More local weather than metar?

[Dave]

The airport station for us is 60 miles away. At the airport and I've noticed they will get rain at different times than my house does. So in other words my sprinklers will automatically turn off when the airport gets rain but we haven't seen any. I have attached a screenshot of the local station that I get when I type in my information on Weather Underground. Is there a way to use this local station's data rather than the main metar which is far away?

Also as a feature request, I've seen many programs ask for the zip code, the user inputs it and the software finds the nearest station. Or even better have an auto location detect feature on the settings page.

By the way I've had my hydroflash for three months now. It has been working great. Since it has been so hot I just have the water on quite a bit. As it cools down I will use that much more to control which days get sprinklers. The iPhone app has been helpful and I look forward to the update.

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[Support]

Hi Dave,

We are looking at adding this in to HydroFLASH so that more localized weather info can be used as an input to HydroFLASH's rain delay functionality. We completely understand as there are areas that have micro climates and are also far from the METAR data sensor location, as in your situation.

Glad that you are happy with the performance of HydroFLASH and we will post something here as new features are added.

Thanks much for your feedback, greatly appreciated.

[chadm]

I am glad that someone else brought this up (not as esoteric a request as I thought it might be).

I run my own VP2 and would love to use that to prevent irrigating during rain, freeze and high winds. As I already publish real-time data to weather underground, it would be fantastic to be able to select my PWS as the source for weather data. It would be nice to be able to select:
Temp below X degrees
Wind above X mph
Rain rate greater than X inches (you already have that primitive with the current METAR implementation).

The next level of desirability would be the ability to select a METAR source and a local source, with independent delay selections for each site. This permits selecting a 'far away' site to preemptively delay (for an hour or whatever), as well as a 'local site' to delay for current conditions (i.e. clear immediately as soon as the wind abates).

-Chad

[ryerson]

Why would I use weather data from anything but the weather station at my residence that also broadcasts to Weather Underground?
http://www.wunderground.com/weather-forecast/US/CA/Dove_Canyon.html
Hope to see this capability someday (soon)

[Support]

Hi,

You will have the ability choose a number of weather sources including to select your personal weather data using your WUI ID. We will be working on the updates to HydroFLASH to include these options so that you can choose this in addition to providing additional options based on other weather parameters for managing your watering times and amounts.

This will allow you to select a local weather METAR station or your own personal weather station for your personal data use.

Let us know if there are any specific features or other options related to this you are interested in implementing.

Thanks,
HydroFLASH Team

[chadm]

This is truly fantastic news! As stated in my original post, preventing irrigation during high winds and active precipitation events are very important.

Temp below X degrees
Wind above X mph
Currrent Rain rate greater than X inches

I can also see value in tapping in to the soil moisture data (if it exists in a PWS feed). The Davis VP2, as an example, is limited to 4 discrete sensors - it would require some thought on how soil moisture could be tied to one or more irrigation zones. Ostensibly, if the zone is tied to a soil moisture feed, that zone would be prevented from running on its scheduled time if the soil moisture reading did not exceed X. You would need a table that permitted tying each zone to a single soil moisture sensor feed (drop down selection to pick one of many), an entry for minimum soil moisture reading, and delay time (to prevent thrashing on well drained soil; hysteresis).

[Support]

Just an update.

We are close to a new release that will have a number if changes and improvements. Here is a partial list.
Multiple weather data choices including WUI and the ability to use MeteoBridge to automatically FTP its data from your PWS data directly into HydroFLASH.
http://www.smartbedded.com/wiki/index.php/Meteobridge

We recently integrated this into HydroFLASH with a Davis Vantage Vue and are using the plug in MeteoStick receiver with the MeteoBridge. The MeteoStick device plugs in to the MeteoBridge and receives data directly from the Davis Sensors, with the MeteoBridge pushing it to multiple sources on the internet including pushing the data to HydroFLASH.
http://www.smartbedded.com/wiki/index.php/Meteostick

We have created the correct templates for this feature and placed then on our cloud server and will post more information on how to set this up in a future post.

We are also adding the ability for other HydroFLASH devices to connect to an 'peer' HydroFLASH that is the repository for the MeteoBridge Data and access it also. This is to support multiple HydroFLASH devices at a single location accessing weather data form a common source. The MeteoBridge will only push the data to single device but multiple HydroFLASH devices can access the HydroFLASH device that has the weather stored on it. These solutions are excellent for locations that have local networking but no Internet access.

The nice part about the MeteoStick receiver is that is frees up your console completely so you can place it anywhere (instead of next to your computer). Ambient Weather sells complete kits for those interested.

We have added Wind and Low Temperature options to prevent watering if selected. Additionally these (along with rain delay) will send out push notifications to your mobile device when they occur or are cleared.

Apple Push notifications are now working.

We added a Water Every X Days via the Watering Scenes that allows you to choose any interval and base it on a epoch date to start.

We are working on the mail SSL/TLS feature also.

The Mobile apps are being updated by our software team and we hope to have everything ready very soon.

Thanks,
HydroFLASH Team