System Guide

In this Chapter:
Part 1 – Enabling the Sentinel Watcher
Part 2 – Configuring Watcher Operations
Many of the system level operations, as well as weather source related
operations, can be scheduled to occur at a predefined time. In all cases,
the results of the Watcher operations are written to the Log file and various
windows Results tabs. If the e-mail feature is utilized, the results of some
operations can be e-mailed immediately after they occur.
Note: To enable the Watcher operations to occur, the Sentinel WMS software
must be running at the scheduled time of the event and the Sentinel Watcher
mode switched on.
When a Watcher polling or communication time is designated, it should
be close to, but sufficiently before the Satellite Day Change time to enable
communications with each satellite in the system to be completed before
the day change time occurs.
Part 1 – Enabling the Sentinel Watcher
1. To begin, choose Watcher > Start from the Main Menu.
Note: When the Sentinel Watcher is started, the Sentinel Clock icon
in the Windows Start Bar will change from Red to Green
.
Right-click on the Clock icon to open an options
menu enabling Watcher Start/Stop and Hide/Show
Sentinel WMS program shortcuts to be selected.
2. Choose Setup to open the Software Setup window.
3. From the Software Setup window, choose the Watcher Operations tab.
The Status Reports tab will be selected by default.
4. To automatically launch Watcher at
program start up
, select W
atc
her On
option located on the Startup tab of the
Setup window. Refer to Star
tup Tab
on
page 6.
Part 2 – Configuring Watcher Operations
The Watcher Operations tab provides configuration options organized on four
sub-category tabs: Status Reports, Weather Sources,Satellite Programming
Updates and Schedular/Optimizer.
Status Reports
1. Select the Retrieve Alarms options as preferred:
• To poll a specified Satellite System for alarm conditions, select
Retrieve Alarms.
• From the drop-down menu, select a Target System to poll.
• Enter the preferred polling start time.
• To automatically clear (do not log) the alarm report after the Watcher has
received the report, select
Clear Alarms After Reception.
2. Select the Hydro Report options as preferred:
• From the drop-down menu, select a Target System to poll.
• Enter the preferred polling start time.
• Select data to be included in the report: Water Use, ET and/or Rainfall.
Weather Source(s)
The options provided on the Weather Source(s) tab define and control
weather data source polling required by ET- and Rain-based irrigation
programs. Sending ET and Rain updates automatically recalculates run times
in the database for all programs in the target system.
Note: The weather source must be configured for polling to enable this
oper
ation.
(See “
Configuring the
W
eather Station
”
on page 35.)
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3
2
2
8
Sentinel Watcher Operations
4. Choose the Close watcher windows when complete option if
you prefer to have Watcher windows automatically close after data
is recorded and logged.