[Ray]

@jakestevenson, I think you may be confusing the low-level code that sends data to the shift register vs. the web API that tells the controller to open a station through the HTTP command. For the former, OpenSprinkler uses shift register to control stations / sprinkler solenoids, the reason is this makes it much easier to expand to multiple stations without having to occupy more microcontroller GPIO pins. The code that implements the shift register operation is all in apply_all_station_bits() function in OpenSprinkler.cpp. In addition, you can check the following link to see examples of how to get Arduino to work with shift register:
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut

The web API is explained in the Firmware API document. This allows you to open/close a station by sending an HTTP command.

[Ray]

There are two possible reasons for the time drift: one is the RTC battery (the CR1220 battery). If you have a multimeter, check if the battery voltage is at least 2.7V. Otherwise you should replace the battery. Second, the DS1307 RTC chip might be defective. If so you can easily replace it. In either case, if the controller is set to perform NTP sync, it should obtain network time every 24 hours to stay in sync with the current time.

[Ray]

@radas: the reason the weights are capped at 100% is that almost everyone who needed the adjustment felt the original weights are too aggressive, therefore we provided options to reduce the weight of each factor. Technically there is no difficulty at all to allow the weight beyond 100%, but we haven’t heard any request before yours.

[Ray]

Yes the app polls the controller (i.e. gets json data) every few seconds to stay in sync with the current status.

[Ray]

It’s ok to install and compile the firmware yourself. The demos folder is not necessary for the firmware.

[Ray]

Given this, we plan to add a few checks in the app to throw out warnings if 1) the interval day is an even number and 2) odd or even day restriction is selected. Under these two conditions, the odd/even day restriction is either redundant, or will result in the program not run at all.

[Ray]

If you are not on the latest firmware 2.1.5, please upgrade to the latest firmware as it contains important bug fixes that relate to the weather data not updating. Thanks.

[Ray]

I am not familiar with switches, but if you have a router, could you try it on the router? I am still puzzled by the LEDs — whether it’s switch or router, the LEDs should light up, because (if I understand it correctly) this is indicating that the Ethernet controller has started, so it shouldn’t matter if it’s switch or router. But I could be wrong.

[Ray]

We are not ready to release the A+ dedicated version yet. It will be at least a few more months till it’s finalized.

[Ray]

Hi, this is an interesting idea, and it’s in some sense similar to the 5+2 programming on many thermostats. At the moment we do not have plan to add this feature. Normally if you have a weekly program, you can split it into two, which would allow you to use different start times on weekends. But if I understand correctly, you have a interval day program, which you can’t easily split since the firmware doesn’t keep track of the day of the week for interval day programs.

[Ray]

That’s possible. Because DS1307 is powered by 5V, so any spike or overvoltage presented on 5V will damage DS1307 too. If you don’t need RTC you can just remove DS1307. It’s really only useful if there was a power break, and your controller is back online while you don’t have Internet connection. Otherwise RPi can perform NTP sync automatically to make sure it stays synced with the current time.

[Ray]

The difference between 1.0 and 1.1 is that 1.0 uses an off-the-shelf enclosure with custom cutouts; 1.1 uses the OpenSprinkler injection-molded enclosure. There is practically no difference in hardware features/components.

[Ray]

If you are using a recently firmware, can you also report the ‘Last Successful Weather Call’ time stamp? The 137% is the number reported by the controller, so if the controller hasn’t successfully received updated weather data that number may be outdated.

[Ray]

I could be wrong but I don’t think the repository has been updated recently. To diagnose, the first thing you should check is whether the weather data it’s using to calculate the percentage matches your recent weather conditions. If so, then you can use the Zimmerman formula to see if those data indeed lead to 0%. If not, that means your controller is having trouble reaching Wunderground and hence is not updating the weather data correctly.

[Ray]

5 minutes faster seems quite off. It also seems to indicate the firmware is not getting NTP sync correctly. First, check if your ‘NTP Sync’ option is checked; next, does your controller have access to the Internet? Without Internet access it can’t sync with NTP server properly.

