creative minds needed

[ogtommy]

ok, so here’s my situation. I got my opensprinkler as my brains for my greenhouse. i use a pump to supply water to a manifold with 6 solenoid valves. 4 of them are used for the 4 different sections of my greenhouse and 2 of them are used for control valves or master valves etc. I have a Pump Start Relay that i use as my mastervalve to turn my pump on since im not using my 2 control valves or master valves right now. I do plan on implementing them in the future so that each of the 4 sections get fed water with a specific mix of nutrients from the appropriate reservoirs. this is based on what stage of growth they are in. The first half of their life they get Reservoir 1 and the second half of their life they get Reservoir 2. in essence, im going to need 2 pumps (master valves) to do that. as of now i haven’t found any option in any program that allows 2 master valves but maybe its possible with concurrent watering. What it boils down to is being able to open to valves at the same time. the watering schedule would be something like this:
start pump 1
open master valve 1
open zone 1/close zone 1
open zone 2/’close zone 2
close master valve 1
stop pump 1
start pump 2
open master valve 2
open zone 3/close zone 3
open zone 4/close zone 4
close master valve 2
stop pump 2

that is the crux of it. anybody have any ideas on how i can do this?if there was two master valves available it would be easy but whose to say we only take the easy route.
i have 6 solenoids valves. 4 for the zones and 2 as master valves
i have 2 pump start relays to start the pump as needed. these i guess can be tied in parallel with the mastervalve since they will be opening/starting together. Now, can a zone turn on without running out of power?
how about mixing sequential/concurrent at the same time or using multiple programs running at the same time?
plz help me out. this open sprinkler is a god send and has made such a difference to my greenhouse. i spent an hour a day watering now i dont have to. it seems like im at the finish line, just need a little more to go.
thank you all in advance

[kkpwrh2o]

This sounds like a Google job interview question 🙂

[Samer]

I think you touched on the easiest solution which is tying together the pump/master into one station. From there you only need to differentiate between pump 1 vs 2.

You could hook up your zones to the OS as follows:

1 – Pump 1 + Master 1
2 – Pump 2 + Master 2
3 – Zone 1
4 – Zone 2
5 – Zone 3
6 – Zone 4

Programs based on your example:

Program 1 – Station 1 and 3
Program 2 – Station 1 and 4
Program 3 – Station 2 and 5
Program 4 – Station 2 and 6

You would then put the controller in concurrent mode. You also want to make sure the time window for each program does NOT overlap, the duration is less than the time window, and the interval is much greater than the time window.

In the above setup the master valve is not set using the OpenSprinkler (since it can only handle one master).

Each program would only handle one zone and the pump/master would have to be selected in each program.

I hope I understand your problem correctly and maybe this helps. If I am off base let me know and I will rethink this problem.

[ogtommy]

im pretty sure you nailed it 😀 ive been running things as they were for the past few days while i updated my plumbing and my electrical wiring. Making sure no shorts occur. im going to try everything tomorrow so i got my fingers crossed. this will make life so much easier. i even went out bought another raspberry pi and ordering another sprinkler pi because of how easy things have become and the ability to also implement temperature/humidity logging, HID lighting on/off etc etc.All i can say that this has been such a positive experience and has given me free time away from my greenhouse. thanks for a quick response and i will let you know tomorrow how things work out.
thanks again,
Tommy

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