Troubleshooting

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In order to troubleshoot this integration or get help, it's important to check two sources:

• the diagnostic file / storage file. You can either generate a diagnostic file or get the smart_irrigation.storage file from the configuration/.storage folder. To download a diagnostics file, in Home Assistant, go to Settings >Devices&Services > Integrations >Smart Irrigation, or use this link. Click the 'three vertical dots' menu and select 'download diagnostics'.

Reading the diagnostic / storage file

The diagnostic / storage file is in a JSON format and lists your configuration settings, your zones, sensor groups and modules. It also lists the weather data collected. The weather data is stored in the metric system, so might not match up with what you see in the UI. Here's a list of units:

• Dewpoint, Temperature: degrees Celsius (C)
• Evapotranspiration, Total Precipitation: millimeters (mm)
• Humidity: Percentage (%)
• Pressure: converted to absolute if provided as relative pressure and stored in hPa
• Solar radiation: megajoule per day per square meter (MJ/day/m2)
• Windspeed: meter per second (m/s)

The reason we're using these units is consistency but also because the most-used module (PyETO) requires the data to be provided in these units (at least, that's what the limited documentation and code seem to imply). For those interested, here's the function that does this most of the conversion in code (with the exception of the absolute to relative conversion for pressure):

"A zone is never watered and its deficit does not move"

When every day of the window lacks something the equation needs (a temperature, the wind), the evapotranspiration comes out as nothing: the deficit stays where it was and the zone is never watered, which looks exactly like a zone with no need. Smart Irrigation now raises a repair issue naming the zone and the inputs that were missing, and clears it at the next calculation that can be done. Check that the sensors mapped to those fields are available, or that the weather service still sends them.

A repair issue also appears when one run of a zone cannot water what the zone loses between two waterings (see Maximum duration in the zone settings).

A zone says it cannot be calculated

When the calculation of an automatic zone fails, the zone keeps its last water balance and is not watered. Smart Irrigation says so in three places until a calculation succeeds: the zone's line in the Zones tab (red, with the reason, instead of "nothing to water"), the zone's problem sensor (binary_sensor.smart_irrigation_<zone>_problem, on, with the reason in its reason and calculation attributes), and a repair notice. The reasons and what to do:

• No sensor group: a zone added on the Zones tab has none until one is chosen. Choose it on the zone's card.
• No weather readings: the zone's sensor group has no readings. Check that it has sources and that they report, update the weather data, then calculate the zone.
• No module: choose how the zone is calculated on its card.
• No evapotranspiration: the zone takes its evapotranspiration from a sensor or a weather service, and the sensor group had none. Check that sensor or the service.
• A forecast without a weather service: the module looks days ahead, which needs a weather service. Set one up, or set the module's forecast days to 0.
• An error: the message is shown. If it keeps happening, please open an issue with it and the diagnostics file.

A dry run changes nothing and says nothing. A calculation with nothing new to read (every reading was already used) is not a failure. A zone switched to manual or disabled is not calculated, so it shows no such problem.

"The calculated duration looks wrong"

The diagnostic file shows the current state, not how it was reached. To find out why a particular day watered the way it did, switch on the calculation log in the general settings. From then on every calculation appends one line to config/smart_irrigation/calc_log.jsonl with the sensor records and their aggregation, the module intermediates (solar radiation and whether it was measured or estimated, net radiation, ET0) and the resulting water balance, duration and volume - so two days can simply be diffed against each other. The most recent records are also included in the diagnostics download (coordinates rounded, entity ids removed), which makes them easy to attach to an issue.

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