[tom]

Thanks, Ray and Samer (and whoever else may have contributed). This is an impressive bit of engineering 🙂

Is the flow rate available through a API? This would be great to have.

What happens to the flow sensor when a valve is not active? Since I want to see other activities (e.g. a pool autofill valve, leak detection, etc.) I would like the information to be constantly available. Perhaps you could accumulate any flows that happen when no known zone is active to a zone named “Unknown”, that would also be logged.

By the way, I highly recommend going with a gauge with a .1 gal resolution. Even at 30 GPM, that is only 5 ticks per second for the controller to handle, so it’s not overloading the controller, but gives much better real time flow information.

[tom]

I like this idea… I’d love to see a smaller, more distributed control system… .hopefully this could fit into the Master-Slave logic eventually.

[tom]

I agree with Samer… The OSPI has always announced itself as a test bed for experimentation and addons…. I think it is great as a “science experiment” – and billed itself as such. The Unified Firmware is a much more solid tool, with a lot of addon potential through APIs and modifying the Open Source software itself.

Given the California rebate situation, (>1 acre of irrigated area pays $35/zone for a smart controller listed on the rebate list), I am installing 3 Rachio controllers now for my 45 zone system. In some ways, I like Rachio better (better documentation, customer support, communication reliability, ET algorithm (I think). It also has cool ITTT integration, to build simple rules to capture events and react to them (e.g. add a row to a google spreadsheet when a run finishes) But in other ways, it is inferior to OS. It can only hold a max of 16 stations; the wires have to be fed through a very small channel, for no apparent reason other than they thought it would look cool that way. The controller snaps over the wiring block, so you can access the wires without disconnecting the controller, making it a pain to debug (or even see) the wiring. The app has some serious User interface problems, (e.g. you can’t tap on a zone and turn it on, you have to get out of the edit mode, open the key pad, reselect the zone, and hope that you don’t put it into an “all zones” water cycle by accident. So, all is not nirvana.

I really like the hardware and software that Ray and Samer and others are putting out. Congrats to all … The OS is MUCH easier to install with its terminal blocks and expansion boxes, the user interface is on par or better than the Rachio. I think that the open source community around the OS hasn’t reached critical mass yet; a larger group could deliver greater benefits to all.

I looked at the Rain Bird system – it would have required a $1600 communications add on board to a $750 48 station controller to get the full ET/communications/logging capability on a dedicated PC (Last thing I want to do is run another PC full time to run my sprinklers). These are selling very well to commercial applications- why would they want to introduce a free app to replace this? At the same time, the public (and old-time irrigation guys) look in horror at a controller without a dial. They just can’t imagine I can run my sprinklers from my phone (or watch).

Anyway, I do think that there is great potential for an open source sprinkler initiative, but there is a huge gap between what folks buy at Home Depot or their irrigation store and what modern technology can provide.

And yes, it would be enormously valuable to be on the accepted rebate list…

So, I’m not giving up on Open Sprinkler, just taking side excursion 🙂

[tom]

I was having the same symptom with my Orbit box, and discovered the same wiring problem. I presume its fixed now. thanks for the tip.

[tom]

cool project. I’ve been toying with some ideas about managing my pool water levels.

some thoughts:

1) I presume your pool has an overflow drain, so that excess rainfall will dump water (and chlorine) out of your pool. My pool can only take about a half inch of rainfall before it dumps. So, increasing the height of the overflow and decreasing the normal level of the pool can save water. And holding off filling the pool if the weather predicts rain is another way of saving.

2) I gave up on liquid chlorine (too harsh on my wife’s skin; the conditioner chemicals making the water hard, smell, and not liking to have harsh chemicals around the yard), and when to a chlorine generator/salt pool system. We love it. The power supply to the salt generator is way over priced, so there is an opportunity for a DIY/open source project to drive a salt cell with a power supply/controller.

3) I’ve saved a ton of money by running my pool filter pump at lower speed for a longer time, and shifting the filtration cycle to lower time-of-use rates. Smarter control of the pool speed can really help. Pentair variable speed pumps have a digital interface gadget that you turn on the pump at four different speeds with 4 different 24AC signals. So an AC OS board could control the pump without messing with 220V wiring. They can also be controlled with an RS 485 protocol, but this would require some reverse engineering to figure out their codes.

So, the OS hardware is very close to what’s needed to manage a pool system 🙂

I’m interested to hear how you progress.

