x10 Rain8II sprinkler weather scripts for use with Heyu

I use Heyu-2.9.1 for X10 home automation running on a Sheevaplug. For irrigation, I purchased a Rain8II from WGL Designs some time ago. With the Rain8II you need an X10 ON, and OFF for each zone to control it, unlike the first Rain8 where you just needed to trigger the first zone and it would automatically go through it's watering cycle. The Rain8II is also 2-way X10. That means you can configure it to automatically send back a status message to confirm that is has received the command that an x10 device has sent it.

The Rain8II states in the manual that it can be controlled by an X10 Mini Timer schedule, which I've done. When you want to disable the schedule, due to rain for example, you simply slide the selector from 'Run' to 'Set Clock' and it disables the first 5 unit codes. In my case I am only using 5 sprinkler zones so this worked out perfect. If you want to disable all 8 zones on the Rain8II, you will need to change the house code on the Mini Timer to an unused house code.

I mostly use the CM11a and Heyu for my Rain8II timers. Only when my CM11a cable went bad, I used the Mini Timer until I replaced the cable. I simply created the proper macros and timers in the schedule file an uploaded them to the CM11a. Well since I have a LOT of x10 signals flying around my house, some of the x10 signals for the Rain8II were being missed. According to the Heyu man pages, the solution for this was to simply schedule it twice a minute apart. So I have two ON and two OFF timers for all five zones. This works great, but I still have to comment out the timers and re-upload the schedule file on unexpected rainy days I don't want to water, and remember to reverse that when I am ready to water according the regular schedule again. Also, since the Rain8II sends back confirmation messages to Heyu, I shouldn't need two entries per ON and OFF for each zone in the schedule file!

With Heyu-2.9.1, the module type RAIN8II was added, as well as the module option 'DEFER'. What DEFER does, is it makes Heyu wait until it receives back the Status message from the module before updating it's internal state tables. So now you can send the command 'heyu status backyard_grass' and it will give you a guaranteed result. I also recently learned that you can trigger heyu scripts in the x10.conf file with CM11a uploaded timers using the 'sndm' flag in your script. If you use Heyu, you should know what the transmission flags are.

All that being said, I wanted a way so that my sprinkler timers would work with only the CM11a in case my Sheevaplug is down for some reason. I also wanted to be able to supplement the CM11a timers with a little intelligence when the Sheevaplug and heyu were up and running, which they are most of the time.

The first goal here is to create a status checking script so that I can eliminate the two timer schedules per x10 signal per zone that I currently have uploaded to the CM11a. I only want one timer entry per signal!

The second goal is to create a rain checking script, so that sprinklers won't turn on if it is raining, or has rained in the last X number of days. It would be so cool if I could calculate evapo-transpiration in the script, but that is a pipe dream for now.

So far, I have a first draft of the weather script created and as of tonight it worked! (it is raining a bit at the moment).

I still need to create the status checking script. I will update this blog as I get to it.

I hope some of you shell scripting and heyu experts can offer corrections and advice!



It appears that pasting my code has messed it up a bit, need to figure that out...




/etc/heyu/x10.conf:

alias driveway_grass I1 RAIN8II DEFER
alias walkway_grass I2 RAIN8II DEFER
alias front_planters I3 RAIN8II DEFER
alias backyard_grass I4 RAIN8II DEFER
alias sideyard_grass I5 RAIN8II DEFER

SCRIPT driveway_grass on sndm :: /usr/local/bin/chkrain.sh; if [ "$?" ]; then heyu off driveway_grass; fi
SCRIPT walkway_grass on sndm :: /usr/local/bin/chkrain.sh; if [ "$?" ]; then heyu off walkway_grass; fi
SCRIPT front_planters on sndm :: /usr/local/bin/chkrain.sh; if [ "$?" ]; then heyu off front_planters; fi
SCRIPT backyard_grass on sndm :: /usr/local/bin/chkrain.sh; if [ "$?" ]; then heyu off backyard_grass; fi
SCRIPT sideyard_grass on sndm :: /usr/local/bin/chkrain.sh; if [ "$?" ]; then heyu off sideyard_grass; fi


