[eddiek2000]

@kenk wrote:

I have just received and setup my V1.3 board with my raspberry pi.
I noticed that when I activate zone 1 from the manual activation screen, both zone one and 2 are active, if I activate zone 3, both zone 1 and 3 are active. If everything is off all zones are off.
Could zone 1 be acting like the pump zone? This is not a big deal, I will just have to shift all my wiring one to the right and correct my programming.

Zone 1 is the second connection. The first is reserved for the pump.

[eddiek2000]

@kenb wrote:

@rszimm wrote:

Great ideas! Pretty busy today but I’ll dig into this tomorrow.

Oh, and yes, the first output of the board is reserved for the “pump” or “master valve” output. That’s why there are only 7 zones.

Just started to play with this package on my setup. I have 8 zones and no need for pump so wondering how difficult it is to modify to support 8 zones with the main board. Seems silly for me to need to buy an expansion. 😀

I haven’t opened the source up to see how things work.

EDIT:
So now I have opened the source up. Looks like the zone control and pump control is in a couple functions: pumpControl(), TurnOnZone() and isZoneOn()

Looks like if there was a flag for “Use Pump/Master” then these 3 functions could be modified to allow for the first pin to be used as a Zone vs. used as pump. Are there other assumptions in the code in other places that might also need a change?

I have been thinking about your problem and I think the easy answer is to fool the system. Tell it you have 8 zones. Turn off the master zone for all but the last Zone. Use the master zone as your eighth zone.

[eddiek2000]

@perico wrote:

Hi.

It would be possible to run the zones in concurrent mode?. When I was testing it I noticed that only one valve can be on at once.

Thank you and congratullations for your work!!

If you run multiple vales at the same time, then could you just connect them to the same control line?

[eddiek2000]

@rszimm wrote:

I’ve created a wiki for this project at: https://github.com/rszimm/sprinklers_pi/wiki
I’ve also uploaded the source code to github at: https://github.com/rszimm/sprinklers_pi

I have been testing the crap out of this lately. The logs are very nice feature. I especially like the new table log. 2 more feature requests though:

1) Can disabled schedules be available for a “Quick Schedule” run?
I set up a “Valve Test” schedule for a 2 minute interval per zone. The “Valve Test” schedule needs to be enabled in order for it to be usable/selectable in a “Quick Schedule”/one shot run. Also, when it is enabled, it defaults to midnight being the start time and you cannot disable the time. I am sure this is by design. Therefore having the ability to run disabled schedules would be good.

2) An advance button would be awesome, if possible.
When I close out my system, I run each zone a few times with the “valve test” – usually 2 minutes. As each zones empties out and is only blowing air, I manually advance the system to the next zone. Saving the head from turning dry for too long.

I honestly think these are the end on my wish list. This product is truly AWESOME!!

I know you are busy, so if you don’t have a chance I can probably knock out #1. #2 will require me to spend a little more intimate time with the code and is probably not too big of a problem.

Thanks!
Ed

[eddiek2000]

@rszimm wrote:

@eddiek2000 wrote:

I “think” 0-99 is a reduction in watering time, 100 is as programmed, and 101-200 would add time to the schedule. I upgraded and went looking for the seasonal adjust and found mine set at 0.

Your intuition is correct!

I don’t know why the seasonal adjust dumped you back to zero on upgrade. That absolutely shouldn’t have happened. Were you upgrading from v1.0.3? Is it possible that you set it to zero before upgrading?

I cheated and upgraded from the test version v1.0.2. Figured I would give it a shot before starting from scratch.

[eddiek2000]

@mikethechap wrote:

I love the set up. Nice pics. Kind of funny to put it in a gutted Rain Bird box. It adds a note of irony, don’t you think. That said, I fought to get my sprinklers to run dependably using WeatherMatic with a super weather sensor, a Rain Bird, and another really expensive one that uses it’s own moisture sensors in the ground. No aspect of home management has lead to more profanity, frustration and anger. Then Open Sprinkler comes along and it runs better than any of those systems ever ran, far more intuitively, and at less cost. Thanks to these incredible developers. I truly think that the Raspberry Pi has a shot at being another Gutenberg Press.

