At times, zones might not run the way or in the order you had expected. Brandon from Baseline Support joins the show to help us understand BaseManager color codes and the info they hold.
Status colors help identify what may be going on with your controller. To review status colors go to BaseManager → Menu → Status Colors or found on the door of the controller.
Red Status
- Red status = high-priority alarms, including two-wire communication failures, watering prevention from unscheduled or high flow shutdowns, and mainline variance alarms.
- Two most common reasons (wire issues).
- Two-wire communication failures and over current: High-priority alarms indicating the controller can’t communicate with field devices. Causes include wire path damage, device failure, controller failure, or a short circuit compromising the two-wire control board circuit.
- Open and short circuit alarms for solenoids: Low-priority alarms monitored by biCoders. An open circuit triggers at 49 mA, a short circuit at 585 mA, with amperage constantly monitored by the decoders.
Pink Status
- Pink = the zone or program is paused.
- Manual runs have higher priority than scheduled programs and will pause scheduled irrigation. Water window blocks keep the zone pink. Manually run zones ignore these conditions and continue running despite pauses.
Yellow Status
- Yellow = a zone is in the queue to irrigate.
- The controller runs programs efficiently based on user settings, limiting zones watering simultaneously (zone concurrency) managed by flow in mainline settings. Zones wait until others finish or enter soaking.
Light Blue Status
- Light blue = the zone is soaking. As cycle time ends, it enters soak mode.
- Intelligence Cycle Soaks- start first finish first, rather than completing all first cycles before moving on.
"Device No Response" & Troubleshooting
"Device No Response" means a failure in the two wire connection between the decoder and the controller for that zone.
Troubleshooting:
- Redo connections or connect the biCoder directly to the controller with only the device being tested attached.
- If this message appears, solenoids cannot be tested because communication with the decoders is lost. Do not disconnect solenoids and start troubleshooting on the two-wire path issue.
- Look for patterns: if there’s only one red box, the issue is isolated to that specific device and location.
Managing Schedule Pauses and Program Priorities
- Schedules → Edit → can change the pause condition will resume irrigation as originally programmed. Zones will start watering again at the top of the next minute.
- Program priorities ensure higher-priority programs run before lower-priority ones (acting as a fail-safe).
- This is useful for irrigation or start conditions outside the schedule.
- Higher priorities run immediately, while lower priorities pause and wait until the higher-priority program finishes before starting.
Stopping Irrigation
- You can stop programs individually in QuickView, LiveView, or at the controller by setting them to off.
- In QuickView’s under “Program Status”, you can set individual zones to “Set To Done” or turn the controller off.