Should I make my own custom hardware?

[magnusviri]

My commercial sprinkler controller quit working so I decided to see if I can make something with all the spare parts I have before I buy a new controller. I went looking online and I found OpenSprinkler. I know Ray makes money selling prebuild controllers but I guess I’m trying to save a few bucks and use what I already have.

I have a Raspberry Pi Zero W, 2 x WeMos D1 mini (ESP-8266), 2 x Lolin D32 (ESP32-WROOM-32), a SparkFun RedBoard (ATmega328), and a box full of other parts (shift registers, resistors, buttons, transistors, MOSFETS, voltage regulators, I think a humidity and barometric pressure sensor too, etc). I’m mainly missing the relays and I don’t have a 24V AC to 5V DC converter (and not sure I want to try to make one, although I might buy something instead of putting a 5V adapter in my outdoor container). I don’t really want a display. My sprinkler valves are 24V AC and my old sprinkler controller has a 24V AC transformer. I have 5 zones but someday I might want to add more (like for a garden).

The microcontrollers were given to me as part of conference badges years ago and I bought the other stuff thinking I’d do something with the microcontrollers but I never did. My electrical engineering knowledge is pretty basic, like I understand the ideas but I’ve never designed anything. I’d rather use the ESP boards because I’m not sure I’ll ever use them for anything else and I’ve already used the Raspberry Pi for a few things (mainly retropi).

The only reason I think I might be able to make something is that there are so many webpages of people using OpenSprinkler with their own custom builds and they only use a few parts (mainly the microcontroller and the relays). I looked in the forums and I can’t really tell if this is something that people talk about on the forum or if they’re pretty much on their own if they do this. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Does it make sense to try to make my own or should I just pay the money and get an OpenSprinkler Pi? I don’t exactly have lots of free time either.

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