My Open Sprinkler has been having trouble connecting lately

I am starting to have the exact same issues as you. My wireless SSID and network has not changed but I keep loosing connection to the controller and the only way to restore the connection is to power cycle the sprinkler controller. I am running Ubiquiti wireless access points in my house and I have no issues with all the other wireless devices in the house.
My biggest issue is when I loose connection to the controller the controller sprinkler schedule stops so my lawn ans flower garden dont get watered. My wife is about to kill me as I dont notice that it is not working until stuff starts to dry out. I bought the controller last year and had zero issues with it until this year a few weeks into watering season.

Hope there is a fix for this issue.

1. I have a single WiFi router and 2 access points off of that. Both AP’s have the same SSID where devices can jump from one ap to the other.

2. I just installed the latest firmware last night so we will see how it goes.

3. I will create a support ticket if the problem comes back after the firmware update.

Thanks
JG

Hi! I am also running Ubiquiti wireless access points (UniFi AP-AC-Mesh 3.9.42.9152) and have the same problem. Opensprinkler (3.0 DC Firmware 2.1.8 (1)) lost Wifi connection so i have to reconnect or start over the controller. Now i connected the controller to a UniFi AP-AC-Pro (3.9.42.9152) and till now it works fine…i hope.

There is no problem with the Pro but when connected to the ac mesh(wireless uplink)

Since upgrading to 2.1.8 (1) I’m having the same issue where I can’t remotely connect to OSPI, I have to restart it, so much so that I installed a z-wave outlet so I can restart it remotely. Nothing has changed in my WiFi setup, using google mesh.
Thank you

When posing please indicate what version of OpenSprinkler hardware you have. Lefrancais referred to OSPi, and stonecrest referred to OS 3.0, but I don’t know which version, AC-powered or DC-powered.

If you take a look at the sprinkler controller market, almost no one sells Ethernet-based sprinkler controller any more — almost all are WiFi-based.

I’ve also been having this problem occasionally (maybe days or weeks apart?) where I discover the controller has dropped off the wifi network. I use OpenHab to drive the watering program, so it’s a big problem if it drops offline when I’m not around to reconnect it for more than a day or two. The display on the unit says it is reconnecting, but it does not do so until I reboot the unit (either by power cycling or holding the B2 button), at which point it reconnects immediately.

The get info page says “Firmware: 2.1.8(1), Hardware version: 3.0 – DC”

For now, I’ve set OpenHab up to warn me more actively if it drops the connection, but there’s something clearly not working in the firmware when it attempts to reconnect to wifi (its attempts – if indeed it is really attempting to reconnect – universally fail, whereas following a reboot it reconnects immediately… this leads me to believe it will not be solved by replacing the hardware).

Is there any way to access the unit at a lower level than the web gui and download a system log?

Mine is an Asus RT-AC88U.

I know it’s splitting hairs, but I don’t think it’s a disconnection issue: I believe it is a *reconnection* issue. That is, connection interruptions can happen for all sorts of reasons – for example, I’ve rebooted my router three times in the past week for other reasons – and in each case the OpenSprinkler has re-established the connection just fine as soon as the router comes back up. However, when the failure arises, the display on the OpenSprinkler shows that it is reconnecting, but it fails to do so until I intervene, no matter how long it is left to attempt reconnection. When the failure occurs, the issue is resolved immediately – and 100% reliably – by rebooting the OpenSprinkler unit. That appears to be the only way to resolve the issue. It would be good if detailed diagnostic logs were kept on the OpenSprinkler itself so that we can see what is going wrong in the OS’s system when it fails, but I am not aware of any logs except those associated with the timing of watering.

That seems like a really good idea, actually – it doesn’t depend on being able to trace why it is currently failing to connect (which sounds, from Ray’s post, like it could otherwise be a roadblock if they can’t reproduce it). I don’t think there’s any need for the time tolerance to be particularly short. For example, it could be a logic like this:

IF no functioning network connection (unable to sync NTP?) for at least 6 hours
AND currently configured for WiFi connection
AND unit uptime > 24 hours

THEN reboot system

That will mean it only tries the reboot as a last resort – not because the router it is connected to is disconnected from the internet for a while – and even then it would only reboot itself once every 24 hours.

I think your case may have been a slightly different issue (or at least different to some of these cases, including mine – there could be multiple problems in this thread). In my case, the display on the OpenSprinkler indicates that it is trying to reconnect (as opposed to indicating that it’s connected and has an IP address), but it never successfully reconnects. So the OpenSprinkler unit is picking up that it has lost the connection… but the only way to do anything about it is to reboot the OpenSprinkler unit.

I have already set a fixed IP address for OS on the router, so that has not been a solution for the problem I’m encountering.

It is probably a problem with renewing the dhcp lease, probably try static IP address. I set my dhcp lease as static on my dhcp server (router).

If I reset my access point I find I have to power cycle usually. My OpenSprinkler is plugged into a smart outlet so I can do it remote.

edit: i’m running on raspberry pi