Sure, I'll try to describe. I appreciate you taking the time!
The concept of pumps and stations, differs from simply running stations, because of concurrency of pumps and stations (without full concurrency of everything at once).
Each watering-station will always have one of the pump-stations running at the same time, but these pairs must be separated in time (sequential).
In a commercial irrigation installation, you might have physically distant areas that need pumps to provide pressure.
In my case, I have different nutrient tanks with different formulations, requiring separate pumps to feed the irrigation zones when they are triggered.
In a commercial controller, you might have as many as 6 pump connections. They differ from regular zones, as they are triggered at the same time as zones. So zone 1 runs as pump 1 runs, zone 7 with pump3, etc. Zones are assigned to pumps in a static manner, i.e. zone 7 will *always* come from pump 3. This is a limitation that I'm happy SIP might not have.
Simply choosing sequential vs. concurrent doesn't cover the use case, as I don't want to run all stations at once, for the power requirement and other reasons.
I've been playing with the Combine-Stations plugin, and this comes close, but the limit of 8 virtual stations is limiting
It would be great to be able to assign e.g. 6 extension boards, and choose 8/16/24/32/40/48 virtual stations to come out of that total.
This would allow me to do just about anything I can think of (now).
---
You asked about the actual problem I'm trying to solve, I'll try. It is complex.
The facility has 4 flowering rooms, 2 vegetative rooms.
Each flowering room has 8 irrigation zones (valves). Veg has 3. Total is ~38 zones.
The facility runs a weekly planting cycle, with an 8 week duration in the flower room, which means that in a single flower room has 8 different developmental stages.
There are approximately 3 different nutrient formulations, e.g. Formula 1: weeks 1-3, Formula 2: weeks 4-6, Formula 3: weeks 7-8.
So in this example I have 3 reservoirs with 3 pumps.
I have 8 zones * 4 rooms = 32 zones.
With combine-stations, I can create 8 virtual stations, which will cover the first flower room nicely.
Zone -> Pump:
1->1, 2->1, 3->1, 4->2, 5->2, 6->2, 7->3, 8->3.
For the second flower room, I would like 8 more virtual stations for 9->1, 10->1, etc.
But I ran out!
So, I think a modification to the combine-stations plugin that allows me to choose 8,16,24,32,40,48,.... instead of being fixed at 8 virtuals would cover my use case perfectly.
Make sense? Am I missing another option with the existing code?
Thanks so much for listening!
I would dive in to modifying the plugin myself, and I might, but I have zero python experience
The concept of pumps and stations, differs from simply running stations, because of concurrency of pumps and stations (without full concurrency of everything at once).
Each watering-station will always have one of the pump-stations running at the same time, but these pairs must be separated in time (sequential).
In a commercial irrigation installation, you might have physically distant areas that need pumps to provide pressure.
In my case, I have different nutrient tanks with different formulations, requiring separate pumps to feed the irrigation zones when they are triggered.
In a commercial controller, you might have as many as 6 pump connections. They differ from regular zones, as they are triggered at the same time as zones. So zone 1 runs as pump 1 runs, zone 7 with pump3, etc. Zones are assigned to pumps in a static manner, i.e. zone 7 will *always* come from pump 3. This is a limitation that I'm happy SIP might not have.
Simply choosing sequential vs. concurrent doesn't cover the use case, as I don't want to run all stations at once, for the power requirement and other reasons.
I've been playing with the Combine-Stations plugin, and this comes close, but the limit of 8 virtual stations is limiting
It would be great to be able to assign e.g. 6 extension boards, and choose 8/16/24/32/40/48 virtual stations to come out of that total.
This would allow me to do just about anything I can think of (now).
---
You asked about the actual problem I'm trying to solve, I'll try. It is complex.
The facility has 4 flowering rooms, 2 vegetative rooms.
Each flowering room has 8 irrigation zones (valves). Veg has 3. Total is ~38 zones.
The facility runs a weekly planting cycle, with an 8 week duration in the flower room, which means that in a single flower room has 8 different developmental stages.
There are approximately 3 different nutrient formulations, e.g. Formula 1: weeks 1-3, Formula 2: weeks 4-6, Formula 3: weeks 7-8.
So in this example I have 3 reservoirs with 3 pumps.
I have 8 zones * 4 rooms = 32 zones.
With combine-stations, I can create 8 virtual stations, which will cover the first flower room nicely.
Zone -> Pump:
1->1, 2->1, 3->1, 4->2, 5->2, 6->2, 7->3, 8->3.
For the second flower room, I would like 8 more virtual stations for 9->1, 10->1, etc.
But I ran out!
So, I think a modification to the combine-stations plugin that allows me to choose 8,16,24,32,40,48,.... instead of being fixed at 8 virtuals would cover my use case perfectly.
Make sense? Am I missing another option with the existing code?
Thanks so much for listening!
I would dive in to modifying the plugin myself, and I might, but I have zero python experience