Sprinkler valves do not open

[Ram]

Hi,

I recently bought the Opensprinkler for Beagle Bone Black and I am almost done on the set up. I am using BBB Rev C. This comes with 4Gb on board storage. I revised the Ubuntu OS on the BBB so that it can be integrated with TP-Link TL-WN725N. The entire set up (opensprinkler + BBB) is powered by the old irrigation controllers power supply and it is 25V A/C.

The green light is on the opensprinkler board. The BBB is up and running. It has its own led’s and the wifi is accessible. I can ssh into the BBB and I can see the ospi.py program running. I have configured it (as recommended) by installing the script in /etc/init.d directory etc…

The web program (Dan’s Interval) program is up and accessible and I did try the Run Once program and set a duration of 2 minutes for all my valves – 6 of them. However none of the valves opened for their allocated 2 minutes each.

I am not sure what I am doing wrong and have no clue as to how to test this further? I do not have an extra irrigation valve lying around. FWIW, I used a multi-meter to check for voltage on the pins for the valves. The input voltage (orange connector) reads 28.5 V A/C. The station outputs all read 0.0 V. Should they show a value? Or do they show a value only when the connection is made to the valves?

I am looking for valuable input to resolve this issue. Your time is much appreciated.

Thanks

Ram

[Ray]

When measuring the output voltage, make sure that you are measuring AC voltage between the COM terminal and any station that you have turned on. If you happen to turn your multimeter to DC voltage, the reading will be about 0 (because the average DC reading of an AC wave is 0). Also check to make sure the terminal blocks are inserted tightly.

[Ram]

Thanks Ray for your suggestions. No luck on my end.

When I measured, the whole unit was inside my house. Not connected to the valves. Would that make a difference?

One other thing I did not follow through on is about the setting up of DS 1307 RTC.

Will get on it in a few minutes.

[Ray]

If none of the zones has output voltage, I would suspect that the COM terminal block may have a connection problem. All OSBo boards have been tested and we verify that each station can activate a real sprinkler solenoid. However, the test does not check terminal block so that could be the source of the problem.

[Ram]

Ok, tested again this morning. No power on the terminals. Checked the connectors again to make sure there is not loose connectivity etc.

Then unplugged the connectors and then used the multimeter directly against the pins. No power. Should there be power with no connection to the valves?

Then dis-assembled the set up, removed the BBB (to isolate the problem) and connected the power and checked with the multimeter directly against the pins. No power.

Is there anything else I can check? Is my OSBo defective? I hope not!!

[Ray]

“Then dis-assembled the set up, removed the BBB (to isolate the problem) and connected the power and checked with the multimeter directly against the pins. No power.” I don’t understand what this means: without the BBB, the OSBo cannot turn on any station, it needs BBB to send control command to it, so obviously without it there won’t be any output voltage on any station.

When you used multimeter to test, are you actually running the OpenSprinkler program, or at least the test program, so you know the software is actually turning on a station?

As I said, we test each single board and make sure every station works on each board. The likelihood of all stations failing is quite small. Anyways, if you still can’t figure out, send an email to [email protected] and we can have you return the board to check it for you.

[Ram]

Ray – What I meant was that I tried to see if there is power on the pins without the BBB connected to the OSBo. From what you describe that is not possible. I did put the BBB and OSBo together again. But no luck.

When using the Multimeter, yes I am running the OpenSprinkler program. Made sure that the Linux Ubuntu OS on the BBB kicked off the ospi.py program (via the init.d). Linux command ps -ef | grep ospi returns python ospi.py. This confirms that the program is running. Then using the assigned IP:8080 I log into Dan’s program and use the “Run Once” option. I set each station to run for 5 minutes. I have 6 stations connected to the valves. Not a single valve was activated.

I tried setting the stations to go manual with 10mins the cutoff time. And turned on all the stations. The timer countdown happens on the application but the valves do not open. There is no voltage on the pins / connector.

I am out of ideas to try and isolate this problem. I will reach out to support.

[Ray]

Hmm, there may be a software issue I am not aware of. Here are two additional things you can try:

1) Go to /home/ubuntu/demo and there should be a simple demo called selftest. Try to run this (make sure to run this in sudo) and see if that can activate the valves

2) In case you didn’t notice, we have just released the unified OpenSprinkler firmware:
https://opensprinkler.com/forums/topic/announcing-opensprinkler-unified-firmware-2-1-3-for-avrrpibbblinux/
this is a new firmware that’s fully compatible with the standard OS firmware.

If neither produce any different results, there may be a hardware issue. You can email [email protected] to proceed.

[Ram]

Ray, I have got good news.  Your previous post did point me in the right direction.

The gpio module Adafruit_BBIO.GPIO was not installed. Once I installed that, I was able to run the self test programs and all the pins show output of 29.7 V A/C when each station is triggered. The “run once” feature in web application is also triggering the right voltage on the right stations.  I am yet to connect the unit to the valves. Waiting for daylight.

What went wrong? I think I got hung up in getting the wifi dongle to work. So in trying to configure the TP-Link TL-WN725N, I ran out of room on the 2Gb SD card (actually it is an 8GB micro SD card but when using dd to copy the osbo2.img file it only recognizes 2Gb). So I could not follow instructions to compile a driver for the wifi dongle. But then I ditched the micro SD card because the BBB comes with 4Gb eMMC flash storage built in. So booted with that version of OS. Built the driver. The wifi dongle was up but intermittent. Googling, I found 2 suggestions one which said to connect the wifi dongle using a USB cable or to disable the HDMI port (for whatever reason). Since I had no need for the HDMI port, I disabled it – but then I could not boot up the BBB using the OS on the eMMC built-in storage. I now had to find the OS on the internet and then flash that to the eMMC to bring it up. But I noticed that my version now was different and more recent than the one I had initially. But I went ahead and started using that, again downloaded all the required packages / source code to compile to make my wifi dongle work. That was successful and this time no intermittent signal, the wifi stood up always and was accessible reliably. Next I did a git clone to get Dan’s program and installed in /home/ubuntu. I decided to use the eMMC and installed the program. Did not want to use the micro SD card. Program installs fine and configured the init.d so that the ospi.py program is executed at boot up time. However it was missing the Adafruit GPIO module. There was no errors in syslog. One thing I noticed that when I did the git clone to install Dan’s program, the demos folder never came through.  Your last post pointed me to the selftest program. So I went to the osbo2.img and then extracted the demos folder and put that in /home/ubuntu. And the problem was quite evident when I ran the selftest.py program.

Long story – but I am a happy camper now. Can’t wait to plug this unit and get a better control of my irrigation of my landscape and conserve water.

Thank you for your support Ray. Really appreciate it. Though it was a bit of a struggle, overall, this was a nice learning experience for me. I learned quite a bit.

Ram

 

[Ray]

OK, glad that you figured it out in the end. As I said, we are now recommending the Unified OpenSprinkler Firmware to OSPi and OSBo users:
https://opensprinkler.com/forums/topic/announcing-opensprinkler-unified-firmware-2-1-3-for-avrrpibbblinux/
which has the same software features as the standard OS.

[Author]

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