Easy Manual Zone Feature?

[Tails86]

I am considering on purchasing the OSPi version of OpenSprinkler. My only concern is that I have a neighbor that helps me shut down my system every year. He is not so technically inclined, and sometimes comes over while I am away. I would like to know my options as far as making it simple to start a zone manually.

I was thinking of getting a USB number keypad and modifying the software to accept manual zone entry. Having the key entry of “.12<Enter>” could stop any current program running and run zone 12 for 20 minutes. Maybe then “-” could stop whatever is running. How difficult would that be to implement?

[Tails86]

I thought about it some more. The terminal would be capturing keystrokes. I could have a program capturing those keystrokes and sending signals to the interval program, but that seems messy. It would probably be better/easier to implement a scanning keyboard on 8 of the unused GPIO. I can have a separate thread monitor the keys within the interval program. Then a flag can be set for timing_loop() to poll for. A buzzer would probably be nice to provide feedback on a valid entry too. Does that seem simple enough or am I overlooking something?

[Ray]

If what matters is to shut down the system, would it be sufficient to just unplug the COM terminal block, or even unplug the power?

[Dan in CA]

Tails86,

It sounds very doable. If you could implement it as a plugin, other users might find it useful also.
In any event, if you have specific questions, you can open an issue on Interval program’s GitHub repo and I will try to assist you as much as I can.
https://github.com/Dan-in-CA/OSPi

Dan

[Tails86]

My neighbor usually hooks up his air compressor to the main line, and than runs each zone on the control box for a minute or so. I suppose that he could go over to each valve to turn each one on manually after powering down the system. That is a good fallback if I fail to implement something that is easy to use.

Thanks for offering your help, Dan. I have a lot of questions, but I’m still digging through the project. proto.py seems to be where I need to start. I see you even have documentation on that 🙂

[Dan in CA]

The documentation for writing plugins still needs a lot of work.
Any questions you have will help me fill in the gaps.

the best place to post questions is on the GhtHub plugins repository:
https://github.com/Dan-in-CA/ospi_plugins/issues

Dan

[Tails86]

I find the documentation fairly straightforward so far. I’m new to python, so most of the time that I have spent building a plugin has been learning python syntax. I have a fairly simple working plugin now (attachedattachment failed). I don’t actually have the OSPi hardware yet, but I have confirmed that it works through the web interface. I still need to flesh it out and clean it up. What would be the best way to share this?

[Tails86]

For anyone who is interested, I branched ospi_plugins from Dan-in-CA and added my keypad plugin here. I still still don’t have hardware, so I have only tested it using the web interface. Please don’t judge too much as this is my first time working with python.

The keypad can be used for the following functions.
-Start Manual Station
-Start Manual Program
-Set Water Level
-Set Manual Station Time
-Set Rain Delay Time

-Activate Rain Delay
-Deactivate Rain Delay
-System On
-System Off
-Restart System
-Reboot OS

[Author]

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