Advancing basic Irrigation with L5108RELVP

Hi,

I've had a L5108RELVP installed for some time but only used it for basic on/off for solenoids for my watering system. Given I only have a Wiser, I cannot exploit Irrigation Manager so I'm looking to make some basic improvements on the system.

Currently, I have 4 buttons, each setting a timed (5 min) watering period for each individual Solenoid. I want to advance this to a 1 button trigger for all 4 watering systems (which is ok)

Having a bunch of DLT's around the house, I figured I'd setup a button to turn all four on at once for 5 mins rather than me press 4 buttons on the Wiser/switches.

I've setup the L5108RELVP under the irrigation application and came across a TAB called "LOGIC" where you seem to be able to group channels under one group. On creating a 'general' group and ticking all 4 channels, and setting up a widget in Wiser, the only way to enable them is to click on widgets for each indivdual channel, as well as the group I setup.

Is this right? Has anyone had experience with configuring the L5108RELVP and can help me understand the 'logic' of the logic ? The Help files are not quite telling me what I can understand ... :/

Regards,


BenC

 

Hi BenC,

It sounds like you have the logic boxes ticked as 'AND' rather than 'OR'. This setting makes you have to have both GroupChannel1 AND LogicGroupof4Chans both on for Channel1 to be active, which seems to be what you are seeing.

If the logic setting is ticked as OR instead, to turn on Channel1 to 100%, you can make GroupChannel1 OR LogicGroupof4Chans to 100%. Of course LogicGroupof4Chans will also turn on the other 3 channels as well

Also, just be aware that the reason the Irrigation Manager 'app' and normal stand-alone watering systems run through the solenoids sequentially is that there is often not sufficient water pressure into the house to run all watering legs simultaneously, hence they step from one leg to the next sequentially.

You said you had a Wiser so a possible solution is to write a small logic program that on triggering from your switch (or schedule in the Wiser) goes through the 4 watering zones?

Brad

 

Id' assumed AND/OR was in relation something linked to the irrigation manager and something complex like they would all run at once (AND) or one after the other (OR), but silly me, it's exactly what I want to control.

Thanks Brad for that simple and quick explanation.

Worked a treat!


Regards,

BenC

 

Hi BenC,

Glad to hear it worked.

Just a final tip:-

In the interests of family harmony, never schedule watering during the time your other half showers.

Brad

 

Haha ... good advice! Fortunately I'm on pump/water tanks for irrigation and toilets.

Once I work out how to pull rain forecast easily in gethttp I can automate the whole lot. I'm restricted to timed events and checking the temp and assuming it isn't raining. Maybe I can make a manual "RAIN" flag and I can press a button on a DLT to enable/disable until I can pull likely rainfall into the picture. Surely that's not hard?

Now if only I could measure my water tank storage cheap. Am off to investigate Arduino!

So much to do these holidays,...!

BenC

 

The way (or a way) to measure tank level is with a 4-20ma pressure sensor screwed into the bottom outlet of the tank somewhere and connected to a C-Bus general input unit.

Rohan

 

Re rain, you can get rain sensors pretty cheaply (under $100). Once they get saturated to a certain point they go closed circuit until they dry out again.

You can adjust the dry out rate to ensure sprinklers schedules don't run until dry. I use them on my house to shut off if rain starts (and has rained sufficiently to saturate the sensor), or to stop a future schedule from running. Currently I run all the 'logic' and scheduling in an old HomeMinder, but will change to Wiser2 when I get home and have time to write and test the logic to control it all. (new house but currently rented out)