[Ray]

Thanks for sharing your solution. Sounds great. I will give it a try and include it in the SD card image.

[Ray]

Make sure you are measuring AC voltage, not DC. 33-34V AC sounds too high for a transformer rated 24V AC. Perhaps cheap multimeters have issues measuring AC accurately (as the AC measurement is supposed to the root mean squared value). In any case, if OSBo runs off it fine, it should be ok.

When you say ‘having difficulty getting my OSBo controller to run stably from AC power’, do you mean the WiFi is unstable (i.e. lose connection) or that OSBo is not powering up? If it’s WiFi, I am not completely surprised: I also occasionally have trouble getting WiFi to stay on. It works better when the controller is placed close to the WiFi router. I think BeagleBone Black is not as forgiving as Raspberry Pi in terms of powering WiFi dongle through its USB port. Adafruit’s BeagleBone tutorial (http://learn.adafruit.com/beaglebone/wifi) mentions repeatedly that it requires a beefy power supply. I suggest that you try to use a wired Ethernet cable first, and see if that makes the system more stable.

[Ray]

You said you put this in Windows command prompt:
avrdude -c usbtiny -p m644 -F -U flash:w:xxx.hex
what is xxx.hex? It should be the actual name of the firmware you want to upload. In your case, firmware2.0.2.hex

There is a README.txt in the folder of each firmware. Please, read it.

To answer your last question: your controller should still be alive. It appears dead probably because you uploaded something wrong. Just try to upload the correct firmware and it should work again.

[Ray]

The other possibility I can think of (that has to do with crashing) is the DS1307 RTC and / or 32.768kHz crystal. I suggest replacing these two and try again. If you don’t have a hot air gun to replace DS1307 RTC, please send an email to [email protected] and we will arrange for a repair for you.

[Ray]

Yes, I am hoping that version 1.3 will be ready in about a month of time. The plan is to include TVS, mini-relay, and a rain sensor terminal to OSPi.

[Ray]

3k is no go. will send you a replacement and it will go out on Monday.

[Ray]

D3 is a 5.6V zener diode. Its purpose is over-voltage protection. Here is what I suggest: desolder D3, and then measure the *resistance* between +5V (VIN) and GND. If the resistance is somewhere in the range between 4.4K to 5K, that means the switching regulator is still likely to work. If not (for example, only a few ohms), the switching regulator has been damaged, and I suggest that you send an email to [email protected] so we can arrange for a replacement.

[Ray]

By the way, we can send you another replacement. If this still doesn’t work, I suggest that you look into getting a new transformer. You can check the store page for recommended transformer:
http://rayshobby.net/cart/opensprinkler/ospi-12

[Ray]

Hmm, this is very strange. All boards have been tested and verified to work before shipping, and the fact that it burned without load (i.e. before you connected it to Pi) is even more bizarre. Off my head I don’t know what happened. You did make sure nothing else was connected, and there were no metal pieces or wires surrounding the board that could possibly short things out, right?

[Ray]

Yes, the TVS and relay available on OSBo will also be included in the next version of OSPi. These changes are easy to make, but I am also trying to evaluate the feasibility of plugging in RPi face-down to OSPi, and hope to include this change (if feasible) to the next version as well.

[Ray]

Which version of OSPi do you have? Version 1.0 uses MC34063, and it’s not as robust as LM2596 adopted in versions 1.1 and 1.2. You can send an email to [email protected] and we can arrange for a repair or replacement.

[Ray]

I am not aware of the issue that the pre-configured SD card blocks access to RPi from an external IP address. To make sure: did you set up port forwarding on your router to map an external request to RPi?

[Ray]

@rhldr:
1. go to https://github.com/rayshobby/opensprinkler, and you should see a ‘Download as Zip’ button on the right-hand side.
2. firmware update instructions are on the OpenSprinkler homepage: http://www.opensprinkler.com. Click on 6. Firmware Update link on the left-hand side.

@rwp:
If you just want to flash a pre-compiled firmware, you do not need to install VirtualBox — the VirtualBox approach is meant for users who want to compile or modify the firmware source code. Each firmware is independent and does not rely on previous versions of firmware. As I said above:
firmware update instructions are on the OpenSprinkler homepage: http://www.opensprinkler.com. Click on 6. Firmware Update link on the left-hand side.