[tom]

aaarghhh… I just wrote a lengthy reply to this message, pressed the “submit” button, and then it told me that I must be logged into post anything. It would have been nice to know that before they gave me an input screen with a Submit button. 🙁

@David, there can be huge differences between what the controller thinks it is doing and what actually happens. Broken pipes (before or after the control valve), broken sprinkler heads gushing water or not delivering, valves stuck open or closed, drip lines chewed through, and pumps/master valves/wells/water pressure problems. So there are dozens of points of failure that can have really bad consequences. (twice, I’ve come home from vacation to find a burst pipe. These cost me $800 and $1200 in water bills.) Accurate metering, describing exactly what happened, is really valuable.

It is also important to meter what is happening when the valves are NOT on. I want to put my meter upstream of all my valves, so I can see any leaks or strange behavior.

And, of course, I want to see me water flow (and alerts) in real time on my watch 🙂

[tom]

@David: Berlin! Ich habe ein Jahr in Goettingen studiert 🙂 Sorry about the BBQ, maybe some other time. Stone Brewery, a wonderful micro brewery near me in San Diego, is opening a MicroBrewery in Berlin soon. You should try it to taste what real beer should taste like 🙂

This is really coming along well! I like it very much. I like the fonts. Maybe the rain delay should be in days, not hrs. Delays last for the next program start time. In California, the rule is 2 days delay when rain is detected. I don’t know why I’d ever just delay some hours.

I’m missing feedback when I enter parameters. I don’t know if they have taken effect (there is no “enter” button). I’m not sure if when I select the Run Station time if it took or not. So haptic feedback would be nice, or some positive feedback (“signifier” in Don Norman’s framework)

I think that one of the limiting factors for adoption of a new sprinkler system is the user interface. Folks are used to all forms of clunky dials and pins, and most irrigation folks I show OS to cringe when they see it… how can you run a sprinkler system with that? While we geeks are happy with a certain style of interaction, the rest of the world has an entirely different “conceptual model” of irrigation (mostly, just set it and forget it)

You can take an online course from Donald Norman for free at https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-the-design-of-everyday-things–design101

One other addition might be to adjust a program’s timing per zone. Have a button to increase or decrease the amount of time by a percentage (not absolute seconds). If we did this, I would also like to keep a history of how the program was adjusted. (On Weds, someone increased the watering on the trees by 20%).

keep it up…

Tom

[tom]

I’m wondering if Docker might help out https://www.docker.com/whatisdocker

I would be happy with just some manual documentation as to what is being set, and where. I found it by looking at the .sh script.

I’m happy to have new features, though 🙂

I noticed from your web page that you had done some image work. I am looking for a way to easily take timelapse “sprinklercam” shots of what I’m sprinkling. Just another way for closing the loop. It would be nice to integrate the log with the image stream (and weather info).

[tom]

OK, I got it resolved… the Opensprinkler.sh in /etc/init.d didn’t get cleaned out when I removed the directory, so it was pointing elsewhere.

and I figured out that “top” shows me the process as opensprinkler. duh.

[tom]

Thanks…

I’m a little confused as to what I did, particularly with the two spellings of the directory name 🙂

the first time, I did the git pull and the build. it worked fine, but didn’t change the behavior of the program. then I discovered the second directory, and did another git pull and build. still no change, even after reboot.

so I moved the directory over to another name, and did a fresh git clone, which created a new OpenSprinklerGen2 folder. but I don’t see it running when I try to access the site via URL. (I was using another port number in the old installation, but presume that the new install won’t use it.)

how can I tell from the command line if Open Sprinkler is running?

[tom]

@David: Great work… I get such a kick out of having this on my wrist. Maybe “Run” or “Start” is enough for the menu item. “Run Station” or “Start Station” would also work if there is space.

The font is still hard for me to see in dim light (I can read it OK in bright light). I could put on reading glasses, but it would be nice to have all the text in the bold font that now shows the controller name, or an option in the settings menu.

It would be nice to have what is now the “Manual” menu item (soon to be “start” or whatever) appear at the top of the menu before the Rain Delay option.

I don’t understand your reference to https://github.com/littleprojects/Pebble_Opensprinkler/blob/master/src/app.js#L525 is this the code that you are running on the watch? if not, are you sharing your Pebble code? I’d enjoy learning from it, and seeing if I might be able to push some info from a Python script.