Thanks! I thought the Rainbird enclosure was appropriate. I have 2 – my original was taken out by lightening and the replacement is available if something happens to the OSPi. This has been my goal for many years and I am thrilled to be able to accomplish it with a RasPi!!! In all actuality, the Rainbird controller could probably be replaced with a raspi without the OS boards. The backplane doesn’t have many wires and with a scope I probably could have reversed engineered the valve/module control. It would have been cheaper and more fun, but also more time consuming. And time is not what I have available lately.

Yep – Ray did an outstanding job designing the OSPi hardware and rszimm has done an INCREDIBLE job with his control software. I literally just upgraded my version of his program in literally 2 minutes. From download, compile, to upgrade. Not an issue, my only warning is to check the settings and ensure your seasonal adjust is not 0. I “think” 0-99 is a reduction in watering time, 100 is as programmed, and 101-200 would add time to the schedule. I upgraded and went looking for the seasonal adjust and found mine set at 0.

[eddiek2000]

Finally went live tonight. I gutted my old Rain Bird enclosure:

[attachment=1:mt4ugcnu]RB_enclosure.jpg[/attachment:mt4ugcnu]

and installed the OSPi running sprinklers_pi. I just need to install the latest version, which will take no time at all when I have the chance.

[attachment=0:mt4ugcnu]OSPi.jpg[/attachment:mt4ugcnu]

[eddiek2000]

rszimm,

Another kudos to you!! I just set up my android phone to use a tunnel over ssh (connectbot) to connect to my OSPi running your program. I was debating on how best to use the sprinklers_pi web server outside of my LAN and it dawned on me to use port forwarding over ssh. Works like a Champ!! Now I can securely access my sprinkler system from anywhere in the world. 😀

A little background: I have a Linux Firewall/router setup at home to NAT all of my local traffic over our cable modem connection. I know it is a little overkill, but I am a linux geek at heart. :geek:

[eddiek2000]

@trash007 wrote:

First off. Great work. Suggestion for wunderground section update is to be able to enter a pws instead of a zipcode query. So the query would look like:

/api/%s/yesterday/conditions/q/pws:%ws.json where %ws is the name/call sign for the personal weather station. This would allow the weather indicator to be even as accurate as the neighborhood.

I would be even tempted to get my own wunderground station($100-200) at some point. 🙂

~H

A local weather station is my plan. A quick look at the price of components looks to be in the neighborhood of $225:

$60 for pi with SD card and wifi.
$120 for weather station
$45 for radiation shield for weather station

[eddiek2000]

Might have to give it a shot. Not happy about java, but is just me.

[eddiek2000]

@cmoore wrote:

I notice that the github repository has all the individual files under the OSPi tree, but then it also has ospi.tar.gz which seems to contain the same files. Why the two different copies? It seems like it would be really easy for those to get out of sync. In fact if I diff the two versions there are a lot of differences, but at first glance they seem to be trivial (like end-of-line markers being different). Maybe it would make sense to get rid of the ospi.tar.gz and just let people pull the source tree?

This thread is about “sprinklers_pi” an alternative control program for the OSPi hardware platform. I think you are confusing the 2. See first post:

@rszimm wrote:

Hi there,
I’ve created an alternative control software module to control the Raspberry Pi OpenSprinkler system. It’s entirely self contained and doesn’t require python, a web server, or any other heavy software to operate. It can also be compiled to run on the Atmel AVR / Arduino platforms, so theoretically it should run on the AVR OpenSprinkler as well.

I created this a few months back before I had seen the web code created by Samer. The look and feel are pretty similar mainly due to the use of the same mobile web library (jQuery Mobile).

Here are the features:

• Fully contained system with control logic and web serving.[/*:3mh2r6lp]
• Same code can be compiled to run on the Atmel/AVR/Arduino platform.[/*:3mh2r6lp]
• Web based control (including mobile Android iOS)[/*:3mh2r6lp]
• Automatic adjustment of intervals based on weather conditions. (weather underground API)[/*:3mh2r6lp]
• Manual Control[/*:3mh2r6lp]
• Scheduled Control[/*:3mh2r6lp]
• Quick Schedule[/*:3mh2r6lp]
• Named Zones[/*:3mh2r6lp]
• Full Graphing feature of historic logs[/*:3mh2r6lp]
• Ability to run with OpenSprinkler module or direct relay outputs.[/*:3mh2r6lp]

Plus I’m working on a few other things…

Here are a few screen shots from the software:

—
Installation instructions:

