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Well there are on-board components that are powered by the +5V line, particularly the relay and the DS1307 RTC. If you don’t use them, they do not have to be powered. The other components are all on the 3.3V line. Cutting off pins from RPi is fine, but I personally think removing the PTC fuse is a better solution and does not require such permanent change to RPi as cutting off pins.
@TechFan: could you try a different USB port and different USB cable? I assume you did make sure the screen remains OFF following the bootloading procedure.
If you have a soldering iron, the easiest way is to remove the green PTC fuse on OSPi v1.4. Once the fuse is removed, the on-board 5V will be disconnected from RPi. Here is an example picture of the PTC fuse:
http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/pict/1809917938554040_1.jpg
To de-solder it, just apply soldering iron on one end of the fuse, and when it gets heated up, both ends will become loose, then you can remove it with a tweezer.If you click on ‘stop all stations’ that event will not be logged (because technically this directly turns off valves without modifying the timing values). It can certainly be added, I am just explaining here why it’s not being logged currently.
For those who haven’t been able to upgrade, here are some notes that may help (most of these are already mentioned in the instructions and the GUI)
1. Make sure to check if you have OpenSprinkler 2.1 or 2.0, they have different procedures:
– OS 2.1: the 24VAC terminal block is orange-colored, to enter bootloading mode, unplug all power, then press and hold button B2 while plugging in a USB cable, and release B2 after 2 seconds. The LCD screen must remain OFF, if the LCD lights up, you need to repeat the above step.– OS 2.0: the 24VAC terminal block is green-colored. There is NO need to enter bootloading: just select OpenSprinkler 2.0 from the dropdown list, and click on Upload.
2. Driver (for Windows):
– OS 2.1: requires USBasp driver. Windows 7 64-bit and Windows 8 require signed drivers. To get around it, it’s probably the easiest to boot Windows into a mode that disables driver signature enforcement. For Windows 7, I think you can press F8 during system booting process, and select the correct option that disables driver signature enforcement. For Windows 8, you can follow the instructions here: http://letsmakerobots.com/node/36841Note that because the driver is unsigned, you need to install the driver every time you re-boot. And you also have to re-install the driver even when you plug the device into a different USB port! (Cheers, Microsoft!) Frankly, when I designed OS 2.1, I never thought the driver issue would be so annoying. If I had known this, I would definitely opt to use a different bootloader.
– OS 2.0: requires USBtinyISP driver. Adafruit has released a signed driver for USBtinyISP, please use their updated driver: https://learn.adafruit.com/usbtinyisp/drivers
Do I have to disconnect expansion module and common during update process?
No you don’t need to disconnect expansion board.
The Wiki was added not so long ago. It’s not empty (in particular there are important information there about OSPi and OSBo), but I agree it’s under-used. It’s meant primarily for user-contributed content.
The main change is to switch to use the OpenSprinkler injection-molded enclosure, in the same way as OSPi v1.4.
The work-around is to set the start time to whatever start time you’d like, and end time to be 11:59pm. Once the program starts, it will finish, even if it spans over the end time (in this case, it will span over midnight). The end time (in conjunction with the interval time) is only used to check how many times the program should be repeated during the day. Hope this makes sense.
There is an 8 pin set of holes on the main board lower right – just to
the right of the screw hole to mount the board onto the enclosure (and
to the right of a print that says “ext out”… Is that what I use? Do I
just solder that in?Yes, that’s the pin header that you should solder.
I would think the colored wires would go symmetrically leftmost pins (white) on main board to leftmost pins on the expansion board. That means flipping the connector on the expansion board and to do that I need to cut off the little bump…Is that correct? Can I do damage by trying or it just won’t work if the wiring is wrong?
No, you shouldn’t flip the connector: the bump should always face up, on both the controller side and the expansion board side. If you put the two connectors back to back, the wires should all be parallel. This type of cable is the easiest to source, so the expansion board pin header is designed to match the cable wiring. In short the expansion board pin header is ‘mirrored’ from the controller side pin header. Hope this makes sense.
Hi Samer, you may want to consider splitting the slider into two: one for minutes, one for seconds. That may be easier and more user friendly 🙂
You should check the latest user manual:
http://rayshobby.net/docs/ospi14_manual.pdf
page 6, ‘Rain Sensor’ section. Rain sensor port has been added since OSPi 1.3. The video is outdated and I should re-make it at some point.Ah, yes, you are right, the app doesn’t support setting water time down to seconds yet. Will talk to Samer and see if this is easy to add in the app.
