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Specific Requirements:


System Modes

Setup Mode:

The function of the setup mode is to make the initial setup of the system, where establishing the relationship between physical hardware and logical zones is the main purpose. It also offers a section where users can be set up, including assigning them certain privileges. See "Security" for details on how to setup users.

After the pipes and control lines have been connected to the system's relay control, the system is started to set up the zones.

Zone establishing works on two levels.

Physical Zones:

The first level is the establishment of physical zones. The system is able to address the physical devices connected to it but it is not aware of the interconnections among the devices. The system engineer installing the system, tells the system in "Setup Mode - Physical Zones" which sprinklers depend on which valves.

(26k)
[Fig 5: Setting up the physical zones]

The system senses via the hardware interface which valves and sprinklers can be assigned and it displays a list of all these devices. The engineer now selects these devices and places them on the graphical view of the course. Then he can select items from a predefined list of pipes and connect the devices with the pipes by simply clicking on one device and drag the mouse to another device while holding down the mouse button. The names in the list on the right are generated automatically; the numbers correspond to numbers that are provided by the relay control, either by gathering it from the devices itself or by specifying those numbers within the relay control.

Once in the graphical view on the left the user is free to select user-defined names for any item. To do this, he will simply double-click on any item, which will then offer an input-box.

However, if the user has made a mistake while assigning the physical zones, he can drag an item to another place in the map or even back to the list on the right side. When being returned to the list on the right side the item may gain back its original name.

Logical Zones:

While the physical zones are mainly used to give the system clear instructions on how to control the sprinklers, the purpose of the logical zones is to enable the user to control the system in a more intuitive way, not depending on the way the sprinklers are actually connected to the pipes. Therefore sprinklers can be grouped together in another way, completely independent of the physical structure.

The logical zones are the only way to address sprinklers and valves during schedule mode, the translation into actual sprinkler heads is done transparently by the system.

Example: the three sprinkler heads on the green of hole three form a basic zone. Together with the zones of fairway, rough and driving range they form a new zone, maybe called 'hole 3'. Holes one to nine again might form a zone called 'front 9', while holes ten to eighteen might form 'back 9'. Together with the zone for the pathways, parking lot and clubhouse, they finally establish the zone of all sprinklers.

Another user might want to group the sprinklers in squares, or according to the vegetation to be sprinkled ('trees', 'greens', 'bunkers'). However, only one of these structures is possible at a time, the system is not supposed to handle several completely different sets of logical zones, although this goal can be achieved partially by using overlapping zones.

(10k) [Fig 6: Logical Zones get composed based on the underlying physical zones]

The list on the right contains the physical zone representation. However, although the valves are displayed in that list, they cannot be selected; the logical zones are established by grouping the sprinkler heads only. The reason why they are still displayed is that this might offer the user some help in identifying which heads he is grouping right now.

Since this dialog obviously uses the data from the physical zone setup it is recommended to execute that step before the logical zone setup.

Logical zone setup works in a way such that the user creates a logical zones using the "New Zone"-button and then insert any number of sprinklers or other zones into the new zone. The user can choose any name he likes for the zones, if he thinks that "Mickey". "Donald" and "Goofy" help him controlling the system, he is free to do so.

If a sprinkler is already contained in a logical zone, but is also supposed to be part of another which is not a superset of the given zone, an alias of that sprinkler may be created. This alias can then be inserted into any other zone. This opens the possibility for creating overlapping zones.

"Delete" removes a logical zone and moves all sprinklers contained in it back to the list on the right. A confirmation dialog may be displayed before performing this operation.

To make the list on the right as short as possible, all valves of which all sprinklers have been assigned to logical zones are removed from the list. However, they may reappear if sprinklers are moved back into the list on the right. This is possible since the sprinklers are internally referred by their number which can be indexed into the physical zone list.

The work is complete when the list on the right hand side is empty.


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