@Samer thank you so much for all your efforts, too. I do hope we can get some documentation/support going in case you get hit by a truck 🙂 Maybe if you point me in the right direction, I might even do a bit myself, if nothing else, to learn JS 🙂

@David and @Samer: I’m hosting a BBQ this Saturday with user interface/smart things guru Donald Norman http://jnd.org/ and will be showing him my Opensprinkler setup. He is best known for The Design of Everyday Things http://www.jnd.org/books/design-of-everyday-things-revised.html I suspect he’ll have lots of first-class ideas. I’ll show him whatever software is available Sat afternoon my time (GMT-7).

[tom]

Thanks, David… this is really cool. I’m not sure about the update process… I ended up unloading and reloading the app completely before I realized I had the new version.

I like it! some comments:

The rain sensor still says it’s raining. I’m in a drought in San Diego, so this is a bit of a cruel joke 🙂 I don’t have the sensor even hooked up, and plan to use it for flow sensing from a meter Real Soon Now with the next release. Can’t wait to be the first to in my neighborhood to see my water meter flow on my watch.

“Manual” mode on the controller turns off the auto mode, so it is confusing to use manual mode on the watch, but (I presume) keep the controller in auto. Perhaps calling the watch control “Custom” or “Override” might clarify things.

The order of status lines that appeal to me are:

rain delay (but only if there really is one)
water level
last run (more as a check to make sure things are working)
last update
next run (new)
sunrise/sunset
logs (new) – I’d like to see the most recent log, as well as a history of a given zone… (e.g. “how much/how often have I been watering this zone?” and “how many gallons of water have put here in the last week?” when we get the flow sensor.

and geolocate everything so I can just walk around and do all this without worrying about zone numbers, etc 🙂

[tom]

Thanks… I got the URL working. My problem was that I was using http:// in the front of the URL. I ended up with three controllers because I interpreted Ray’s comments last year that extenders over 50 feet were iffy. I am managing many zones over a large area, and so I decided to use two controllers to replace the ones I was removing as “production” controllers. Then, I added another for my wife’s garden that I use as a “sandbox” system for trying new things out. Now that it seems I can run a long extender cable, it looks like I can simplify things with just a 300′ Cat 5 cable run.

by the way, my Pebble says “Rain sensor says its raining” even though I have the “use rain sensor” box unchecked.

[tom]

Thanks, Ray. I was talking about doing the communication over the same wires that connect the controller to the solenoid. Can I just inject the signal at the solenoid and then read it at the controller, sharing the same wires for both the solenoid activation as well as my data communication?

[tom]

I’m thinking about placing Arduino Trinkets to measure soil temperature out near the control valves. How hard would it be to get a (slow is OK) serial comm link back to the controller? I presume that doing this over DC makes it a lot simpler, but I don’t know what would be involved.

[tom]

These are all very interesting options. In terms of stringing extenders out from a central unit: Do they have to be daisy-chained, or can they be a hub/star configuration?

[tom]

I’m pushing 65C now, and it keeps running https://thingspeak.com/channels/41518

If it does shut down due to overtemp, do you know if it will it just reboot when it cools down?

[tom]

This is all really great stuff. I look forward to seeing the code in operation.

By the way, I’m very happy with my personal weather station that I’ve connected to the Weather Underground. I bought an Ambient WS 1400 for $149 http://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Weather-WS-1400-IP-Observer-Monitoring/dp/B00O9YIEJW/ref=sr_1_11?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1438747261&sr=1-11 plugged it in, and its been working perfectly ever since (except during power outages, or when my WiFi network is down). I put it on top of a piece of electrical conduit from Home Depot – the hardest part of the install was just mounting it. It gives me solar radiation and rainfall rate, which I figure is an important micro climate issue to work out runoff issues. 2mm/hr for 24 hrs is way different than 48mm in one hour 🙂 Given California’s El Nino situation, this could be a big issue this winter if we get torrential rains. I also live near the coast, which has a marine layer effect that can be very localized.

[tom]

I read your post at 10AM Sunday, ordered a Pebble on Amazon, and got free same-day delivery – it arrived Sunday evening. I installed your software, and got it working right away. Amazing stuff! Thanks for programming it.

A couple of issues: I use an external DDNS system to access my sprinklers, so I need to be able to access a URL, not just an IP.

I have three controllers, each with a different port number so that I can forward them through my router. I don’t see how I can access more than one controller from the Pebble.
It would be great to allow a user to scroll through the zones (up and down buttons move the cursor, the select button chooses the zone under the cursor) Then, they could turn the valve on or off (up button is “Add one minute,” down button is “subtract one minute” subtract to zero and the zone turns off. You could also add a “chatter” mode that would turn the valve on and off quickly to make a sound that would help find the zone in the sprinkler manifold, where there might be 8 valves next to each other. Chattering the valve would make it easier to find.

