Hi, I have three Harvst heater pads, hooked up to aux control 3 on my Watermate, mains version, through a Harst supplied splitter cable. I can't get them to heat.
I've tried these two options:
- Turn on when Temperature [ID 8904] under "Wired sensors" in the dropdown is below 20, limit to 90 seconds, wait 1 minutes before running again. Nothing happens, even when the temperature has been well below 20 degrees celcius for hours.
- Or use timers: On at 8 am for 3 minutes.
No heat can be felt with any of these options. I'm assuming Temperature [ID 8904] is the short, probelike temperature that hooks up to the Watermate's dedicated port for this.
Am I not understanding something? I can't find any directions on how to hook it up, so I thought it would be as straightforward as my attempts.
3 minutes may not be enough to give a noticeable warmth, especially in the summer. The heaters are designed for propagation in Winter/Spring and don't generate a ton of heat ( intentionally )
I would suggest having the heaters on for a long period on a timer ( over 10 minutes )
Or else turning on when temperature goes below X, set limit to 0; then the heaters will remain on while the temperature is low. Note that if you are using temperature sensing, you'd need to consider how you place the temperature sensor relative to the heaters.
It may be best to turn the heaters on when general air temp is under 10C, they don't get hot enough to cook plants. Then when the day warms up above 10C, they will turn off.
Thank you, I'll give that a whirl. I wasn't sure how warm the heaters could get, and didn't want to overdo it. Might be a good idea to say something about that in the manual or on the product description in your webshop
I tried setting heaters to turn on when temp is below 12 degrees celcius, limit 0. Last night was several degrees below that, according to the watermate app, so the heaters should have been continually on for several hours. When I checked this morning, while temperature still was around 8 degrees, there was no discernible heat. I get that you don't want to cook plants, but if there is no noticable difference between pads on or off, how effective can they be?
And how can I tell if they actually work? Maybe my splitter cable is faulty? Will the pads turning on be logged in stats, like watering is? Or is there somewhere else I can see if they're active?
Hi Thomas
When the box turns on, it runs a hardware test. The results are logged; so if you do a power off/on, then go to Settings > View logs on the device control panel ( via its wifi ) you should see the results of the Aux 1/2/3 tests. Can you paste them in here?
Chris
I'll do that, if it's still necessary? Ie: I've done some testing, and concluded that the hardware seems to work.
I set the heater pads to run for an hour, starting at a set time. All three heated up, quite noticably. I then also set the Harvst supplied grow lights on a different output to turn on at a set time. This also worked fine, so at least the hardware is working.
What I still can't get to work, though, is turning stuff on when sensor trigger values are reached. For clearer test results, I set my grow lights to turn on when the temperature is lower than 25 degrees. Which it was for the whole test day, so I'm assuming it should have turned on once the update was sent to control unit?
( Which, by the way, is awfully and seemingly unnecessarily clunky, given that I have a 240V connected unit, rather than a solar powered one. Waiting for up to 30 minutes to see the effect of setting changes is quite tedious when power usage isn't really an issue )
So I guess the remaining causes are either a software issue or user error. Could you provide a screenshot of all the exact values I need to input to turn the heater pads on when the hardware temperature sensor is below 12 degrees celcius, for a non plant cooking period of time and pause, preferably keeping the soil temperature in small propagation pots in the vicinity of 12 degrees, in a propagation tray with a lid, when ambient temperature is around 8 degrees?
I did check the logs, without restarting the control unit. Here's the output from today:
00:00:00 AUX 3 ON for 0s ( aux3 )
00:15:01 Sensor period off 3
00:15:01 AUX 3 OFF ( aux 3 )
00:15:02 AUX 3 ON for 0s ( aux3 )
00:30:02 Sensor period off 3
00:30:02 AUX 3 OFF ( aux 3 )
00:30:04 AUX 3 ON for 0s ( aux3 )
00:45:05 Sensor period off 3
00:45:05 AUX 3 OFF ( aux 3 )
00:45:06 AUX 3 ON for 0s ( aux3 )
01:00:00 AUX 3 OFF ( aux 3 )
09:00:00 z1 sked1 on for 30s
09:00:00 Pump on z1
09:00:16 Water low z1
09:00:33 Pump time finished
09:00:33 Pump off z1
13:05:32 Received new settings
17:22:14 Wifi: Mains restart
This was with these settings:
Use sensors...
