Question
What does TimedOutOpening mean in a schedule?
Answer
This means the software couldn't confirm if your device, i.e. valve, flood gate, etc. opened successfully within an acceptable time period.
Overview
The scheduling software has a specified time period within which a device must open successfully. This is to prevent a schedule being stuck on a failed device indefinitely and avert major issues in the irrigation system, such as a pump shutting down or a pipe bursting.
This allowed time period depends on the device type. For example, a valve shouldn't take more than 2 minutes to open under normal circumstances. A flood gate, on the other hand, can take up to 4 minutes to open fully.
If you're getting a lot of timeouts but the device is opening successfully in the field, your system might be suffering from:
- Communications issues - the field unit (or gateway) is dropping off the cellular or radio network due to reception or other issues, which is preventing the software from verifying if the device has opened.
- Congestion issues - if you have a large radio network deployed, messages may be getting delayed.
The best way to avoid this error is to make sure:
- Gateway units are located at good cellular reception.
- Any 900MHz radio field units have line of sight to the Gateway unit. Crops and other foliage that grow over the antenna height will break radio communications.
- All antennas are undamaged.
- Gateway antennas are installed according to the guidelines.
- Field units are fully charged and there are no battery issues.
- The number of radio nodes in the network is limited to avoid congestion.