[Ray]

Since the sprinklers_pi program is written by Rich Zimmerman, his github repository:
https://github.com/rszimm/sprinklers_pi/wiki
is the best place to check for updates.

[Ray]

Well, I can’t think of any obvious explanation for it. I think the problem is still that the ENC28J60 is not starting, but you said the LEDs on your laptop’s Ethernet jack lights up, and that’s strange. Do you mean your laptop or your router? How are you getting OS online?

Since I am also curious what’s causing the issue, you can submit a support ticket and send your DIY version back to us so we can take a look.

[Ray]

If your work around involved using ‘/etc/init.d/OpenSprinker.sh stop’ regularly, I don’t think it’s a safe solution, because as you noticed, this can leave valves open forever. Technically to solve this problem, when you stop the script from running it needs to send a signal to the firmware to tell it to turn off all open valves.

Setting os.status.rain_sensed affects all stations that are influenced by rain sensor/rain delay, in that if rain_sensed is true, stations (unless if they are set to ‘ignore rain’) will stop running. Also any change to this flag will be logged as ‘rain sensor’ events.

Calling reset_all_stations() will not affect future programs during the day. It merely resets all stations. If there is a program scheduled to run in the next minute, it will still run without any problem.

[Ray]

@jking1224: it doesn’t conflict with the support for flow sensor: if you have a flow sensor, it can measure the flow rate more accurately by taking flow rate directly from the sensor; otherwise you can enter a flow rate manually. So each station will indeed have a ‘flow rate’ attribute, which can be either manually set or set automatically if you have a flow sensor.

[Ray]

We sell a USB adapter that you can use to power the WiFi adapter from OpenSprinkler’s USB port:
http://rayshobby.net/cart/accessories/acc-usb/usb-fa-mb
you can also buy this from Amazon. But the flexible one that Oasiz37 linked to is more convenient.

The reason OpenSprinkler still uses the USB B female connector is that the enclosure is made to fit this type of connector. We could have switched to use microUSB but that would require a re-make of the enclosure. Keep in mind that OpenSprinkler originated from an Arduino-based sprinkler controller, and even now Arduino still uses the same USB connector.

[Ray]

You are right that you are already on the most recent version of the firmware. Do you know how long the issue occurs after each reboot? On the microcontroller-based OpenSprinkler, there is a feature that reboots the controller when the last successful weather call is more than a day old. This is not implemented for OSPi, partly because RPi will manage the network connection, partly because rebooting RPi is a lot more disruptive than rebooting a microcontroller. Knowing the patterns of the issue (like how long does it take to occur and so on) will help us find way to diagnose.

[Ray]

I’ve seen a picture posted on this forum about placing a Android tablet next to OpenSprinkler to give it sort of a touch screen interface. Can’t remember which post, but it definitely makes a lot of sense given how cheap these tablets and phones cost these days. About the Google Calendar, I only had experience writing a Google Calendar based program for OpenSprinkler Pi (which was improved by Jason Mechler to use the new Google API). One thing that we have been working on for the next firmware update is to send UDP notifications for any sprinkler events, so this can log the events to an external UDP server.

[Ray]

@ottorino: we normally don’t provide support for DIY kits, especially for hardware related issues, because the issues could be due to soldering. Regarding the rain sensor log, it’s very likely due to a time change at the start vs end time of the rain sensor action. This is because 49710 days is roughly 49710*86400 = 4.2 billion seconds, and that number is about 2^32 — the only reason it would be that large is the end time happens to appear ‘earlier’ than the start time (due to time change), resulting in a negative duration. But since all negative values of duration will be converted to positive numbers, it results in a number close to 2^32.

[Ray]

You can try to install the Windows XP driver — that driver should work on all Windows platforms (although so far we are only aware of Windows XP that requires that driver, all other, more recent Windows systems can automatically detect and install driver for the USB serial chip). If this doesn’t work, try it on a different computer.

[Ray]

Sure, the maximum timeout is certainly possible. But my intention is for the user to be explicitly aware of the time of pause, because if the system uses a default timeout the amount of time may work for some users but not for others.

[Author]

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