"chain" two devices together

[ljm]

Although I haven't purchased the controllers yet, I have setup two devices on the LawnCheck website, and I'm pretty impressed!

Have you considered adding a way to "chain" two devices together?  So rather than setting the first to come on at 7:00am and hard-coding the next for 8:30, set it up for the second to start once the first is scheduled to be done?  LawnCheck could even take into account when the first is set to 80% and adjust the starting time of the second one accordingly.

The idea would be to complete the watering in as short as time as possible, without risking that two sprinklers will come on at the same time.

When multi-cycles are involved, it would be particularly cool if LawnCheck could run the first cycle on the first controller, then the first cycle on the second controller, then the second cycle on the first controller followed by the second cycle on the second controller.  It seems like LawnCheck should be able to calculate the start times for each controller without too much difficulty.

-larry

[Jim]

Hi Larry,
A few customers have requested this and I have given this some thought.  It's something that is very possible and needs to be done.  Hopefully this winter!

Thanks,

Jim

[ljm]

Sounds good!  If you can do that, I think the next logical step would be to remove the "one device per program" limitation.  The reason I have two devices is that I have ten sprinkler heads; ideally I would like to program them as though I only had one device.

As it is now I have to setup two identical "normal programs" (one for each device) that have the same options (in terms of "days on", "months on", number of cycles and weather options) and two more identical "hot day programs".  And I have to remember to pause all four programs when needed

The ideal thing would be to have one "normal program" and one "hot day program" where I simply choose all the zones (on any device) that they apply to.

Having said all that though, I need to mention that Lawn Check is already light years ahead of my current timer system, so these requests aren't critical to my adoption of Lawn Check

[Jim]

Larry,
The current thinking matches that approach.  In essence we'd allow a second controller to be optionally defined as "linked" to a primary controller.  The second controller. if linked to a primary controller, would not have an independent schedule. All of the zones defined in the second controller would show up on the primary controller's program screen.    In essense, the LawnCheck scheduler would build a single 16 zone controller from the two 8 zone devices.

That's the thinking, the rest is time and energy!  Can't commit this to a timeframe yet.

Jim

[ljm]

That sounds perfect!

[brk]

That sounds like the best solution, treating the two as one virtual device.  I would benefit from two devices in the future as well!

[Gangee]

I now have 2 controllers, add me to the list.
Having all 16 zones display in a Program would be great.

[pohoda]

This would be a great feature. It is cumbersome trying to adjust multiple zones so that they do not overlap. Also when pausing it would be great to be able to do it once for both controller.

[Jim]

Hello pohada,
Thanks for your additional request.  We've just added the feature to OptiRain Open in the recent Version 2.0 so we hope to also add this to LawnCheck.  We are working on an android app right now and when completed will prioritize  to get to this functionality implemented ( by spring 2015).

Jim

[pohoda]

Thanks Jim. An Android app would also be awesome! Keep up the great work.

[pohoda]

Hi Jim,

Has there been any progress on getting the chaining done for Lawncheck.com? I see that you have completed the Android app and I am using it.

Thanks,

Paul

[Jim]

Hello Paul,

Yes, its July 10 2015 and "chaining" has been implemented.  You must have two or more controllers within your account.  Chaining is called Sequential Linking and has been tested for up to three controllers.  It should work for more than three if you have them, but over three hasn't been tested.   Multicycle has been tested to an extent.

Because this is relatively new you should check your logs.   Standard linking (ie, non-multicyle) has been tested for about 3 months now under various conditions.  It appears to work well with no overlap - each program in the "chain" starts about 1 to 3 minutes after the last program has completed.   Sequential linking works only for scheduled programs not for manual/quick cycles.

After you have linked programs together you will find that it is very easy to click through the chain using the links on the program summary screen starting with the starting program.

Here's the  help page for sequential linking.

Jim

[pohoda]

Great! Thanks Jim. I will check it out.

[pohoda]

I was able to setup the linking as described. I really like the approach you took to doing this. Nothing fancy and just a simple and effective implementation. Nice work and thanks again for continuing to enhance the product!

-Paul