I am in the process of building this in my system. I want to add a couple of extra features. such as minimum run time, the ability to run a few minutes each hour over night (for skimming) and some other bits an pieces.

  • @[email protected]
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    21 year ago

    Haha! Nothing wrong with keeping track of some inspiration.

    Sounds like you already have the ideal setup for that part then. You could set an automation that loops with a timed delay to handle the night time pump circulation.

    Would you need the pump to observe the same behavior with longer run times during the day? If so you can set it to check the time or sunrise/sunset and run the corresponding loop you need. That might solve the minimum runtime issue as you would be achieving your goal runtime by dividing it across the day.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      11 year ago

      i think i want to try and run between the sunny hours, only off of solar. but at some point it will be obvious i wont get my minimum run time in, so i will need to run it anyway.

      Shouldn’t be too hard to track the sun in the sky, and start the solar-powered run when it is above an angle, and move to a maximum time limited schedule when it is not possible to actually generate enough power to run the pump.

      1. track the time that the pump is running, and reset it to zero at the start of the day
      2. when the solar allows for it, run the pump
      3. when solar is not longer able to power the pump (ie max potential power is less than trigger), move to a timer based schedule
      4. if the pump run time is >required, stop the pump (and dont restart it)