Solar powered control boxes have a built-in battery, which must be kept charged using the solar panel. As soon as you receive your WaterMate system, plug in the solar panel and put it in a sunny location so that the battery is fully charged when you come to set up and test.
- The solar panel must be plugged in at all times, to keep the battery in good condition.
- The solar panel should be mounted outside the greenhouse or polytunnel; try to position it so that it catches the most sun possible.
The built-in battery will provide enough power for up to ten minutes of watering per day, and will recharge fully on a sunny summer day; more than enough for most greenhouses and polytunnels.
Read more about battery capacity and pumping.
Charging will be disabled below 5°C or above 40°C to ensure a long battery life. If possible, do not mount the control unit in full sun, so that you get more charging time in the summer.
Read more about mounting the control unit.
Power saving (sleep)
The control unit will go to sleep when it is not doing anything, to save battery power. It wakes up every 30 minutes to take readings, and to turn on the water pump if required.
To change settings, or override the watering, the control box needs to be awake.
To wake the unit up press the override button on the top until you hear a rising tone.
Watering time
Since the control unit is not awake all the time, setting a watering time of 9am will not always happen at 9am. It will be the first time the box wakes after the prescribed time. Each control box has been set with a different 'wake time' in the hour, to distribute load on our web servers. The wake time is not configurable by the user.
If your box has a wake time of 22 minutes past the hour:
- The box will wake every half hour, at {hour}+22 and {hour}+52 minutes.
- 9am watering will happen at 9.22am
Setting up in winter
When you set up your system for the first time, you’ll want to run the pump to test your pipes and fittings. This will probably run the battery down - when the battery is low, you will hear a falling tone from the control unit and the pump won’t run for long, if at all.
In the winter, with overcast skies and a low sun, your battery may not recharge fully within a few days. You can either wait until you have more sun, or you can buy a top-up / trickle charger to take the place of the solar panel over winter.
Connections
If your control unit doesn't look like this, send us an email with a photo of yours and we'll help you out.