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Rain sensor

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Jim:
Hi Gangee,

I see from your connection log that you experienced a connection outage of a couple hours today.  During that time your EtherRain is most likely still working , however it cannot report in to LawnCheck because it can't reach LawnCheck.  Usually this would be caused by some type of temporary outage or it could be traffic congestion (not just on your network but in the case of Cable, if you share bandwitdth with neighbors).  During that time you can still connect locally with the controller and you may also be able to reach the Internet with your computer, because your computer will continuously try to reestablish a connection and will deal with a lot of dropped connections, but EtherRain may not be able to connect.  

In any event two hour connection losses, should they keep occurring say once or twice or even three times a day should still result in ok irrigation performance.  Their are extended modes you can use if you experience cycle skipping.  Extended modes deliver commands earlier and run commands later giving you a delivery window up up to 5 hours.

You'll have to track your outage performance to see if your connection provides the necessary connectivity that you need for your application.   The way you'll be able to tell is via the cycle skip report.  If you get a high number of cycle skips per week continously  even after setting your programs up in extended mode, then your connection may not allow you to use the service.     I haven't come across any customer connections yet that were so bad that LawnCheck wouldn't work. So we will have to continue watching and monitoring.

JIm
  

Gangee:
Jim,

I'm trying to track this down. 
What direction does the check-in process go?  Does the device report to you (upload), or do you ask the device (download)?  How often? 

Thanks,

Jim:
Hi Gangee,

the controller checks in with LawnCheck.  it sends check-in request about once every 5 minutes.


JIm

Gangee:
Jim,

What port does it use? http or https? Is it sending text or a ping? Any and all details are good. I should be able to replicate the issue by writing a little program myself. If this is too sensitive, send me an email.

Jim:
Hi Gangee,

I don't want to talk about the protocol on this forum because LawnCheck was designed to be easy to use without need for a technical background and most users won't benefit from reading it.

To answer your question though, you don't have to write any software, just use the connection tester available through EtherRain Admin Windows or Java.  It uses your computer to tell if a connection can be established.  Also, because you mentioned ping, you could do a series of ping requests to LawnCheck.com during various periods of the day to see how the response time varies.  This might help in understanding any outages your LawnCheck report is showing, plus you could try a different DNS address.  Again, this is fringe stuff that most users don't need to know about. 

And also, your connection report shows pretty good connectivity.  The only reason I mention congestion is because you've had solid connectivity during nights and morning and only modest outage blocks during midday, so far anyway.  Seeing most people irrigate at night or morning this should provide great service.  We'll keep monitoring.

Hope this helps,
Jim

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