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Irrigation Control Interface w/C4?


CFUG

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Is anyone doing anything with C4 WRT sprinklers that is beyond what a standard time clock can offer? In need of a motion activated routine that will scare dogs off of the grass. I'm tired of replacing sod every other month.

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^Yeah, it would be on schedule. I think the dog walkers come out about 8 or 8:30 so that's when it would go active. I'll have my dealer put in a CA relay and just kick-on the one zone solenoid. I don't have a outdoor motion so I need to deal with that somehow. It seems that if C4 can market a T-Stat (don't get me started on this device) they can contract with someone for a Zigbee time clock...

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^To talk to the Zigbee solenoids. Wireless sprinkler control is a natural but nobody does it. But, fo my project, interfacing to the solenoid themselves is what I'm after. CA wireless relay is the only way to do it. Or, HC300/500 dry contacts or contact extender I think.

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I have a Driverworks Rain8net RS-232 irrigation driver that has been developed. It isn't flawless yet but it supports multiple programs, chaining multiple Rain8net's together, etc.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We're you able to integrate the rain8net into the C4 system? I found this product last summer - but my dealer had no idea how to do it. I have 14 valves that need integration - and if we are talking cutting edge programming - I would really like to see it interface with a home weather system that monitors wind speed and humidity - so that a a simple if then statement applies they will not turn on the cycle. It never does much good when the wind is blowing 20 mph and the water is blowing across the driveway instead of the lawn.

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The Driverworks driver currently supports chaining as many Rain8Net devices as you want. I'm using 2 chained devices for 16 stations (although I'm only using 9 sprinkler zones). It supports 5 separate programs and a test program. It supports the idea of a seasonal adjustment percentage. It also lets you toggle on/off specific zones (which appear as relays in the system which you can trigger from the remote, touchscreens, etc) and either have them stay on until you turn them off or they auto-shut off after the program time passes (used when you want to just trigger a specific zone for extra time, like my orchard).

It needs some tweaks (by someone who has the access to the driverworks stuff) but I also think it needs to support a second way of assigning programs. Currently the programs work where it uses for each zone a field where you specify ABCDE for a zone to be in all 5 programs, or AD to work on the first and fourth programs, etc. In retrospect, I would like it to also have the option where I could specify a start zone (say 3) and an end zone (say 6) for doing all of my lawn zones, etc.

The other interesting and useful thing I figured out after the fact is that it supports 24V relay trigger. You can hook that to an Elk 24V relay and use it to trigger things like landscape lighting, etc. with my extra un-utilized zones.

Once the driver is dropped in and the connections are made, the programming for doing the zones is actually very easy. Mine look to my rain sensor before they run the appropriate program, etc. Now if only you could do math within the C4 interface, that could make some more complex scenarios interesting, anyways I digress.

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  • 2 months later...

Max,

I have 4 Rain8net devices running about 26 zones. I would love to try out your driver for these. I am not trying to do anything fancy just create a few routines that allow running different sets of zones each day/night.

Thanks,

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I just got a cyber-rain controller - cost me $364 and the city of South Jordan gave me a $250 rebate. Look it up - pretty cool - does not work with C4, but the software is cool and will soon be able to control from the road.

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  • 7 months later...
Max,

I have 4 Rain8net devices running about 26 zones. I would love to try out your driver for these. I am not trying to do anything fancy just create a few routines that allow running different sets of zones each day/night.

Thanks,

26 zones? And your water bill is how much? Oh, you have a farm and you pump it from your pond- I see....

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Max' date='

I have 4 Rain8net devices running about 26 zones. I would love to try out your driver for these. I am not trying to do anything fancy just create a few routines that allow running different sets of zones each day/night.

Thanks,[/quote']

26 zones? And your water bill is how much? Oh, you have a farm and you pump it from your pond- I see....

It could be a lot of small areas that need different amounts of water. It is not uncommon for example to have flower beds that have different watering needs.

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Holy Moly. Well, us city-slickers don't have much of a "back 40". In fact, in my area there is plenty of Astro turf-like material going down. You might have 4 or 5 zones. At any rate, the I/O Ext. and some SSRs provide control here.

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Yeah, we don't have much xeriscaping in my neighborhood, but my parents' neighbors both have rocks in their front yards.

A lot more of that in Arizona than in Utah, that's for sure.

With 20 zones, it gets pretty expensive to do it all on the I/O Extender.

RyanE

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Not that I don't trust C4 or anything, but I feel better having an irrigation system running the irrigation. If for any reason the C4 system was offline, the sprinklers wouldn't work.

I think I have 17 zones, which (as already pointed out) is cost prohibitive in addition to my skepticism of doing it that way.

I don't think my HOA allows for xeriscape (sp?), but everyone here has lawn anyways.

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Been OK so far- around a year now. I had a cheap builders-grade Orbit controller to start with and the damn wireless rain sensor would never work properly. I've got a commercial sensor unit attached to disconnect solenoids instead of toggling the programming. I can also kill-off operation through 4Sight. I guess I was more worried about the sofware failing ON while I was out of town.

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Been OK so far- around a year now. I had a cheap builders-grade Orbit controller to start with and the damn wireless rain sensor would never work properly. I've got a commercial sensor unit attached to disconnect solenoids instead of toggling the programming. I can also kill-off operation through 4Sight. I guess I was more worried about the sofware failing ON while I was out of town.

Yeah, leaving them on would be worse than leaving them off. I just let my sprinkler timer handle that, the rain sensor works great. Integrating with C4 would be cool, but I wouldn't go through much cost of hassle to implement it.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi, Guys, I just came across this IP base irrigation controller that can be controlled anywhere in the world over the web.

I was wondering if any of you out there could integrate it with c4 since i'm not that tech savvy.

this is the website: www.irrigationcaddy.com.

Please let me know your thoughts. thanks.

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