[Ray]

@mb42: by the way, in case you didn’t notice, some of your suggestions have already been integrated:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=700&p=4433#p4650
for example: changing terms to clarify the meaning of them, adding nagivation links, these have all been integrated since firmware 2.0.7.

[Ray]

@agencay: go to settings (if you are in the new UI, click on the icon at the top-right corner of the screen), then ‘Change Options’, http port is right there in the options.

[Ray]

@mb42: I understand your disappoinement and I apologize for not making enough stride along the improvements you suggested. In my own defense, please understand that as a single-person open-source business, I don’t have the kind of resources that big commercial companies have, in terms of technical development and support. OpenSprinkler started as a DIY open-source project, for educational purpose, and for giving users the flexiblity of customizing the code if they want. Overtime, it has evolved into something a lot bigger than I thought when I started, and I think it remains the lowest-cost web-connected sprinkler controller on the market. As an open-source project, it relies on community contributions to improve it. If you have an improvement in mind and have the programming skills, I would very much appreciate you to contribute to the project. So far I am pretty much the only person working on the firmware code. I have a day-time job and I work on the hobby business in my spare time. I don’t want to be the single point of bottleneck, so if you have programming skills, you have all the source code availble, please consider making changes to the code. Frankly this is the state of the situation, and I very much appreciate your understanding.

To answer your questions:

1. When will the new programming features be deployed?

A lot of the new features, including per-station water time within a single program, are being integrated into the next firmware update numbered 2.1.0. The unified UI, available from the just released 2.0.8, allows Samer and I to work together to roll out 2.1.0.

2. How can I help OS evolve into a device that not only matches the programming capabilities of other controllers, but surpasses them? Hopefully my previous posts are helpful, but I am willing to help more.

See what I said above.

[Ray]

then it would just be a mechanical considerations to install. My though was to run four wires external to the OSBo, and mount the weather cape externally in the box, or in it’s own separate box so the sensor would get proper readings.

This sounds like a feasible solution.

[Ray]

@vinny:

but, i couldn’t edit any of the fields from a web browser (Normally use Safari also tried Chrome)
Tried to enable ntp, sequential mode etc. None of the settings stuck.

Did you click on ‘Submit’ after making those changes? Also, did the UI report password error? If so you need to log out first and then input the correct password.

[Ray]

@TechFan:

Btw, I am not sure if this is addressed in that logging change. But shutting of all valves by disabling manual mode didn’t log either. I still think it would be good to log start times so you can at least tell a run started.

Shutting all valves off and turning manual off are now all logged. If a station finished running, the finish time and duration are logged, from which you can infer the start time.

Regarding saving controller settings and program data: because some parameters are usually changed across different firmware versions, and these affect the data structure stored in the EEPROM, it’s pretty difficult for the controller to preserve these settings. Using the app’s import/export functionality is the best solution for now.

[Ray]

Operating on manual (all stations are ticked with “Activate Master”), I get stations 1 to 4 to work ok. Stations 5 to 10 DON’T althouigh you can hear the station soleniods openning with no water flow, so the master valve is not operating electrically.

Do you mean you can hear the master station solenoid open, or do you mean you can hear station 5 to 10 solenoid open?

Because you can open each station manually, the only thing I can think of is the ‘activate master’ flag is not turned on for stations 5 to 10. But you are pretty sure those flags are turned on already. I will check firmware 2.0.0 and see if I can reproduce this problem.

[Ray]

1. Replace all manual valves with Solenoid valves(150 meters distance for the 4th valve). Do I need normally Open or Closed? Any specific product?

Most valves are normally closed (for safety reasons so if power is lost it won’t leave the water flowing).

2. Use OSPi to configure the schedule for 1 hr per valve, accommodate the frequent power outage(not sure how its possible).

