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I have a pump that can supply smaller zones and drip zones and city water that can supply full sprinkler zones. To minimize cost I use the pump as much as possible. What is needed to implement 2 master zones (one for city master valve and one for pump relay)? With my conventional controller I just manually switch the master valve signal since I don’t use the lawn sprinklers much but I would like to upgrade the controller and make this a program selectable feature.
I’m new here, but…
Could you assign each master to it’s own station (not using the master station option that is built in). Configure both not to use weather adjustment, leave the city water station in a disabled state.
Then program both master stations to turn on a minute before your watering schedule and turn off 5 minutes after the schedule would normally end if there were no weather adjustment.
This way, you can set your lawn and garden to weather adjust and they will water from the pump. On those days the the well is low, you can log in from anywhere (your couch with beer in hand) and disable the pump station then enable the city water station.
At least, I think that would work.
Sean
I was hoping for something a bit more automatic such as being able to set zones 1 and 4 to run with master valve 1 and zones 2, 3, and 5 from master valve 2. I currently do that with a standard sprinkler controller by using diodes to all zones used with master 2 and building triac outputs for master 1 and master 2. If master from main controller is on and no signal from diode circuit I enable master 1 output. If master from main controller is on and there is signal from diode circuit I enable master 2 output. I could use the same circuitry with opensprinkler but it would be great if it could handle this case in software so the master selection could be reprogrammed.
It looks like both requests are about having more than 1 master valve. The firmware currently only supports one master station. However, you can make use of the ‘parallel station’ feature. Specifically, you can define a station as a ‘parallel’ (i.e. non-sequential) station. When creating a program, include that station as well, and set its time to span the whole program. This way, that station will turn on when the program is on.
This is assuming you are running the Unified OpenSprinkler Firmware, which supports parallel stations.
I see how that would work but it sounds like it would require setup of both times which would give poor WAF. Most of the time we use this for watering bushes rather than grass. I have several hose faucets around the yard on zone valves. If something needs watering we hook up a hose and then manually set a time for that zone. I was hoping to be able to do this from a smart phone to keep from going back to the controller as the yard is big. How would I do this without some code changes? Or minor code changes? I would like to just be able to say run zone 3 for 30 minutes (now) and have the pump kick on if its a zone that is set for the pump source.
I second the idea of multiple Master Stations. I see this as a strong point of differentiation for OpenSprinkler and would kick the ass of commercial / horti controllers that may provide similar functionality.
If we are limited to the 8 primary stations/zones as being master valves for associated stations, it would still be a killer product.
I did think about adding support for multiple master stations a little while back. But lacking experience with common use cases, I couldn’t decide. Here are two questions to get started:
1) How many master stations? Two should be easy to support, but would you ever need more than two?
2) Does each station always activate only one of the master stations? Do you need some stations to activate more than one master valves?If I could have two sources and just select which source for each zone that would be sufficient for me. I don’t ever need to activate more than one master valve. Once set up, if a zone is activated the proper source valve is automatically triggered too.
My situation is slightly different in that I need two master valves and to be able to assign them by program or day, not just by zone. I irrigate greenhouses with two water sources — reverse osmosis and fertigation — and would like to be able to assign a master valve to each source so that I can select the source for each program or day. For example, a typical irrigation regime would be fertigation 6 days a week with an RO flush on Sunday. I would never need to activate two master valves at once.
Hey all, just ordered my OSPi today and ready to get my geek on! One of the features I’d love to see is multiple master valves. In my case, I’d want m1 to run with stations 1 through 14 and then both m1 and m2 with stations 15 through 18.
I only have one master with my legacy controller, but after reading all about the OS (great product Ray!!), I started to think of how it could help me fix other issues with irrigation. One issue I’ve had on more than one occasion, is a worker splitting an irrigation line while digging, tilling, etc. and having water rushing out at 60 psi through a 1″ hose for hours before being noticed. My thought was to install an inline brass solenoid valve, in my house, just before the water line connects to the irrigation manifold. This would be m1, which I’d need to activate for all stations, and prevent wasted water if any line broke.
My current system has a master valve that I rigged a year ago, where instead of replacing my manifold with a larger one, I took an existing station, added the 3 new zones to it with 3 new valves, as well as another valve for the existing zone. I currently have two legacy controllers managing this; a new controller for the four new zones, 15 through 18 and the original controller of the master which means I need to make sure the clocks are in sync to ensure the master is running at the same time as those zones. I think this will be fixed with the master valve feature and the second master would be great for the broken pipe example. Thanks!
@Greg, OK, this seems to be the first request to support a station triggering both masters. We were about to make UI changes to support two master stations, so it’s good to know that.
