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Hello everyone, I want to show you my irrigation system based on the open sprinkler. I’ve been developing it for several years.
The general rule is that I have one centrally placed open sprinkler in the office that controls the others. There is a high-power omnidirectional antenna on the barn. Receiving stations are scattered in a radius of several kilometers, usually one station supports solenoid valves located up to 1000m, although this is not the rule. Each receiving station consists of a directional wifi antenna and of course an open sprinkler. In the stations I have placed the 24V AC power, the Open Sprinkler is powered with it. But the device does not give current directly to the solenoid valves, I have used the relays, thanks to them the open sprinkler is not overloaded.
The photos that I added show my first control box in one of the pumping stations. I placed there an inverter, a temperature sensor with hot air extraction and a professional alarm system. It cuts off the power supply after exceeding the maximum pressure, fire, and informs about the lack of electricity.
The control cabinet was created last year to prevent water from flooding electronics and rebuild the system after a fire caused by a broken pipe.
I was supposed to put an automatic fire extinguisher in there but I gave it a rest 🙂Soon I will get more photos from my farm
Regards Jacek
We mainly grow strawberry, haskap, raspberry, cauliflower, cabbage and carrots. The rest of the crop does not occupy a large area, we treat it as a test. The farm covers about 170 ha, of which open sprinkler manages irrigation for 70 ha. attached, I am sending a picture of my today’s unfinished work which is supposed to manage 18 valves for 4 ha.
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Thanks for sharing your setup. We have a sod farm and are looking to control several hundred sprinkler solenoids (24Vac). Can you explain, how does it work to have “one centrally placed open sprinkler in the office that controls the others”? Is there documentation on how to do this – setup multiple opensprinklers with one as the master? It seems like this would be a workaround for the 72 station limit in version 2.1.8?
And, can you explain a bit more about “used the relays, thanks to them the open sprinkler is not overloaded.” Is this a workaround for the transformer having a limit to how many 24vac solenoids it can operate at one time?
I now see in the OS Manual section 3.2 how to set up remote zones. Excellent. Still wondering if this allows us to have more than 72 stations?
And, still wondering what the advantage is to using relays?The maximum per controller is 72 zones. Regardless of whether some zones are remote or not, they all have to occupy zone and program memory, so the maximum is 72.
The advantage of using relays is that they isolate solenoids from the controller, so in case something wrong happens on the solenoid side (i.e. hit by lightening), the isolation helps protect the controller.
You explained it well, Ray. But to explain my “obsessions” in the use of relays and an external transformer, I’ll put it together.
* 1 – Why a transformer? the controller is not loaded with coil current. the relay load is 30 – 40 mA. load on the solenoid valve coil depending on the model 150 – 250 mA. If we open one or two solenoid valves, there is no problem. However, if we want to squeeze out of the maximum from controller, we often open 10 to 15 solenoids at a time. This is too much, open sprinkler stops working stably and stops responding. In my case, the programs overlap and operate independently at different times in different locations.
* 2 – Failure caused by human error or failure in the field, without the use of relays, the controller fails.
* 3 – it looks good 🙂
I’m sending another photo
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You can centrally manage more than 72 stations, but the hardware aspect will still be that many per controller. This will require you to log into each controller independently to manually set them up. It’s still a much better solution than using something from Hunter or the like. It is possible using the API to set up and centrally manage multiple controllers through automation to have as many stations as you desire, but that would most likely be a custom software solution.
By the way, I love the OP’s setup. Great job.
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