Power to valves stuck on?

[chad]

Hello,

First, thanks for the awesome product. I hope to get it up and working with the Adafruit usb wifi dongle before I head out for vacation this summer. One question – should there always be power sent to valves? My valve seems to be stuck in “on” mode no matter what I do. When I place my multimeter leads between COM and any of the valve station terminals, I am seeing between .67-.77 volts [EDIT – I think I read it wrong and it’s actually 26-27 v ac]. Is this normal? When I manually turn on a station, I see no difference in voltage.

Thanks,
Chad

[Samer]

Are you using DC solenoids by any chance?

[chad]

Orbit 57100 is the one I’m using.

[chad]

Any ideas? Should each station be getting power even when all are turned off?

[Samer]

I am honestly not sure (not the hardware guy). Ray is at Maker Faire this weekend but hopefully someone can help you out soon. I know the AC to DC can cause a similar issue hence my suggestion but clearly that isn’t the issue.

[Ray]

Did you have solenoids connected at all or you are just using a multimeter to measure the voltage with no solenoids connected? If no solenoid, the voltage reading is normal, due to stray voltage. When you have a load connected it should remain off (close to 0 voltage).

[chad]

@ray wrote:

Did you have solenoids connected at all or you are just using a multimeter to measure the voltage with no solenoids connected? If no solenoid, the voltage reading is normal, due to stray voltage. When you have a load connected it should remain off (close to 0 voltage).

I’ve measured the voltage both ways – with and without solenoids connected. The voltage is always the same across all stations.

[Author]

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