I am just designing my drip irrrigation system and thought that it would be a good idea to water mainly with hard water to save softener salt and then switch to softened water for a couple of minutes before shutting off each zone, so that hard water will not be left in the drip emitters to evaporate and clog them. It seems that this would be common practice for people with a water softener, but I’m not sure how to do it. Sounds like two master zone valves, hard and soft, would work, though, if I understand the concept of master zone.
Hi all,
In my case I have 2 irrigation control boxes, one for the front yard and one for the backyard.
Both control boxes have 4 zone valves and 2 masters valves for municipal and borehole water.
It would be great for me to have 4 master valves, 2 would be used for the front yard and 2 for the backyard.
That way I could get rid of the manual selector switches I currently use to select between water sources for the front and backyard.
Typically I’d run for the front yard zone1 (master1) municipal water, zone2 (master2) borehole water, zones3-6 irrigation.
Similarly for the back yard zone7 (master3) municipal water, zone8 (master4) borehole water, zones9-12 irrigation.
We are wrapping up firmware 2.1.4, which has added support for 2 independent master stations. If you need 4 master stations, you can either use ‘parallel stations’ to achieve the effect of 4 masters (the downside is that you will have to manually set the master station run time), or you can use two separate controllers.
I received my new open sprinkler controller with firmware 2.1.4, but it does not seem to do what I wanted. The only way of using the master valves seems to be to associate each zone with a particular master valve. On the other hand, I want use master 1 to water with hard water on all zones and then use master 2 to flush all zones with soft water. I can’t see a way to do that.
Can you specify your need? It’s unclear to me exactly how you want the two master stations to work with the valves. Firmware 2.1.4 allows you to associate each valve with either, both, or neither of the master stations.
I would like to use different water sources (master valves) on different days. I do this currently by having an irrigation program for the fert. master valve and one for the RO master valve that run at the same time as my plant irrigation program, depending on plant needs. This works well because programs can run concurrently, but being able to assign master valves to days of the week/stations would be slick.
My need as stated earlier in the thread is similar to the need of Rich and also to the need of Ian earlier in the thread. Basically, the current software allows you to associate one or two masters with a zone, but that is the same every time the zone is used. We need to open only one master at a time, but to be able to choose which one to open depending on the program or day. I want to normally use hard water to conserve softener salt, but then rinse all of my drip zones with soft water after use, to avoid calcium deposits. Ian and Rich want to choose RO or fertilizer as sources. Neither of us need to open two master valves for a single zone at the same time, it is either/or. Ideally, you could select the master for each zone within the program. Having to do this by controlling the master valve as a simultaneous program seems overly complicated and prone to mistakes.
OK, I see what you mean. So looks like for you the solution is to have program-level master station — in other words, each program can associate a specific master station. As I described earlier, you can always achieve this by using a parallel (i.e. non-sequential) station as a master station. Then in each program you can set that station to run for the entire duration of the program. This way you can associate different master stations in different programs.
OK, I tried that and it is not complicated – just a different concept than the master valve, and the valves are not set up as “master” valves in the software.
Hey guys, I’m running 2.1.4 Unified by don’t see the dual master option. Am I missing it? Or will it not be available until 2.1.5? Thanks!
It is available in 2.1.4. It is possible the app hasn’t been updated to 1.4.2 or newer. You can find the app version in the about page from the side panel on the left.
Once you update, you should see the dual master station opinion.
It is available in 2.1.4. It is possible the app hasn’t been updated to 1.4.2 or newer. You can find the app version in the about page from the side panel on the left.
Once you update, you should see the dual master station opinion.
For those who need a station to be associated with different masters in different programs — I thought about a work-around. The solution is to connect one solenoid wire to two station ports (i.e. dedicating two ports for one zone). For example, assume on the OpenSprinkler device, station port 1 is master 1, port 2 is master 2, port 3 is ‘Zone1_primary’, and port 4 is ‘Zone1_secondary’. The solenoid wire of zone 1 is connected simultaneously to port 3 and 4. Next, ‘Zone1_primary’ is set to activate master 1, and ‘Zone1_secondary’ is set to activate master 2. Now, when you need to run zone 1 with water from master 1, you simply use Zone1_primary; similarly, to run zone 1 with water from master 2, use Zone1_secondary. In essence, the way this works is that both Zone1_primary and secondary are connected to the same physical solenoid, so either will turn on that solenoid. However, they are associated with different masters, allowing you to switch between different masters.
I have a similar situation as described by a couple other users. I have 8 zones that i need to alternate watering between two different sources. I need to feed all 8 zones from a ‘nutrient’ source and then feed all 8 zones from a ‘flush’ source. The workaround described above won’t work because i have too many zones. I will try the parallel workaround next. Just hoping this is being worked on for the next update? Two master valves that can be controlled within a program and associated with any zone. Thx!
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