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Hi Ray,
I have had OpenSprinkler (OSPi) now for about a week and have been playing around with it. It is such a nice kit in a neat enclosure. When I showed it to my gardener, he loved it.
However, it seems such a waste aesthetically (and from a functionality point of view) to have the clear case and no LCD/OLED display in there.
I have been looking through the forums for a solution to have a display with the Raspberry Pi. The option seems to be there in the code, however, it is not easy to re-engineer it and then do a copy paste.
Hence my question: Do you have an ETA to have optional LCD/button functionality in one of the future firmware builds?
Many thanks
LL
Hi, the current OSPi enclosure has no space instead to include a display — adding a display will make it significantly taller, and wiring it / assembling it with the rest of the circuit is complicated / not elegant.
There was a pull request in the github repository from a while back:
https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-Firmware/pull/8
and adds I2C LCD. I’ve not tried it myself and it’s only compatible with the version of firmware at that point.There is plan to unify the hardware of OS 3.0 with OSPi, in that OSPi will be connected to OS 3.0 (minus the ESP8266 chip inside) via a 4-pin cable, and since most components (including OLED) on the OS 3.0 circuit boards are I2C already, it allows OSPi to talk to and control all components through I2C. This way, OSPi will use the same hardware as OS 3.0, except it uses RPi as brain instead of ESP8266.
Would be really great to have this work with the existing OSPi board.
BTW, where are current compile instructions? I found some pages that refer to it but the links are dead. And the more current stuff I found (I think…) only has details for Arduino and OS 3.0.
I agree with Jim. Most of the people using a RPi are likely to tinker with their installation. I – for my part – put a 128×64 SSD1306 OLED display (standard I2C) between the Pi and the acrylic housing, using padding to prevent any short circuit. So all I need is the software capabilities… 🙂
The branch on GitHub is from 2015 and hence is too old IMHO.
Thanks in advance.
As to how it fits into the case, all the header connections are brought to the edge of the OSPi board so a tall header can be used to attach a board and put it above the Pi. Adafruit has a LCD with push buttons for the Pi that will work. And a tall case is easy to do now that the case is laser cut (if you have access to a laser…).
There are some postings about similar things that might help you if you are able to do some code hacking. I am looking into that myself.
Was only able to find one that has available code.
https://opensprinkler.com/forums/topic/ospi-with-lcd-and-push-buttons/“where are current compile instructions?” — it’s in the support document:
https://openthings.freshdesk.com/solution/folders/5000149652The 2015 repository you referred to is an old branch that is not maintained anymore. The current OpenSprinkler firmware is a unified firmware and that’s in github.com/OpenSprinkler, not the rayshobby repository anymore.
Also, keep in mind that adding LCD and buttons and make the enclosure larger will inevitably drive up the cost of OSPi — I understand that many users choose OSPi because of its lower cost than OS 3.0.
I second that request. I had asked in the past but there was no one to help. We do need a screen and shouldnt worry about case or enclosure.
Thank you.
For those that are interested in LCD support, I did start to enable it natively within OSPI. It look some time to figure out the various components in the OS code, but I was able to pretty much get it all working without adding much code at all. If there is interest, I can issue a separate pull request for LCD support for the RPI. I’m still figuring out what other stuff I want to display on it and I’ve not put the options in the menu yet to enable/disable it and change the config.
I’ve also been working to enable MQTT support as well: MQTT Integration
What I used was a i2c connected 20×4 LCD. I snapped a couple pictures if you are curious what it looks like. I did have to modify the circuit a bit since they are really made for both 5v logic and 5v lcd.
Attachments:
No, I didn’t do that as I didn’t need them or really want them. Depending on the hardware, it shouldn’t be difficult but it could depend on what’s hooked up where. The i2c controller I used as part of the LCD I believe has a couple extra pins you can trigger things on but I didn’t want to spend the effort to wire it all up and further reverse engineer the software to make them work.
The LCD I used was from Amazon: Link
But DONT just hook it up! it does require some modifications for a i2c 3v3 vs LCD powered at 5v.
@digitalbits: very good to know that, and neat hardware setup too!
digitalbits, I suggest you post the code or perhaps you could fork what is on github and leave it there. It may be that others would help out.
@JimS I will in due time.
I wasn’t sure how active people were developing with this but I made changes that integrate well – but have not finished. For instance I’ve put put information in the code in a way that works for me but needs to be updated for config options which I’ve already started. Until that happens it just ends in a lot of confusion for people why it doesn’t work. I just got the hardware, so I’m just getting started.
There are already too many forks that get outdated. I don’t want to jump off in a direction that ends in yet another fork that is not maintained. 🙂 They will all end with pull requests and of course for the ambitious to go compile once I feel its ready to git.
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