Feature request - no flow alert

[booboodoguy]

I have been using the flow rate sensor code for a couple of years now and have experienced zero flow situations due to a defective rain sensor. Now that the flow sensor code from bb09961 is in the main branch I request that a check be added to the flow sensor flow rate to, in addition to exceeding the user specified flow rate, a flow rate greater than zero ( or some small number) is checked.

[bb09961]

Yeah, that is a good idea. I had the same thing happen last year due to a flow meter wiring issue. To make it more flexible, it would be great to implement a user set minimum flow rate for each station. If the flow sensor or a valve fails, or if a sprinkler head or drip system is clogged, or a master pump fails, or the water is unexpectedly shut off, it would send a Low Flow alert.

If the existing method is used, it would get a little crowded and maybe confusing to add 2 numbers to the name of each station to indicate minimum and maximum flow rate. It's possible, but I think changing the UI to have the min and max flow value stored for each station in separate fields would be ideal. Let's see if that is something they would consider first as I don't have the ability to suggest specific UI code changes myself.

As an example, this below would start impacting the amount of room for the station name:

This would be much more intuitive:

[booboodoguy]

Here's my simple code changes to notifier.cpp to get a FLOW ALERT if the flow for any zone is less than 10% of the max flow set point.

281 if (flow_last_gpm > 0 && strlen(tmp_station_name) > 5) {
remove "flow_last_gpm > 0 &&" since I want to check for zero flow.
next
293 if ((flow_last_gpm*flowrate100/100.f) > flow_gpm_alert_setpoint) {
change line 293 to ...

293 if ((flow_last_gpmflowrate100/100.f) > flow_gpm_alert_setpoint || (flow_last_gpmflowrate100/100.f) < (.1 * flow_gpm_alert_setpoint )) {

This solves my problem.

[bb09961]

Yeah, that makes sense. I'll test that out on my personal firmware version and see how it goes.

[bb09961]

The only issue I found with this logic is that if the station runs less than ~90 seconds, the flow rate will always be 0. Flow rates aren't calculated before 90 seconds to avoid air in the lines causing inaccurate flow rates.
With that in mind, I added an additional check to only send an alert if the duration is greater or equal than 120 seconds
if (fval >= 120 && ( (flow_last_gpm * flowrate100 / 100.f) > flow_gpm_alert_setpoint || (flow_last_gpm * flowrate100 / 100.f) < (0.1 * flow_gpm_alert_setpoint) ))