Hi Scott,
Really sorry to hear that.The key thing to check is the voltage on the +5V pin; use a multimeter to check the voltage between +5V and Ground (if you have OSPi 1.4, there is a +5V pin at the upper left corner of the PCB). If it’s between 4.9V and 5.1V, it should be fine.
You may also want to check the SD card — if the SD card is corrupted the RPi won’t boot. Re-burn the SD card image and see if that helps.
@rhldr: sounds like a problem with the RTC. To check whether it’s a problem with the NTC sync result or RTC, you can go to the Options page, turn off ‘NTP sync’, and set a time manually. Then see if the time drifts significantly (it will probably drift a few minutes over a few days, that is normal). If the time is significantly off, then it’s an RTC problem; if not, it’s a problem with incorrect NTP sync result.
@old_: check the time zone settings. Because OpenSprinkler doesn’t automatically detect day light saving time, you will need to manually change the time zone settings to account for DST.What’s the power supply you are using? Can you check the label and see the output voltage and current rating? Also, I assume you are running Dan’s interval program, is that right? If you are running Rich’s sprinklers_pi program, you may need to change a few parameters / settings first.
is possible to set the max opening time for a channe in few time?
I don’t quite understand this sentence. Do you mean ‘in fewer time’, like sub-second?
Do you need it to trigger the relay automatically or you can do this manually? If it can be done manually, you can use the Run-Once program and just select a station and set it to be as few seconds as you need. If you need it to be done automatically, or you need sub-second timing, you will need to modify the program.
Yes, deleting a log file is done via:
http://x.x.x.x/dl?pw=xxxx&day=xxxx
where x.x.x.x is your opensprinkler’s ip address, pw is the password, day is the epoch time in days. To find the epoch time, google ‘epoch time’ and divide the long number by 86400 (number of seconds in a day). For exampe, for July 5, 2014 it is 16256.I know this is a rather awkward way to delete a log file manually, and a better way to delete the log file will be added soon which allows you to select a day in the UI and delete it that way.
I think you’ve covered the key components — microprocessor, WiFi, solenoid drivers (i.e. relays). There are other comopnents that OpenSprinkler has, but you may or may not need them, such as the 24V AC to 5V DC switching regulator (you dont’ need it if you are ok with using two separate power supplies, one for the microprocessor and one for sprinkler valves), real-time clock, buttons, LCD, microSD slot.
OpenSprinkler Beagle (OSBo) is being re-designed. It probably won’t be ready until a month later. Thanks.
It just occured to me that the problem may be due to defective terminal block: I had one user reporting to me recently that the green 2P terminal block is defective causing no voltage output. I suggest that you switch it with the Rain Sensor terminal block, which is the same type of terminal block. You can also measure the voltage at the solder joint of the COM terminal. In any case, if it’s a defective terminal block, please email [email protected] so we can send you replacements. Thanks.
A new firmware 2.0.7 is released. Plesae check the details here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=758. Thanks.
Nice blog, and thanks for sharing your mod. I will check it out later.
A quick update: I should take back what I said earlier about the Arduino SD library: I discovered just yesterday that the Arduino SD library works perfectly fine for OpenSprinkler, no RAM overuse etc. What happened previously was that I copied the tinyFAT library files to the OpenSprinkler folder, and when I was experimenting with Arduino SD, I didn’t remove those tinyFAT files. Well, I thought a file shouldn’t get compiled if I am not using it (or specifically, any class defined in the file). But this is not how Arduino IDE works — it compiles everything in the folder. As a result, the code consumes almost twice as much RAM as necessary. So I mistakenly concluded that the Arduino SD library is too loated.
Anyways, once I discovered this, I immediately switched to use Arduino SD, because it provides much better support, including large SD cards, sub-directories, and support for both FAT16/FAT32. Lately I’ve started using the SdFat library, which is what Arduino SD is based on but offers more flexiblity and leads to smaller code size. So that’s what gets wrapped into firmware 2.0.7, which I just announced in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=758With this, the SD card limitations are gone: you can now use SD card of any capacity, formatted to either FAT16 or FAT32.
Regarding ATmega1284p: yup, it’s a drop-in replacement for ATmega644p, and that’s one of the main reasons I picked 644: it still has through-hole packaging (DIY friendly), and when needed you can easily upgrade to 1284 that doubles the flash memory space, and quadruples the RAM size! For now, I think 644 is still fine for a lot of the upcoming planned features. Beyond that, I will probably have to upgrade to 1284 🙂
