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I have an Irritrol RFS1000 sensor that was previously attached to my Rainbird irrigation controller. I replaced the Rainbird with OpenSprinkler + the expansion board. I decided to keep the rain sensor.
When I manually trigger the rain sensor on & off, I see the red light on the main sensor unit go on and off respectively. So I know the sensor itself is working. What isn’t changing is the rain sensor status in OpenSprinkler itself.
From the sensor wiring:
– The 2 red wires attached to the two PWR leads on the OpenSprinkler unit.
– Brown wire (which is Normally Closed) is attached to SN1
– White wire (common) is attached to SN2In Open Sprinkler options, I have Sensor 1 set to “Rain” and unchecked “Normally Open”. The web UI reports that the sensor (rain) is active at all times, no matter the state of the actual sensor itself. I have Sensor 2 set to OFF.
I’m not an electrician, so I could really use some guidance for this next part. I turned my multimeter to AC and set the input to mV. When I touch SN1, I see about 6.0mV when the sensor is active. When the sensor is not active (“no rain”) it reads about 6.6mV. I’m not sure if these readings are helpful. I was just trying to see if I could detect some change in behavior. I don’t know what kind of mV the controller expects on SN1 to properly detect the state of the rain sensor.
– Is my rain sensor unit defective?
– How can I perform a more meaningful measurement with my multimeter?
– If the unit is not defective, how do I make the OpenSprinkler detect the change in rain sensor state?
– Do I have the sensor (brown & white) wires connected correctly?Thank you.
I don’t think the white wire should be plugged into SN2 — SN2 is for a second sensor, it’s not for the common wire of the first sensor. If you checked the user manual, a sensor should be connected between SN1 and GND (or SN2 and GND if you have a second sensor). I don’t know how this particular sensor works — I would assume if you measure the resistance between the brown wire (normally closed) and white wire, it should be 0 when no rain is detected, and should be open circuit (infinity) when rain is detected. If this is the case, then the white wire should be plugged into GND.
The sensor was plugged into the rainbird controller the same way (both sensor leads) and I tried to replicate that. The manual for my sensor also showed that as a valid setup.
The Irritrol manual also says white goes to common, is that not what the COM-COM leads are on the controller?
Moving white to GND worked, thank you. Next I want to know what the difference between COM and GND are, and why the manual made it seem like what I did was valid.
The sensor’s manual says white goes to COM because on Irritrol and similar controllers, COM is the common wire for sensors. On OpenSprinkler, the design is different: the sensor’s common terminal is GND, as explained in the OpenSprinkler user manual. This is different from the COM terminal, which is the common terminal for sprinkler valves.
Where do I find the hardware / wiring manual for the opensprinkler controller? All i see are firmware manuals. I don’t see anything that actually describes the wiring or the hardware itself. Thank you for the continued help Ray.
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