Activate 6 valves from OSBee

[erezshabtai]

Hi Ray,
My irrigation system has 6 dc valves and I want to replace the current controler that is malfunction.
In my current irrigation system I opened 2 valves in the same time
Is it possible to operate it with the OSBee by connecting 2 DC valves to one OSBee output if I need to open the 2 valves at the same?
If not, is there a solution to operate the OpenSprinkler Pi with DC power (batteries)?
If also not and I have to work with external transformator, can the OpenSprinkler Pi control my DC valves?

Thanks,
Erez

[Ray]

If you connect two DC valves to the same port, they will always open or close at the same time. Is it what you intend to do? I assume you would like all valves to be independent from each other.

OpenSprinkler Pi cannot work with latching solenoid valves — it’s designed to work with 24V AC valves only.

[erezshabtai]

This is exactly what I wanted to do:
I want to operate valves 1 and 2 at time A
valves 3 and 4 at time B
valve 5 at time C
valve 6 at time D

Of course I would prefer that all valves will be independent but the above setup is realy good enough for me, the water pressure is good enough to open those valves in parallel.
My question was if there are not electrical current issues if I connect 2 valves to one port in the OSBee.

Thanks,
Erez

[TechFan]

I guess I have always wondering how the OSBee worked. . .so I read a little bit more about it. . .still not super clear. This thread got me interested. I have the OS (not PI) that I assume is an Arduino board as listed as the requirement. Does the arduino board need to be outside with the valves as well? I guess I was hoping for a way to not need to run sprinkler wire all the way under my current driveway (I still have values that are manually controlled that I haven’t converted yet). If I can run battery operated valves on those locations, then I wouldn’t need to run the wires. It still doesn’t seem like I would be able to control the valves with the existing OS, which is what I really would want. Or am I missing something??

[Ray]

@erezshabtai: yes the operation pattern you described can be achieved by OSBee. The only question is if OSBee is capable to open/close two valves together. This depends on whether the 2200uF capacitor on the circuit board can store sufficient charge to open / close two valves. I haven’t done any tests myself, but I am pretty sure it can. If it turns out to be not very reliable, you can always replace the 2200uF capacitor with something bigger, like 4700uF or even 6800uF, and I am sure those would be more than enough to drive two valves. Other than that there is no issue connecting multiple valves to the same port.

[Ray]

@TechFan: OSBee is designed for battery-operated valves. Right now the standalone OSBee is not available, we only offer OSBee Shield for Arduino. The idea is you plug in the OSBee Shield into an Arduino, and the whole assembly, including battery, can be put into a water-proof enclosure and placed outdoors near the valve. OSBee can communicate with a hub using 433MHz or 2.4G transceiver, and the hub has Internet connection. This is because WiFi or Ethernet controllers are not yet suitable for battery power, unless if you can periodically charge the battery through solar cells. So to get it connected to the web, it needs to leverage a hub.

OpenSprinkler and OpenSprinkler Pi / Beagle are different from OSBee, in that they are powred by 24VAC, and are not meant for battery-operated valves. If you want to modify OpenSprinkler or OSPi/OSBo to work with battery-operated valves, it’s going to involve quite a lot of modifications.

[TechFan]

I guess that is well beyond my Arduino knowledge. I was just hoping to be able to control battery operated valves from the same GUI as OS. Probably easier to run wires under the driveway than to get that working. Hub would connect to LAN or would have to be internet?

[Author]

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