[Ray]

Sure, you are welcome!

[Ray]

To begin: does the LCD display anything? You may want to submit a support ticket because we need your order details.

[Ray]

If after reboot the time is still wrong, then it indicates a problem with NTP sync. In firmware 2.1.9(3) I made a change to NTP in that if the NTP IP is 0.0.0.0 (which is now the factory default value) it uses pool.ntp.org as NTP server, otherwise it uses whatever you specified as NTP server. But I think this shouldn’t matter with OS 3.0 because OS 3.0 already uses pool.ntp.org as default server; the change primarily affects OS 2.3, because its default NTP server previously seems to have stopped working reliably.

[Ray]

Any pointer to a document or article about what kind of signals the water meter sends through WiFi? If it’s relatively simple, it should be possible to add it to OS 3.0. Otherwise Pi is the best platform.

[Ray]

By the latest firmware, did you mean 2.1.9 minor revision (3)? Just making sure you have the latest.

[Ray]

Yes, there is a bug in version 2.1.9(2) which affects the move program up feature. Basically instead of moving it up, it apparently overwrites the previous program with the one down. It has been fixed in the most recent release 2.1.9(3). You can follow the firmware update instructions below to update your firmware to 2.1.9(3):
https://openthings.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000832310-opensprinkler-3-x-firmware-update-guide

[Ray]

Here are the sample links to the ones you marked ????
C0: https://item.szlcsc.com/99021.html
C1: https://item.szlcsc.com/73589.html
PINHD-2×4: https://item.szlcsc.com/59402.html

I recently asked the factory to send me the BOM for OS 3.2 master, AC driver, DC driver boards, and I’ve attached them here. I will upload these to the Github repository shortly. They have reference links but they are all from Chinese websites. Most of them are from http://www.szlcsc.com, which fortunately has a English-facing site (lcsc.com). If you look at the item on the Chinese site just copy the item number and go to lcsc.com to search for the same item you will find pricing in US dollars. I believe lcsc ships worldwide. Some other items have reference links on taobao (basically the Chinese ebay). You can find those on aliexpress.com, which also ships worldwide.

Attachments:

1. os32mc_bom.xlsx
2. os32ac_bom.xlsx
3. os32DCDR_bom.xlsx

[Ray]

Some of the design challenges of a soil sensor include how to power it over long time, and how to transmit the data out. For good and reliable sensing, it’s often necessary to bury the sensor underground, but that makes it harder to power over a long time and have a reliable wireless transmission method. Many years ago I took a look at some of the available options:
https://rayshobby.net/wordpress/reverse-engineer-a-cheap-wireless-soil-moisture-sensor/
but none of them seems a great option. I am not sure what’s the state of the art. I see Vegetronix mentioned quite often — the VH400 sensor is a wired sensor, to go wireless you need a WiFi hub, powered by 9V battery. I don’t know if this is a long-term solution or not — it seems cumbersome to have to replace the battery once every few months. So honestly I don’t know which way to proceed.

[Ray]

This likely has to do with how the average watering percentage is calculated for the log view. If I remember correctly, it pulls the log, which contains separate records for watering level, and calculates an average of those numbers. In the past, it used to be that the watering percentage changes across a day — for example, the weather algorithm sends a request every 2 hours and it may get watering levels that vary depending on when the request was sent out. As a result, the average watering level you see in the log may not match any specific watering level displayed on the homepage. This should be less of an issue now, since the watering level across a day should be consistent.

One way to check is to pull the log record directly and find out what’s going on. To do so, you can open a browser and type:
http://x.x.x.x/jl?pw=yyyyyyy&hist=1&type=wl
where x.x.x.x is your opensprinkler’s IP address, and yyyyyyy is the md5hash of your password (you can use https://www.md5hashgenerator.com/ to calculate md5hash from your password).
The above command pulls log record of the most recent 1 day (hist=1) and with type wl (watering level).

Of course another issue could be what the log view counts as one day — it may be checking the past 24 hours (from now to 24 hours ago) and if so that would cross the boundary of a day resulting in average numbers inconsistent with your calculation. In any case, I will take a look at the corresponding part of the UI code and figure out.

[Ray]

Well this is beyond my knowledge. You may want to ask someone who does solar installation to see what are the options. What I can tell you is that OpenSprinkler Latch draws very little power: at resting state it only needs about 100 to up to 200mA current. So even with 12VDC input voltage, this is about 1 to 2 Watt of power. It draws a bit more when opening or closing valves, but since latching valves only require instantaneous power and does not draw any power when the state doesn’t change, that power is basically negligible.

[Ray]

Actually, I just checked: which version is your app? The current version does ask you for confirmation when deleting a program. See snapshot below:

For site deletion, you are right that it doesn’t seem to ask for confirmation currently. Will add that.

Attachments:

1. 

   Screen-Shot-2020-04-12-at-11.25.40-AM.png
   

[Ray]

Good suggestion. Will do.

[Ray]

Sure, that works too.

[Ray]

Your port forwarding configuration looks ok. The next step is to find out your external IP. Your router’s configuration page should show this (it’s also known as WAN IP). Or you can open a browser on any device that’s connected to your WiFi, and google “what’s my ip”. That shows your external IP as well.

When you are on cell network, you can use
externalip:8080
to access the controller (obviously externalip is whatever your external IP is).

[Ray]

This should be easy to add to the app / UI (i.e. providing a feature to easily convert back and forth between end time and number of repeat times).