1. Start with a generally clean instance of Raspberry Pi Raspbian system. If you have a web server installed, you’ll want to avoid port conflicts (i.e. make sure it’s not running on 8080— the default for this software). If you’ve already installed the python interval program, disable it while you’re running this.
2. Install the wiring pi module. Details are here: http://wiringpi.com/download-and-install/
3. Install the sqlite3 library (technically optional, but why not do it anyway?), and the build tools

   sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev build-essential

4. Download the source tarball here: http://stuff.intelligent-isi.com/sprinklers_pi/sprinklers_pi-1.0.1.tar.gz or type:

   wget http://stuff.intelligent-isi.com/sprinklers_pi/sprinklers_pi-1.0.1.tar.gz

5. Unpack the source tarball:

   tar -xzvf sprinklers_pi-1.0.1.tar.gz

6. Build and install the module:

   cd sprinklers_pi-1.0.1
   
   make
   
   sudo make install

That’s it! If you want to start it, simply reboot or just run the following:

sudo /etc/init.d/sprinklers_pi start

If something goes wrong on startup you can get some diagnostic information at /var/log/sprinklers_pi.

Once you’ve started things up, browse to port 8080 with a web browser. The system starts up in demo mode (i.e. it won’t actually switch outputs). To change the output type go to the Settings and change the Output type to “OpenSprinkler” (assuming you’re using the OpenSprinklerPi module).

For those who are particularly adventurous, the sprinkling logs are stored in sqlite3 database format, so if you really care, you can query them with SQL using the database at /usr/local/etc/sprinklers_pi/db.sql

I’m going to get the source up somewhere like github over the next couple days…

[eddiek2000]

@craigmw wrote:

@eddiek2000 wrote:

@ndboost wrote:

give us some source code on github so we can contribute!!! 🙂

The source code is part of the distribution on page 1. I have been playing with it. I can get more than 7 zones, but can’t activate above #9. I also have an issue save data for zones over 9. There are a few constants that need adjusting and must be another I am missing. A debugger would be great to break on where I am having issues.

I would like to add a seasonal adjustment too. I have found that setting very useful on my Rainbird.

I’m not sure what you mean by seasonal adjustment, but I believe you can control the watering “budget” using the Water Level field under the device options page. This can also be adjusted using the web app, which is really handy if you have an iPad, iPhone or Android. I love being able to turn on and off different zones while testing my sprinkler setup remotely using my Android phone. Also, I have the expansion board and have not had any problems with scheduling or activating zones 9+. That’s an interesting issue.

I must have missed the seasonal adjustment option. Will have to check it out tonight. As far as more than “7” zones, the OP states this about his release:
@rszimm wrote:

Wunderground IP: You can get it by resolving api.wunderground.com. It’s 38.102.136.138.

There’s not currently support for a rain sensor. How is your rain sensor wired up? I don’t have a rain sensor, but adding support should be pretty simple. Anyone know what the optimal logic is w.r.t. a rain sensor? Rain the last 24 hours just don’t run any schedules?

There’s also not currently support for more than 7 zones (plus a master valve or pump). Shouldn’t be difficult to add in though. Most of the logic is already there and it’s just a matter of changing a constant, but I’ll have to shift some stuff a bit in how schedules are stored because I only allowed room for the 7 zones. Not a big deal really, but some work… Plus I don’t actually own an expansion board so I’ll have to get you to test things out when I’ve got something to test.

Did you mod the code to add support for more than 7 zones? Wanna share your mods?

Thanks,
Ed

[eddiek2000]

@ndboost wrote:

give us some source code on github so we can contribute!!! 🙂

The source code is part of the distribution on page 1. I have been playing with it. I can get more than 7 zones, but can’t activate above #9. I also have an issue save data for zones over 9. There are a few constants that need adjusting and must be another I am missing. A debugger would be great to break on where I am having issues.

I would like to add a seasonal adjustment too. I have found that setting very useful on my Rainbird.

[eddiek2000]

Very awesome work. Can’t wait for an update. I just received my RPi and am awaiting my OSPi board and expansion board (I have 12 zones) to really get started.

Long story short is I have always wanted a PC programable sprinkler controller. I even tried to figure out the Rainbird remote protocol, but that went no where. Well, last Friday, my controller was taken out by a lightning storm. I have a temporary replacement on the way, but my long term goal is the Pi version. The OpenSprinkler program got my eye, but when I saw the Pi version, and this software, I was sold.

Thanks Again!! If you need an expansion card for testing, I just might be able to help.

[Author]

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