a simple matter. I'll check the error log later today and see what is there. mike

First, the ISY is using DHCP to get it its IP. It is connecting to the router via a switch and traffic across that switch can be heavy at times with up to 5 HD video streams present at any one time. However, all other devices appear to be accessing the internet normally. I'll check to see what it will take to make a direct connection to the router. While the ISY does appear to be getting data updates from WB. Temp, humidity, wind and rain data all appear to be consistent with existing weather conditions. Eto at 0.1547 this morning is consistent with what I would expect given our current weather. Water Deficit Yesterday is also 0.1547 and that is consistent with there having been zero rainfall. I gave the system 0.5" of water yesterday as I said I would. Using yesterday's Irrigation Requirement of 0.2973 my hand calculation shows that today's Irrigation Requirement should be 0.2973 - 0.5 + 0.1547 = -.0314. However, today's Irrigation Requirement is being shown as 0.1547, just as though yesterday's negative value had been discarded. mike

Hi Michel, There are many entries with 140000 and a few with 140002. Here is the most recent 24 hours: System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 03:11:42 AM System -170001 [TCP-Conn] -1/-140002, CLI-WBug Sun 2013/03/24 11:59:40 AM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 12:56:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 01:02:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 01:48:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 01:53:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 02:19:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 03:48:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 04:19:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 04:24:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 04:31:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 04:32:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 04:50:39 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:05:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:08:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:10:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:20:39 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:21:39 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:22:39 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:25:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:32:39 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:36:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:41:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:45:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:46:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:49:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:52:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:54:41 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 05:58:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:03:45 PM System -140005 CLI-WBug Sun 2013/03/24 06:04:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:12:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:15:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:20:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:21:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:23:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:24:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:26:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:31:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:33:40 PM System -170001 [TCP-Conn] -1/-140002, CLI-WBug Sun 2013/03/24 06:37:39 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 06:45:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 07:02:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 07:22:39 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 07:35:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 07:50:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 08:00:39 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 08:01:39 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 08:14:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 08:15:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 09:21:40 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Sun 2013/03/24 11:49:33 PM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Mon 2013/03/25 12:11:32 AM System -140005 CLI-WBug Mon 2013/03/25 12:39:33 AM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Mon 2013/03/25 03:00:33 AM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Mon 2013/03/25 03:48:33 AM System -170001 [TCP-Conn] -1/-140002, CLI-WBug Mon 2013/03/25 06:35:32 AM System -170001 [TCP-Conn] -1/-140002, CLI-WBug Mon 2013/03/25 07:04:34 AM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Mon 2013/03/25 07:34:33 AM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Mon 2013/03/25 07:40:33 AM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Mon 2013/03/25 07:55:32 AM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Mon 2013/03/25 08:05:35 AM System -170001 [TCP-Conn] -1/-140002, CLI-WBug Mon 2013/03/25 08:25:33 AM System -140000 datafeed.weatherbug.com Incidentally, Since all values were non-zero yesterday, today's values are exactly what I would expect: Eto = 0.1584 Irrigation Requirement = 0.2973 Water Deficit Yesterday = 0.1584. I'm going to give the system .5" of water today, which should take the Irrigation Requirement negative. We'll see what tomorrow's values look like. mike

Following up on my Friday Mar 22 post: To compensate for the loss of rainfall data I ran the Irrigation - Cycle Complete command with my usage set at 0.25". That should have set Irrigation Required at -0.1001 0.1499 - 0.25). The next morning all three values were equal at 0.1388 as though the carryover value of Irrigation Requirement was 0 instead of -0.1001. I am using 3.3.10 and I don't remember this happening with either 3.3.6 or 3.3.8. However, that could be because it didn't rain during the time either of those two versions were installed. mike

No programs use the Irrigation - Reset Variables command. I've checked all programs several times. Incidentally, last night at about 11:50PM Eto was 0.1033, Irrigation Requirement was 0 and Water Deficit Yesterday was -0.7647. At about 8:30AM this morning Eto was 0.1499, Irrigation Requirement was 0.1499 and Water Deficit Yesterday was 0.1499. I checked the log for the overnight period and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Needless to say that reset threw my irrigation schedule out the window for the next several days. mike