[Ray]

Sorry about my late response. I would suggest first checking if the controller is running in manual mode (in manual mode, the homepage displays a list of buttons to manually turn on/off stations). In manual mode, the normal sprinkler programs will stop running, until you click on the ‘Manual Off’ button (at the bottom of the homepage) to switch back to program mode.

[Ray]

Heh, that’s a novel idea. I’ve thought about and heard suggestions on using OpenSprinkler/OSPi/OSBo for various other projects, such as Christmas light controller. But never thought about using it for sound system. I assume the sound system you are referring to runs on power line voltage. To reduce the complexity of wiring, I would actually suggest using RF remote power sockets instead of hard wiring. You can use OpenSprinkler coupled with an RF transmitter to wirelessly switch on/off power sockets. I’ve used this approach in several projects:
http://rayshobby.net/?p=3381
http://rayshobby.net/?p=7817
The nice thing is that a single RF transmitter can talk to several power sockets, so it’s pretty convenient.

[Ray]

Just gave it a try on OSBo and it works surprisingly well. Very nice. I definitely think this will make OSPi and OSBo more user friendly. I am also thinking of how to get this work for the microcontroller-based OpenSprinkler. I know you have examples for Arduino with the standard Arduino Ethernet shield. The tricky part is that OpenSprinkler uses Microchip’s ENC28J60 and Jeelab’s Ethercard library. I checked yaler library for Arduino, seems it should be pretty simple to adapt to Ethercard library. I will probably shoot you an email offline to ask about some technical details. Thanks again for the excellent work!

[Ray]

You are right that there is unlikely to be any further upgrade to 1.x generation hardware — due to the limited program memory and RAM size of atmega328, any additional feature will be at the cost of removing an existing feature. So it’s gonna be very tricky to optimize everything.

The workaround you described is certainly an option. Another way is to modify the firmware source code to customize how the rain_delay status is applied. Specifically, in OpenSprinkler.cpp, find function:
void OpenSprinkler::apply_all_station_bits()
inside the function, check the following two lines:
if (status.enabled && (!status.rain_delayed) && !(options[OPTION_USE_RAINSENSOR].value && status.rain_sensed))
bitvalue = station_bits[MAX_EXT_BOARDS-bid];
this is where rain_delayed and rain_sensed status get applied on station control bits. If you know which stations you’d like to ignore rain delay for, you can modify the code and hard-code the station indices to allow them to bypass rain delay status. Then recompile and flash the program to the controller. This solution is not very elegant, but it does achieve what you need with minimal impact on program and RAM size.

[Ray]

Thanks for sharing. I haven’t considered adding a soft power down button on OSPi. Personally I haven’t encountered a case where a hard power down causes SD card crash or something. I agree that adding soft power-down is an interesting feature to consider. It won’t help when there is a power break though.

[Ray]

Just answered this in the other thread:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=414

[Ray]

BBB does have RTC, but it doesn’t have a built-in battery. So when designing OSBo, I included a DS1307 RTC with CR1220 battery. I am not familiar with the way you described: connecting the OUT/SQW pin on the RTC to the power button pin on the BBB. Would this trigger a periodic reset or something?

[Ray]

Forgot to mention: a batch of case tailored to OSBo has been ordered and it should be available around mid-December. The new case will have cutout for the Ethernet cable, and we can do a free exchange if you want.

[Ray]

Cool, thanks for sharing your work. I am traveling this week and will give it a try as soon as I can. Thanks.

[Ray]

The OSBo currently uses the same enclosure as OSPi, and so there is no special cutout for the Ethernet jack. Sorry about the confusion. Since it’s designed to mainly work with a WiFi USB dongle, I recommend getting an Edimax WiFi USB dongle. If you have to use an Ethernet cable, you can use a Dremel to enlarge the cutout.

[Ray]

The current DIY kit does not have built-in logging feature. It’s possible to use an external server, like a Raspberry Pi to log it though. For example, Samer’s OpenSprinkler mobile app provides a logging feature:
http://rayshobby.net/?p=6409
and there was an earlier work by Dave Gustavson that also enables logging:
http://rayshobby.net/?p=4821

[Ray]

Just a quick note that firmware 2.0.2 is released, and the rain delay time is now written to EEPROM and preserved through power loss.

[Author]

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