Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The 1.1M ohm 5V-Gnd resistance is a problem. That most likely means one of five pins of the LM2596 switching regulator is not connected. You can take a look at those five pins under good lighting condition to see if any of them seems to be disconnected from the PCB pad. You can try to apply some solder to reinforce the connection if that’s the case. At any rate, this is an unusual case as all OSPi boards are fully tested. Again, if the problem cannot be solved, you can contact OpenLab for a replacement. Alternatively we can send you a replacement board directly, which will take 2-3 weeks to arrive.
The getweather.py script in GitHub is outdated. There has been some recent work contributed by Andrew that uses Yahoo Weather API. Check this thread for details:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=184Well, my original implementation uses this:
dstr=(new Date(lret*1000)).toUTCString().replace(” GMT”,””);
which prints out neither ‘GMT’ nor ‘UTC’. So I am actually a bit curious when you said it prints ‘UTC’. Perhaps the behavior is different on different browser. In any case, adding the time zone number is an improvement.Thanks for your suggestion and the pointers. This has been discussed in other threads as well. If someone is willing to create an SD card image with all the necessary components installed, I am happy to find a place to host the image file. For the time being, I don’t have much time to work on this myself and hope someone can step up to have this done.
@dbrook: common off-the-shelf rain sensors are basically rain-activated switches. OpenSprinkler’s firmware handles rain sensor in the following way: if the ‘Use RainSensor’ option is turned on, and if the rain sensor is activated (this depends on the rain sensor type, either normally open or normally closed), then it disables all stations until the rain sensor is deactivated. In the situation you described, it will stop stations in the middle of a program, before the last station is completed.
Since the behavior of the rain sensor is implemented in software, you can modify the source code to implement any way you want.
Cool, thanks for the suggestion. I’ve integrated your change to the 2.0 and 1.8.3 home.js scripts stored on rayshobby.net. Will update the files on GitHub next. One minor comment: I assume you have to take out the ‘.replace(” GMT”,””)’ part, otherwise it won’t print either ‘GMT’ or ‘UTC’. Or perhaps this is browser-dependent?
Sorry to hear that. Here are my suggestions:
– Use a multimeter to measure the resistance between +5V and GND (there are multiple +5V pins, any of them is fine). It should be around 4.4 to 4.7 kilo-ohms. Also measure VCC to GND resistance, should be around 100 kilo-ohms. If not, it seems there is a damage somewhere on the board.
– If the resistances are correct, the problem is more likely with your 24VAC transformer, or the connection. You can use the multimeter to measure the *AC* voltage of the two wires of the transformer. Then make sure the wires are plugged into the screw terminal with good contact, and that you’ve plugged it into the ACIN port, not the COM port.Let me know your findings. If the board is damaged or DOA, you can contact OpenLab for a replacement.
There is probably a shorting or some damage on the 3.3V line. Here are my suggestions:
– Measure the VCC to GND resistance. Should be at least a few kilo-ohms. If not, there is probably shorting somewhere.
– Start by removing ATmega328 from its socket. Use a flat screwdriver to carefully pry the IC up from the two edges, and be careful to avoid bending the IC pins.
– Measure the VCC to GND resistance again. If it’s at least a few kilo-ohms now, your ATmega328 is damaged. May be due to lighting, or if you’ve accidentally plugged the 24VAC power into the rain sensor port, that will fry the mcu.
– If the problem is not with ATmega328, proceed to remove other ICs, one after another, and measure VCC to GND resistance at every step, until you find which one is causing the problem.
– If all fail, the most likely cause is the MCP1700-33 linear regulator (3-pin, shaped like transistor). Try to clip it off the board, and replace it.
Let me know if these steps help.Can you be more specific about the ‘4 of the pins near the edge of the board’? What component(s) do these four pins correspond to? Try to remove IC1 as well and see if that changes the VIN to GND resistance.
That can come out of a variety of reasons. For example, the programming is not connected properly to the mcu, the mcu is not up running (due to clock source problem etc). You can Google the error message ‘initialization failed, rc=-1’ to see potential causes.
To program a blank mega644 chip, use the following:
avrdude -c usbtiny -p m644 -B 250 -U lfuse:w:0xe2:m -U hfuse:w:0xd1:m -U efuse:w:0xfe:m
(in case avrdude complains the signature does not match, add a -F option to overwrite the signature checking)Then you can flash a firmware with:
avrdude -c usbtiny -p m644 -U flash:w:firmware2.0.0.hexI forgot to mention that you may want to consider OpenSprinkler Pi, which has no software limitation on the number of expansion boards.
I suggest using the VirtualBox image as you mentioned, since it has all the settings ready configured.
If you want to make it work with a native system (note that unlike 1.8.3 firmware which only compiles on a specific version of Linux, 2.0.0 firmware can compile on all platforms), make sure you have added the fies in ‘arduino-code / hardware ‘ folder to your Arduino’s hardware directory. Also you need to select ‘OpenSprinkler2’ as the board in Arduino, as it contains the necessary mcu and parameters. If you select other boards, the code will not flash because Arduino will complain that it’s the wrong mcu.