/etc/heyu/x10.sched:

macro driveway_grass_on 0 on driveway_grass
macro driveway_grass_off 0 off driveway_grass
macro walkway_grass_on 0 on walkway_grass
macro walkway_grass_off 0 off walkway_grass
macro front_planters_on 0 on front_planters
macro front_planters_off 0 off front_planters
macro backyard_grass_on 0 on backyard_grass
macro backyard_grass_off 0 off backyard_grass
macro sideyard_grass_on 0 on sideyard_grass
macro sideyard_grass_off 0 off sideyard_grass


timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 21:30 21:40 driveway_grass_on driveway_grass_off
timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 21:31 21:41 driveway_grass_on driveway_grass_off
timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 21:42 21:52 walkway_grass_on walkway_grass_off
timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 21:43 21:53 walkway_grass_on walkway_grass_off
timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 21:54 22:04 front_planters_on front_planters_off
timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 21:55 22:05 front_planters_on front_planters_off
timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 22:06 22:16 backyard_grass_on backyard_grass_off
timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 22:07 22:17 backyard_grass_on backyard_grass_off
timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 22:18 22:23 sideyard_grass_on sideyard_grass_off
timer s.t.tf. 01/01-12/31 22:19 22:24 sideyard_grass_on sideyard_grass_off


/usr/local/bin/chkrain.sh:

#!/bin/bash

# This script will check for rain and
# return a 0 if no rain, and a 1 if
# it is raining.

STATIONID=KSNA
RAINPAD=2 # Day 0 is today.
RAINTHRESH="0.05"

# Get dates in various formats for use below.
DATE=`date +"%Y/%m/%d"`
CURPDT=`date +'%Y%m%d'`

# Available colums are:
# PDT,Max TemperatureF,Mean TemperatureF,Min TemperatureF,Max Dew PointF,MeanDew PointF,Min DewpointF,Max Humidity, Mean Humidity, Min Humidity, Max Sea Level PressureIn, Mean Sea Level PressureIn, Min Sea Level PressureIn, Max VisibilityMiles, Mean VisibilityMiles, Min VisibilityMiles, Max Wind SpeedMPH, Mean Wind SpeedMPH, Max Gust SpeedMPH,PrecipitationIn, CloudCover, Events
RESULT=`curl -s http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/$STATIONID/$DATE/WeeklyHistory.html?format=1`

# Remove HTML
# Remove header line
# We only care about fields: PDT, Mean TemperatureF, PrecipitationIn, and Events
# Reverse output so today is first going back in time.
WEEKLY=`echo $RESULT | sed 's/
/\\n/g' | sed '/<.*>/d' | sed '/PDT/d' | cut -d, -f1,3,20,22 | sed -n '1!G;h;$p'`

# Remove decimal and convert RAINTHRESH to base10
RAINTHRESH=`echo $RAINTHRESH | sed 's/\.//g'`; RAINTHRESH=$((10#$RAINTHRESH))

echo "$WEEKLY" | while read RECORD
do
RECPDT=`echo $RECORD | cut -d, -f1 | sed 's/-//g'`
TEMP=`echo $RECORD | cut -d, -f2`
INCHES=`echo $RECORD | cut -d, -f3`
EVENT=`echo $RECORD | cut -d, -f4`
DATEDIFF=$(($CURPDT - $RECPDT))
if [ "$DATEDIFF" = "0" ] && [ "$EVENT" = "Rain" ]; then exit 1; fi
if [ "$INCHES" = "T" ] && [ "$EVENT" != "Rain" ]; then INCHES="0"; else INCHES=$((10#$INCHES)); fi
if [ "$DATEDIFF" -le "$RAINPAD" ] && [ "$EVENT" = "Rain" ] && [ "$INCHES" -ge "$RAINTHRESH" ]; then
exit 1
fi
done