Mulltiple Masters on one wireless network.

[David]

In your tutorial which by the way is very straight forward and easy to follow, hard to find that. – back on topic – You show how to setup extender modules to increase the size or quantity of valves you can program. I have sprinkler systems in four different areas of the property these stations are as much as 200 feet apart all able to be reached by wifi.

I would like to have 4 different master units on the same network. You demonstrate how to access each master unit using its designated IP address. my concern would be is this setup liable to cause any problems on operations of the OpenSprinkler systems and can they all be accessed by a mobile device.

[Ray]

The masters currently cannot communicate with each other, and the web interface can only treat them as separate master controllers. There are some potential solutions you may consider. If it’s possible for you to extend the wires going to the valves, you can use the OpenSprinkler zone expansion board, so that one master controller and several zone expansion boards will sit together, and the wires going to valves all start here. The other possible solution is to have multiple controllers listen to a server (for example, use a Raspberry Pi), and the server will send out http commands to every controller in order to have a centralized control.

[David]

Thank you very much Ray for your attention and response to my question on multiple masters, I think I will just go with opening different browser windows for different stations. I appreciate the fact that you were able to come up with some good possible solutions to my problem it gave me options to think about, keep up the good work.

[davethomaspilot]

I have similar needs.

I irrigate my yard from a pond.

At the pond, I have a pump, pump relay, and sprinkler controller. That controller handles a manifold with several valves. The controller turns on the pump when any zone is on.

I have two more controllers located in my garage. Two contrllers are used just to get the number of zones I need. These controllers can’t communicate with the pump relay at the pond.

what I’ve been doing is setting up a “dummy zone” in the pond controller that doesn’t control a valve. This just turns the pump on/off at know start times so the valves driven by the garage controllers have pond water for their zones.

But, this doesn’t work very well. It’s hard to program and error prone. It’s easy for the pump to be on or off when it shouldn’t be. Improving the situation is my main motivation for trying Opensprinkler.

What I need is the ability for any of several master stations to control the pump relay that is connected to one master. I’d like programming to be as simple as if I had only one master with many zones rather than having to individually program each master.

From what I’ve read, I don’t see an immediate solution to my problem since masters can’t communicate with each other. What I want is a way for a controller to act like a zone expansion board.

I’m prepared to add/modify the source code for my needs, but I don’t want to “re-invent the wheel”.

I’d try to use the ethernet over power line adapter and maybe TCP sockets to communicate commands from a single master controller to multiple “slave” controllers. “Slave” in this sense means they looks like a zone expansion board as far as the one master controller software knows. But, there’s ethernet over power line communication between them instead of the physical connection used by the expansion boards.

Is anything like this in progress already? Is there a work around besides using schedules for each master and attempt to keep the pump control synchronized with the controller that isn’t physically connected to it?

Thanks!

[sakos]

Probably I misunderstand your need but have you read the “Remote station” chapter in the user manual?

[davethomaspilot]

That does sound like what I want! New feature in 2.1.6 firmware, I think.

But, there isn’t much in the manual about it. Here’s all I see:

Remote station: a remote station is a physical station on another OpenSprinkler controller. This allows one master
controller to send commands to remote controllers in order to turn on their valves. Each remote station is specified by
the IP address, port number, and station index on the remote controller. The master and remote controllers must share
the same password.

Just ordered two OpenSprinkler pis assuming I can make this work….

In my case, the remote master must also control the pump relay. An example showing setup of controllers to do that would be great.

Has anyone tried this?

Thanks!

[Ray]

To clarify things (since the ‘master’ station on a controller and a ‘master’ controller are two different things), let me call the master station ‘pump station’ instead. A pump station is allowed to be a remote station (i.e. defined as IP address followed by station index). You can have the actual pump relay connected to a remote controller. Then you can have, say, three master controllers, each with a pump station that points to the remote controller. As a concrete example:

– Pump relay is connected to remote controller R (say, with IP address 192.168.0.R, first station)
– On a master controller: define a pump station and set it as a remote station with IP address 192.168.0.R. You can have multiple master controllers.

This way, when you activate a valve on the master controller, it will turn on the pump station, which internally sends an HTTP request to the remote controller to turn on the actual pump.

[davethomaspilot]

Sounds perfect–can’t wait to try it out.

Biggest concern–whether Ethernet over power line will work when one side is 200′ away from the other and next to the electrically noisy pump.

But, the pump electrical noise should be low frequency compared to the power line carrier frequency. So, maybe it will be ok.

Thanks!

[davethomaspilot]

Unfortunately, the TP ethernet over power line doesn’t work down by the pump.

I tried a dozen or so outlets in the house, and I quickly got a link on all of them. But, no link where I need it down by the pump.

I tried both phases, but no luck.

Do the wifi range extenders typically work that far?

[sakos]

I would try with a wifi client device having detachable antenna instead. To achive long distance you will need to replace the original rod by a high gain directional wifi antenna. Directional antenna provides much longer distance than a repeater.

[Ray]

The powerline adapter will only work if the two outlets are on the same powerline circuit. If they are separated by transformers, or are not on the same circuit for other reasons, it will not work.

The WiFi range extender may be worth trying — I think you can cascade two or more to relay the signals (well, at least in theory this should work, but I don’t know how well it works in practice).

[davethomaspilot]

Not sure of your definition of “powerline circuit”. If you mean on the same breaker, that certainly wasn’t the case for me. They worked fine regardless of whether they were on different breakers.

I certainly understand why the signal strength would be greatly attenuated if they are on different 120V phases (about 1/2 the 120V circuits will be on opposite phases), since the transformer’s impedance would block most of the signal unless you install a capacitor between the phases to mitigate this (old X10 trick).

But, as I posted, they wouldn’t work for the long run down to the pond.

So, I bought a Ubiquiti NanoStation and located it in my Attic. And a PicoStation for down at the pump. These work great! I can cover all 8.5 acres of my property with very good signal quality and high data transfer speeds. In fact, I still got a good signal over a mile away.

Originally I did repeater mode. That worked great, but only WEP security is supported in that mode. So, now the Nano is configured as a bridged AP to my existing DSL/Wifi router.

The Nano and Pico are a bit pricey for hobby stuff, but for a home improvement cost, they don’t look so bad.

Thanks!

[Ray]

Cool, that’s a very useful solution to know. Thanks for sharing.

[davethomaspilot]

So, now that I have good wifi coverage over my 8.5 acres, I’d like to have remote control of other things using wifi connected RPIS (in addition to my 20+ irrigation zones)

Front entrance lights
Pond fountain & lights
Pool LED lights

I like the mobile app for controlling thing and I see how to define a station as remote and give it an ip address (but haven’t tried it yet). But, it from the mobile app viewpoint, it looks like there is a one to one mapping between the 8 stations and remote stations.

The number of local stations (8, unless expanded) is limited by the hardware-the triacs and shift register outputs. But, why should remote stations be limited to only 8? Or, why give up control of one or more of the local stations to support remote stations?

I’m thinking this is was a convenient way to extend the functionality of the existing applications rather than a limitation of the hardware?

[Samer]

Under the options, you can increase the number of expansion boards (even if you don’t have any plugged in). This will allow you more stations which you can map to a remote station basically creating virtual stations.

[davethomaspilot]

Ah!

Thanks!

[Author]

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