You asked about the maximum current rating: I assume you are referring to how many valves it can turn on simultaneously? Normally all zones run in sequential manner so no matter how many zones you have only one runs at any given time. In this case the maximum current rating doesn’t matter as only one runs at a time. If you want some zones to run in parallel, then it depends a lot on how much current each solenoid draws and what’s the current rating of the power supply. Assuming the power supply has sufficient current capacity, we’ve internally tested running 4-8 zones simultaneously, but we didn’t test more than that. If you want a significant number of zones to turn on at the same time, you should consider using a relay board connected to OpenSprinkler, to avoid overloading the controller, and allowing you to run as many zones in parallel as you want.

[Ray]

Sure, go ahead. I am also considering adding an option to disable RTC to provide some flexibility: we did encounter a couple of cases where the RTC chip went defective (it’s detectable but doesn’t work properly) causing the timing to be messed up. Adding the option can help bypass the problem.

[Ray]

1. Yes, 12V is ok, in fact, the power adapter we ship with OS Latch is 7.5VDC. The controller has built-in voltage booster to generate the voltage required to open or close latching valves, so it’s insensitive to the input voltage level.
2. OpenSprinkler Latch uses standard DC power adapter plug where the center is positive and side is negative. If you search “male dc adapter” on amazon, you can find plenty of adpaters or cables that can convert between wire screw terminals to DC plug, such as this:
https://www.amazon.com/Xenocam-2-1mm-5-5mm-Camera-Adapter/dp/B01AGQVYQQ
Before using them, make sure you double check the polarity: center positive, side negative.

[Ray]

If you want to use the GUI based updater, do NOT click on Download Firmware — the updater program hasn’t been changed for a long time and the original download link is no longer available. Instead, the firmware files are together with the GUI program. So all you need to do is to Upload. Again, do NOT click ‘Download Firmware’.

Please also note that the GUI program only has firmware up to 2.1.7. If you want to update to 2.1.9 you should follow the instructions and use the avrdude program to update.
https://openthings.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000832311-opensprinkler-2-x-firmware-update-guide

The GUI program is just a wrapper for the avrdude command. But as operating system updates often render previously compiled programs obsolete, we don’t have enough resources to keep updating the GUI program and make sure it works with the current operating systems. So we stopped maintaining the GUI and instead recommend you to use avrdude, which does not have operating system compatibility issues.

[Ray]

It currently does not support specifying an end time. But based on your description, you can just calculate how many times the program should run: from 9AM to 8PM is 11 hours; if you want the program to repeat every 10 minutes, then it would be 11*60/10 = 66 times (this includes a run at 8PM). Or 65 if you want to exclude 8PM.

[Ray]

The UI also keeps a list of free pins:
https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-App/blob/master/www/js/main.js#L4898
so if you need to change the free pin list, you will have to change both the firmware as well as the UI. You can certainly clone the UI, change it, and run it locally (just double click index.html to launch the UI). Another work-around is to use HTTP API to send command to the controller manually to set GPIO zones. This allows you to bypass UI so you only need to modify the pin list on the firmware side.

[Ray]

It’s already added to the latest release of the firmware.

[Ray]

I just realized something: because you are using your own hardware build, it doesn’t seem like you have an RTC chip (DS1307 or PCF8563 or any RTC). The firmware writes NTP time into RTC and syncs with RTC once every hours or so. If you don’t have RTC, it will certainly get incorrect time. You can comment out any code in main.cpp that has to do with RTC.

[Ray]

Can you go to Settings page and check under Advanced, NTP server, what’s the NTP server IP there? The latest firmware has a logic where if NTP IP is 0.0.0.0 it uses the default ntp.pool.org, otherwise it uses your specific NTP IP. At factory reset, it set NTP IP to 0.0.0.0 so it uses the default ntp.pool.org. However, if you upgraded from a previous version of the firmware, it may have some other NTP IP there, which may have stopped working reliably.

[Ray]

Given that the firmware already supports Latch type of OpenSprinkler 3.0, you can simply modify apply_all_station_bits and also latch_apply_all_station_bits:
https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-Firmware/blob/master/OpenSprinkler.cpp#L994
https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-Firmware/blob/master/OpenSprinkler.cpp#L971
You can certainly create a new hardware type as you said, and instead of auto-detect the type, you force the hardware type to be the new one you created. I don’t think you need to use GPIO station — changing those functions are more complicated than just modifying apply_all_station_bits and latch_apply_all_station_bits.

If it’s not a requirement to use unified OpenSprinkler firmware, you may also consider basing the work on the OpenSprinkler Bee firmware — it also uses ESP8266 and was designed to operate 3 zones. It’s easy to extend it to operate 4 zones as in your design.

Both OpenSprinkler and OSBee firmwares make use of I2C OLED. Your design does not seem to have an OLED display, and you use SDA/SCL lines as GPIO pins. So you will need to remove/comment out sections of code that handles I2C otherwise those parts of the code will end up interfering with your GPIO operations.

Also, be careful with using relays — I’ve previously had a version of OSBee using relays, it turns out the relays must support a relatively large amount of impulse current. I initially used a small relay rated at 2A contact current, that didn’t work. I had to change to a larger relay rated at 10A contact current, and that worked. Given that relays are very bulky, most latching circuits instead of transistor or MOSFET-based H-bridges, which are much more compact.

[Ray]

The first thing to check is whether the solenoid is connected between COM (common) and a zone port (e.g. zone 1). A common mistake is that some users connected the solenoid between GND and a zone port, which is incorrect. GND is not meant for common wire.

[Author]

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