As Dan said, you will likely need a backup power supply to keep Pi running. Ultimately you probably want to look at battery-powered controllers with latching solenoid valves — these can be powered by AA batteries and do not rely on power adapter. You can take a look at the OSBee Arduino Shield to get an idea of these types of valves:
http://rayshobby.net/cart/osbeeshield

3. Use OSPi to switch ON the 3 phase Starter automatically, aligning with the OSPi’s 1 hr schedule for each valve (total ON time will be 4 hrs).

If I understand this correctly, this is what a master station can achieve, and master station is already supported in OSPi.

4. Monitor the power line voltage for all three phases, monitor current (amps) – for dry run deduction and log the values into RPi. Use the OSPi’s analog pins.. but not sure what product should I look for to read this info.

This will be a bit tricky because it involves current sensing on the mains. I don’t know much about this.

5. Use Soil moisture sensor and let OSPi to do the rest automagically 🙂

I have been doing research on soil sensor recently. I just wrote a blog post about reverse engineering an off-the-shelf wireless sensor, which may be useful for your application:
http://rayshobby.net/?p=9413

[Ray]

One thing you should check is if station 22 and 24 solenoids are shorted. To do so you can measure the resistance between the COM wire and station #22 (same with #24). The typical coil resistance should be around 30 ohm. If it’s too low (like below 15 ohm), you should consider replacing the solenoid. OpenSprinkler doesn’t have shorted solenoid detection feature yet. In the case of shorted solenoid, the fuse is supposed to blow, but if the fuse doesn’t kick in quickly enough, it might damage the triac. Another possibility is damage due to high transient voltage.

If you don’t need #22 and #24, you can use a diagonal cutter to carefully clip away the damaged triac. If you do need #22 and #24, send an email to [email protected] so we can arrange for support.

[Ray]

So this may be the most bizarre problem I’ve ever seen: I pulled a copy of firmware 2.0.7 source code, re-compiled it, and uploaded, and the problem is gone! From the last time 2.0.7 firmware is generated, the only thing I can think of is I upgraded my Linux system, so there is non-zero possibility that this is a compiler bug. Here are my observations:

1) I can confirm that firmware 2.0.7 we pre-flahsed on all controllers and checked into Github all have the reported issue.
2) The newly compiled firmware 2.0.7 does NOT have this issue.
3) The newly compiled 2.0.7 and the original 2.0.7 have exactly the same size (55612 binary code size) but the content is clearly different.

No. 3 above is quite surprising. In any case, I am not able to debug the issue (unless I can find the avr-gcc version that I used to compile the original 2.0.7). For now the solution is to either upgrade to 2.0.8, or if you want to stick with 2.0.7, I can post the newly compiled 2.0.7.

[Ray]

The reason it shows 2 devices is probably just because the router keeps a history of devices that have been connected to it in the past. If your router shows a list of ‘active clients’ there should be only one OpenSprinkler device there.

You are right that the device ID sets the last byte of the MAC address. This is provided as an option for those who want to use more than one OpenSprinkler on their network. Normally if you just have one OpenSprinkler you can leave the device ID as the default 0.

[Ray]

Hi Dennis,

Firmware 1.8.3 does not store the ‘disable/enable’ bit in EEPROM. So if the controller restarts, it will be put back into ‘enabled’.

The latest firmware 2.0.x (for OpenSprinkler V2) stores this bit in EEPROM so the status will be preserved over power outage. Unfortunately firmware 2.0.x will not work with your V1 hardware. The work-around is to turn off the power switch if you want the system to remain off for an extended period of time.

[Ray]

Haven’t found the source of the problem yet, but here are some observations:
1. if sequential mode is turned off, every time a station is turned off the controller will restart (yes, it’s a pretty serious bug)
2. the problem only happens when SD card is inserted. so I am pretty sure it has to do with the logging function.
3. the latest firmware 2.0.8 doesn’t have the issue.
So basically the issue (restart when a station is turned off) is reproducible by using firmware 2.0.7, with sequential mode turned off, and with sd card inserted. Very strange. I will have to dig a little further to see what’s going on.