Firmware 1.8.3 (for hardware 1.x) supports up to 3 expansion boards, and 2.0 (for hardware 2.x) supports up to 5.
Your 1.42u runs on ATmega328 which has very limited EEPROM (1KB). If you want to try 4 expansion boards, you should change the MAX_EXT_BOARDS macro define in defines.h. You cannot run 2.0 firmware on 1.42u because 2.0 is for generation 2 hardware.
You may be able to run up to 9 expansion boards on 2.0, although I have not tried it myself. Does this mean you have close to 80 stations? That’s very impressive 😯
For connecting to GPIO pins, you can probably use jumper wires similar to the 8-pin and 3-pin cables. But if you have a board designed to sit on top of RPi, then you have to either keep the RPi out of the enclosure, or just remove the top cover.
I will consider adding cutouts for the Ethernet and USB.
If you just need to run garden lights, keep in mind that you may be able to use opensprinkler as is without any modification. This is because you can run dc lights on AC power – it will produce some flickering but usually not noticeable. With 24vac you can connect a light bulb rated 24dc and that should work fine (because 24vac is measured in terms of rms average). If you need to run 12vdc bulb instead, you can connect a 1n4007 diode in series to block half of the AC wave and hence reduce the equivalent rms voltage by half.
To be honest, I don’t think ‘% Watering% would make it obviously clear to a typical user what the parameter is for either. The matter of fact is that there are technical terms that are difficult to explain without at least one sentence of explanation. I understand that most users don’t read user manuals and don’t want to read user manuals. I agree that most products should be designed to be self-explanatory. But at least they should be aware there is a user manual they can refer to when something is not immediately clear.
As some personal experience: I regularly upgrade my cameras. A product like a camera has been designed and refined over so many years that I should think I don’t need to read a user manual any more. But there are still a lot of advanced features that I simple do not understand without reading the manual. Maybe if one day Apple designs a camera, or sprinkler controller, they can do it in such a way that you don’t need to read the user manual. Until then 🙂
Once the controller start, you can click on the first pushbutton (B1) and the LCD display will show the ip address assigned to it. You can also check your router’s configuration page, where there is usually a page that shows the list of all clients and ip addresses.
Your post title is ‘mac address’. That is different from ip address. OpenSprinkler’s default mac address is:
00:69:69:2D:30:00
where the last byte can be customized by using the ‘Device ID’ option.Technically it’s pretty straightforward to add LCDs and buttons to OSPi. It will just need to take a few extra GPIO pins. However, the usability design, particularly how to stack everything together and still keep the unit compact, is more tricky. I can’t think of a really elegant design without involving three layers (OSPi, RPi, and display/buttons), and this number of layers would also make the enclosure look really ugly.
Ultimately the plan should be to integrate RPi (or any embedded Linux chip) together with the OSPi board. This way the product will look exactly like the current mcu-based OpenSprinkler but runs embedded Linux internally. I am investigating this option but still pretty far from having the first functioning prototype.
Indeed transistors / MOSFETs in SOT223 package are somewhat uncommon. However, since SOT223 is fairly large, you may consider using through-hole replacements. Just bend the pins close to the transistor body, and solder them onto the PCB pads. I’ve done this before and it works well.
If you are going to interface with inductive load (such as DC solenoids), you may find it easier to just get one of those relay boards (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=relay+board). Will save you a lot of work of having to solder the flyback diodes.
@hf3 wrote:
Sorry, I’m a s/w, not a h/w guy…. Is there a simple circuit using one of the new ADC channels to measure the 24V current? If there were, seems that would be a good indication of whether a valve is open or shorted, which would be a nice utility to have.
hf
Some commercial sprinkler controllers do have a feature which allows them to scan through all connected valves and detect those that are shorted. I don’t know what’s the easiest implementation, but one possible way is to use an additional resistor to form a voltage divider with the solenoid, and detect the voltage on the resistor using an ADC channel. Probably another approach is to add a current limiter circuit to limit the amount of current supplied to each channel. In any case, I am very interested in finding a simple and low-cost way to address shorted solenoids.
@manithree: I suspect that RPi is more fragile to electric shocks or overvoltage damage since it has a lot more components, of which many are sensitive to high voltages. The OSPi board has a relatively small number of components and many of them (like the shift register) can take a lot of abuse.
I damaged my first RPi by simply connecting a digital output pin to GND. That fried the power circuit instantly 🙁
Just to chime in on this topic: the run-once program allows setting a timer, also, the manual operation mode in the standard front end (i.e. by typing in the ip address in a browser, instead of using the app) allows setting a timer as well. In any case, run-once program is recommended as it automatically returns the controller back to program mode (while the manual operation mode will leave the controller in manual mode until you switch it back).
