Daily E/T Value

[dfw_pilot]

I apologize for re-hashing this, but I'd love to request a way to add a weekly E/T value, either natively or by adding a seven-day rolling addition of daily values. I'm really interested in helping both myself and my neighbors know when to water their lawns accurately in the Dallas area where water restrictions are tight.

Knowing the weekly E/T total value is huge. Better, knowing when E/T value reaches an inch (for most southern grasses) is great because it is then time to water. The Apple Script ideas don't seem to fit the bill when I know that data must already be retrievable somewhere in the WeatherCat database, which I'd love to get to. For more of the gory details, this article explains it well.

Thanks for the great product,

dfw

[xairbusdriver]

While I can certainly understand the help a running total of rain would be, I'm wondering if a 'soil'/'leaf' sensor would be more beneficial. That paper explains the problem well, at least, as much as I can understand! However, I think the final point is most relevant.

[...] however sophisticated the model, nothing works better at determining when to irrigate than watching the turf for signs of stress ? that?s the best way to know when to water.

Unfortunately, that requires some fairly continuous human observations. Of course, the big, unspoken variable in this whole process, is the possibility of unscientific, regulations that completely ignore soil water levels. "Water only on even numbered days/addresses on days of the week with more than two vowels and when the DJ rate of change has been positive for six consecutive days, except on new Moons during non-leap years."

I have a lawn irrigation system. It has had at least two water (rain) sensor devices that failed rather quickly. It now depend on nothing more than a timer that is occasionally disabled during a week of consequential natural 'waterings'! All bets are off when (not if) the drouths come.

[dfw_pilot]

Yes, Soil Moisture readings (not so much leaf wetness readings) are the best for determining the needs of the lawn. A good, experienced eye is also really good. Like you say though, you have to be home to see the grass, and it seems I'm never home. I love my Soil Station, but I'd like access to a better E/T value for the sake of my neighbors, who have neither a wx station or much of a trained eye! The kicker is that WXCat has to have these values in a way they can be totaled, there just isn't access to that data at present.

Thanks.

[WCDev]

Sadly WeatherCat doesn't keep any stats data for ET - it has no idea what it is; it's just some channels available from your hardware that it records.

If it did, then you could easily create a channel to log either the weekly or rolling 7 days cumulative ET and then graph it and create custom alerts etc.

I'll add it to the request list - thanks for the suggestion 

[xairbusdriver]

Perhaps a script (client or server side) take the DAILYRAIN item at the end of each day and create an seven part array. Each day, the first value would be dropped, the others moved one position, and the current day value added to position 7. After that, the 'work' is mostly math, which I will leave as an exercise for the reader. Of course, "thinking" is always easier than doing...

[elagache]

Dear X-Air and WeatherCat scripters,

Perhaps a script (client or server side) take the DAILYRAIN item at the end of each day and create an seven part array.

Unfortunately, the real problem is that you need to have some way to preserve that state.  You can't count on the script being able to run indefinitely because things like reboots happen.  WC ET Reporter keeps that data in a file on the Mac so it can cope with being quit and launched again.  OF course WC ET Reporter is more complex than needed for this particular task, but it was written with the same goals in mind.  I wanted to keep track of Daily ET, 3-day ET, and 7-day ET.  Those are common watering intervals.

Cheers, Edouard

[xairbusdriver]

Writing a file (the array) to disk or even to the web site is trivial. The main task is creating the changing data set. Even that should be possible with some fairly simple scripting.

From my very scant AS 'knowledge', it would seem that the 'array' would be created only once a day (11:50pm ?). I think the first run (for a weekly cycle) would simply create six null entries or even "x" plus the actual rain or soil value. Each run after that chops off the first value and adds the new daly value to the end.

But AS doesn't seem to have many string manipulation commands... much less array handling capabilities. At least that I've found in recent searching. I'm sure the scripting power-users know how or have found some plugins designed to do this sort (no pun intended, of course) of thing. And interpreting the collection will be the most important part, in my humble opinion. I'll leave that to the too-often-away-from-home-pilot and his Mark 1 Eyeball to do the math! (I wonder if he even has an old E6B circular 'slide rules' used to do lots of math in the cockpit...)

[dfw_pilot]

(I wonder if he even has an old E6B circular 'slide rules' used to do lots of math in the cockpit...)

I have two. At home. In the closet. Now, my math calculations come via my calloused index finger on the keypad of the FMC. But even the FMS can't calculate the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.

I'm a little stunned that this simple issue has such complex answers. If only Davis provided 7-day E/T . . . Many people around Texas use the TexasET Network, but of course, it's only accurate if you live near a reporting station. It is great, though, with a rolling 7 day E/T value. I wish I knew their secret!

[elagache]

Dear X-Air, dfw_pilot, and WeatherCat gardeners, . . .

Writing a file (the array) to disk or even to the web site is trivial. The main task is creating the changing data set. Even that should be possible with some fairly simple scripting.