[Ray]

@TechFan: good news, I was able to reproduce the problem, so I will be working on it right away. This seems a software problem, because it happens even when valves are not connected. Also, I am pretty sure this has to do with watchdog timer, because it doesn’t seem to have this problem with firmware 2.0.6, and the main reason I can think of (that would cause a restart) is firmware 2.0.7 introduced watchdog timer. Will report soon.

[Ray]

The current OSPi 1.4 does not support B+ (the user manual has been updated to reflect this). A new version 1.4+ should be ready in a week or two, and it is tailored to B+.

Because it’s difficult to design one circuit that can fit both B and B+, we will offer both versions: OSPi 1.4 is for model A or B, and 1.4+ is for B+.

[Ray]

I tried but can’t reproduce the problem.

[Ray]

Hmm, this sounds like a software bug. But I can’t think of why this would happen. Will check again later to see if I can reproduce the problem.

[Ray]

OK, now I understand it. Very interesting, I had not thought about it. By googling ‘locate sprinkler valves’, I found some typical ways of how this is done. It’s not entirely clear to me if the device they use to locate valves works by turning on/off valves repeatedly. But if this is the way, it should be pretty easy to implement such a feature.

[Ray]

However when I manually turn the master valve on I get water flow. It also show it all working in the LCD display.

So it’s not a hardware problem then. Just to make sure I understand the problem: is the problem that when you turn on 6, 7, 8, the master station doesn’t work (but 6, 7, 8 works), or is it that none of 6 7, 8, master works?

[Ray]

The current version of OSPi has per-station bidirectional TVS, which is used to suppress transient voltages. So you don’t need additional flyback diode anymore.

The post you referred to uses a relay board, which has built-in flyback diodes.

[Ray]

First, if you haven’t done so already, please take a look at the OSBee Shield user manual:
https://github.com/rayshobby/OSBee/raw/master/OSBee_shield/docs/osbee_shield_10_manual.pdf
Page 3 ‘Select Power Source’, which explains the issue with using internal source. You can either slide the power switch to ‘external’ when programming, and switch it back to ‘internal’, or just follow the instructions to use external source.

Second, when using the shield, it’s important to keep in mind that (these are explained in the user manual):
1) pin 9 (PWM) is used for boost converter, do not set this pin to constant HIGH as that will short the inductor. The osb.begin() in the setup() function will make sure to turn this pin to LOW. The inductor can endure a fairly high amount of current, so it’s unlikely to be damaged even if it’s shorted.
2) the pair of pins on the same port should not be set to HIGH at the same time. If you don’t need a certain port, you can bend the corresponding pins to leave them out of the Arduino. This way, these pins will be freed for other use.

To understand the issues you are seeing, can you try one of the provided examples and see if they work? If Serial doesn’t work, just comment those lines out. They do not matter with the functionality of the board.

[Ray]

That’s an unusual problem. Which firmware are you running? Also, is this only happening when sequential is off? If you just need to test the valves with manual mode, you don’t have to turn off sequential — in manual mode you can turn on any number of valves in parallel (as long as your transformer can drive that many valves).

[Ray]

Might be. If possible, can you open that expansion board and check if there is any visible damage? If you are not sure, take a high resolution picture under good lighting conditions and post it here (or send to [email protected]). It station 24 triac is damaged, it can be fairly easily replaced.

[Ray]

1) Check the ‘stations’ page and see if the ‘activate master’ flag is on for stations 6, 7, and 8. If these flags are unchecked, they will not activate the master valve.
2) You need to set the number of expansion boards (in your case, 1) in Options -> Exp. Board. If you don’t set this number, the controller assume there is no expansion board.
3) On the controller, clicking pushbutton B3 will change the display to expansion board 1 (E1).

I suggest that you take a look at the user manul to get familiar with the system first. Thanks:
http://rayshobby.net/?page_id=3775

[Ray]

I am not familiar with Fibaro HC2. If it can talk to IP devices (i.e. via sending http requests) then I am pretty sure it can work with OpenSprinkler.

[Author]

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