Since the Pebble is waterproof to 50 feet, it makes a good gadget for managing sprinklers when you are out in the yard, wet and muddy. I don’t like takig my main phone out when I work on the sprinklers, because my hands get all wet and muddy. But the Pebble is an ideal unit… conveniently on the wrist, readable in full sun, and with big buttons rather than trying to use a touch sensitive screen with muddy fingers (on a much more expensive watch that I probably wouldn’t want to get wet and muddy). For $80

Font size is a problem… it’s pretty hard for me to read the smaller text in dim light.

I wore the Pebbly all day today, and I think I like it. The vibration works well for me to alert me of phone calls, and I like being able to glance at an incoming text or email to see if it is worth reading on my phone. I also like that it’s cross platform for both iPhone and Android.

keep up the good work.

[tom]

I’m not sure if my previous post worked, but here is a follow on…

The watch lists the wrong zone for “last run” – it shows a zone one less than the one that actually ran. I suspect that you are indexing from 1 and OS is indexing from zero.

[tom]

How about tracking changes to the site configuration, as well? E.g. the water level is set to zero, or whatever?

[tom]

I noticed the same problem…with the same settings.

[tom]

I’ve had intermittent problems on my controllers. One, I discovered that I was using a new Raspberry PI 2 with a new WiFi dongle (with antenna) that was using more power than the tiny Edimax USB adapters I normally use. I switched to a bigger power supply unit, and the problem went away.

The other is an intermittent problem I have with a garden controller that just goes off line periodically. I just come back later, and things are working again.

Since I am looking to expand my WiFi area coverage and traffic, I’m thinking about replacing my WiFi network with a Open Mesh professional grade network. More expensive than home routers, but if I get good, reliable coverage, it will be worth it. http://www.open-mesh.com/

[tom]

Do you have any idea of how hot is too hot? And if it does overheat, does it fry the whole board, or just shut down gracefully?

[tom]

@Nathan: Yes, many tradeoffs. Part of me wants to go off into advanced futuristic projects with autonomous drones supervising the sprinklers, robotic sprinklers, computer vision of the landscape, smart sprinkler heads and valves, three dimensional hydraulic modeling of the irrigation area, rain barrel/gray water/reverse osmosis water recovery, smart pool and pond management, and stuff like that. Another part of me has a very real irrigation need that has to be 100% reliable or I could do a lot of damage to my yard (and my marriage 🙂

There’s a huge move towards Internet of Things, smart sensors, home automation, of course. I’ve played with Thingspeak (to which I give a A- rating), Node-Red (B+), Initial State (C+), and a couple of others that were too complicated to even install. I’ve also toyed with the idea of using ROS (Robot operating system), treating all of my home sensing and control as a robot. In any case, all the interesting stuff for the future will be in working with all the sensors and controls in an ever smarter, integrated platform.

One approach would be to use an API to control things. The current OSPI API is a baby step in this direction, and may point the way to allowing these systems to all play in the same sandbox.

But a word of warning: suppose you want to create a “Anticipate Rainfall” REACT control in Thingspeak. If you try to set the OS Sprinkler weather level with their HTTPSpeak, you would discover that setting the Weather level also requires that you read the DHCP variable and reset it at the same time that you set the weather level (it is a so-called “binary” option that gets reset every time you set the weather, whether or not you explicitly include it in the HTTP command). If you miss this subtlety, or send a malformed command, you run the risk of bricking your Arduino controller, requiring a reinstall of the software. (I know, because I spend an anxious evening reinstalling the software when trying to adjust the weather remotely). I’m not sure why they designed the API this way, but I’m sure that the fact that they were trying to squeeze a lot of logic into an Arduino played a huge role.

In any case, the unified OS Firmware is constrained to the lowest common denominator – the Arduino’s capabilities. Moving to a Linux architecture opens up pretty much unlimited capabilities, far beyond what can be squeezed into today’s Arduinos.

It seems to me that the way forward is to define (or find) multiple abstraction layers. The bottom layer is the logic to monitor, actuate, and log the water flows. The next layer would be responsible for scheduling and coordinating the flows. The next layer would integrate with other services, such as home automation, anticipation, etc…

[Author]

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