Turn on when
Temperature [ID 8904]
is below 12
Limit to 600 seconds
Wait 12 minutes before running again
Unless I'm misunderstanding something fundamental, it looks like the unit is ignoring the settings altogether, pretends to do something a few times after midnight and then just goes to sleep.
Should I restart the unit? Update firmware? Anything else?
I've tried these two options:
- Turn on when Temperature [ID 8904] under "Wired sensors" in the dropdown is below 20, limit to 90 seconds, wait 1 minutes before running again. Nothing happens, even when the temperature has been well below 20 degrees celcius for hours.
- Or use timers: On at 8 am for 3 minutes.
No heat can be felt with any of these options. I'm assuming Temperature [ID 8904] is the short, probelike temperature that hooks up to the Watermate's dedicated port for this.
Am I not understanding something? I can't find any directions on how to hook it up, so I thought it would be as straightforward as my attempts.
I would suggest having the heaters on for a long period on a timer ( over 10 minutes )
Or else turning on when temperature goes below X, set limit to 0; then the heaters will remain on while the temperature is low. Note that if you are using temperature sensing, you'd need to consider how you place the temperature sensor relative to the heaters.
It may be best to turn the heaters on when general air temp is under 10C, they don't get hot enough to cook plants. Then when the day warms up above 10C, they will turn off.
And how can I tell if they actually work? Maybe my splitter cable is faulty? Will the pads turning on be logged in stats, like watering is? Or is there somewhere else I can see if they're active?
When the box turns on, it runs a hardware test. The results are logged; so if you do a power off/on, then go to Settings > View logs on the device control panel ( via its wifi ) you should see the results of the Aux 1/2/3 tests. Can you paste them in here?
Chris
I set the heater pads to run for an hour, starting at a set time. All three heated up, quite noticably. I then also set the Harvst supplied grow lights on a different output to turn on at a set time. This also worked fine, so at least the hardware is working.
What I still can't get to work, though, is turning stuff on when sensor trigger values are reached. For clearer test results, I set my grow lights to turn on when the temperature is lower than 25 degrees. Which it was for the whole test day, so I'm assuming it should have turned on once the update was sent to control unit?
( Which, by the way, is awfully and seemingly unnecessarily clunky, given that I have a 240V connected unit, rather than a solar powered one. Waiting for up to 30 minutes to see the effect of setting changes is quite tedious when power usage isn't really an issue )
So I guess the remaining causes are either a software issue or user error. Could you provide a screenshot of all the exact values I need to input to turn the heater pads on when the hardware temperature sensor is below 12 degrees celcius, for a non plant cooking period of time and pause, preferably keeping the soil temperature in small propagation pots in the vicinity of 12 degrees, in a propagation tray with a lid, when ambient temperature is around 8 degrees?
00:00:00 AUX 3 ON for 0s ( aux3 )
00:15:01 Sensor period off 3
00:15:01 AUX 3 OFF ( aux 3 )
00:15:02 AUX 3 ON for 0s ( aux3 )
00:30:02 Sensor period off 3
00:30:02 AUX 3 OFF ( aux 3 )
00:30:04 AUX 3 ON for 0s ( aux3 )
00:45:05 Sensor period off 3
00:45:05 AUX 3 OFF ( aux 3 )
00:45:06 AUX 3 ON for 0s ( aux3 )
01:00:00 AUX 3 OFF ( aux 3 )
09:00:00 z1 sked1 on for 30s
09:00:00 Pump on z1
09:00:16 Water low z1
09:00:33 Pump time finished
09:00:33 Pump off z1
13:05:32 Received new settings
17:22:14 Wifi: Mains restart
This was with these settings:
Use sensors...
Turn on when
Temperature [ID 8904]
is below 12
Limit to 600 seconds
Wait 12 minutes before running again
Unless I'm misunderstanding something fundamental, it looks like the unit is ignoring the settings altogether, pretends to do something a few times after midnight and then just goes to sleep.
Should I restart the unit? Update firmware? Anything else?