From my very scant AS 'knowledge', it would seem that the 'array' would be created only once a day (11:50pm ?). I think the first run (for a weekly cycle) would simply create six null entries or even "x" plus the actual rain or soil value. Each run after that chops off the first value and adds the new daly value to the end.

Well if you think it is reasonably simple why don't you try your hand at it.  There are resources to help you along.  Among the best is this website:

http://macscripter.net/

But AS doesn't seem to have many string manipulation commands... much less array handling capabilities. At least that I've found in recent searching.

Well, like many things you'll find what you are looking for only if you what it is called.  MacScripters has examples of string manipulation.  It is better than you imagine.  AppleScript has decent array manipulation tools and they are used in WC ET Reporter.  In addition, there is a French outfit that has written extensions to provide better numerical handling in AppleScript:

http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/smile/index.html

Sadly, AppleScript is just powerful enough for your get started developing decent applications but not powerful enough for you to really finish them to a quality product.

I'm a little stunned that this simple issue has such complex answers. If only Davis provided 7-day E/T . . . Many people around Texas use the TexasET Network, but of course, it's only accurate if you live near a reporting station. It is great, though, with a rolling 7 day E/T value. I wish I knew their secret!

I agree with you 100%.  It seems really silly that Davis omitted this.  Perhaps it was a limitation of the console processor.  The Vantage Pro-2 is really getting old.  You might want to call Davis and ask about this.  At the very least they need to be reminded of this omission periodically.

Cheers, Edouard 

[dfw_pilot]

You might want to call Davis and ask about this.  At the very least they need to be reminded of this omission periodically.

That's actually a really good idea. I might just do that.

dfw

[xairbusdriver]

Well if you think it is reasonably simple why don't you try your hand at it.

I might do that once I get my current tasks completed. I'll first have to determine what and where the values needed are. Should it be the daily rain total or the soil sample? If the soil sample, at what time of the day should it be recorded, or should it be an average value? If an average, how many values should be used per day? etc., etc. As I said, that is the difficult part.

I have visited both those AS related sites, and several others, also. I have spent a good deal of time getting the AS I created to work... until I encountered another problem with the text fed to it. I have decided to just use AS to simply write the complete "uptime" result to a file and manipulate it with PHP.

PHP is less "English" like, but it is also much more widely supported and developed. After all, both were designed to do different things; AS mostly to control/auotmate Apple hardware, PHP to make interactive web sites on multiple hardware providers. Different tools for different tasks.

The AS easily runs the bash command and writes the little text file. WC's built-in server uploads it fine. PHP can then do its thing on whatever it's fed. I used LaunchControl to set up the system function to run the AS every 15 minutes. It has s a nice GUI and allows one to use it free for several days. I downloaded an older, simpler app, but it did not one to save the setup without paying for a license. Since they were the same price, I gave the benefit of a purchase to the one that allowed un-restricted use.

[dfw_pilot]

I wrote Davis about adding a weekly E/T value to the console and they got back to me.

Dear Sir,

The Console programming cannot be altered, though management has taken this into consideration. It took many years to determine what customers were asking for, and what they can afford, and this was the final conclusion. With this in mind we came up with the AG software that contains strip charts that you can set for any number of days, weeks, months, to see ET.

Doing this on the Console would have placed the console beyond the capabilities of average customers. Most average customers don?t know what ET is. You are the first to mention this in 3 years considering the thousands of calls we get. But we haven?t forgotten your request and I spoke to my Manager and he mentioned the AG software but we weren?t sure you had a PC to work with. He will also forward your request to our Engineering Dept.

I'm remaining cautiously optimistic that they may add this simple feature in the future. I want to try and convince them that, like Steve Jobs came up with ideas that people didn't know they wanted until he presented them, weekly E/T could be the same. People may not have heard about it, but once they know they can save on watering the lawn; so much so the price of the station might be paid for with the savings, hopefully Davis will jump on the idea.

We'll see . . .

[WCDev]

I have added it as a feature request (#198) - I'll probably do it when I do the tags for CO2 - they aren't going to be in 2.3.0, but maybe on 2.3.1 .

[dfw_pilot]

In a similar vein of a weekly E/T gauge request for all of us who use a weather station for the watering of lawns, I'd like to also throw in a request for a weekly rain gauge as well. That might be an easier implementation than weekly E/T, but I'd love (and so would neighbors who use my site for watering lawns) to have a simple gauge to see a running weekly total. A graph is nice, and that's all I have to play with, but adding up the numbers is not as nice as simply seeing the running weekly total on a gauge. Thanks for any help,

dfw

[WCDev]

Weekly rain can be done as a synthetic channel - this would then allow you to graph it or put it on a custom gauge.  The following should do it:

Code: [Select]

set Query to "STAT$RAIN:TOTAL:THISWEEK$"
set weekRain to QueryResult
return weekRain

See attached screenshot for the rest of the settings.