[Ray]

Here is a simple guide to determine which one to choose:
1. Does your system have a pump start relay? If so, go with the AC-powered because the DC-powered is known to be not compatible with some pump start relays (however, you can always replace your pump start relay by a solid state relay and DC-powered works fine with most solid state relays).
2. DC-powered is more convenient for customers outside of US/Canada/Mexico where 24VAC power adapter is difficult to source. It’s also flexible for users who want to power sprinkler system off-grid, such as by using solar power.
3. DC-powered is slightly lower-cost — if you are US/Canada/Mexico based, the power adapter is included. For AC, the power adapter is additional.

[Ray]

The arrow should move the program up. What you reported sounds like a bug, I will take a look right away.

Update: I can verify that this is indeed a firmware bug, and will be fixing it right away. Thanks for reporting.

[Ray]

You can always use the OpenSprinkler HTTP API to set the watering percentage from an external script. For example, you can write a script that runs a server to calculate watering percentage, and have it send HTTP command to the controller to update the watering percentage every day.

[Ray]

One thing you can try is to check the raw log data, using the /jl command. Specifically, open a browser and type in:
http://x.x.x.x/jl?pw=yyyy&hist=2
where x.x.x.x is your OpenSprinkler’s IP address, yyyy is the md5 hash of your plain text password (you can use an online md5 hash calculator such as https://www.md5hashgenerator.com/ to get it).
Check the output and see if there is any obvious problem.

[Ray]

You can do a git checkout of any previous commit of the firmware. Or you can directly download the firmware 2.1.8 release:
https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-Firmware/releases
and unzip it and compile it.

[Ray]

You can find the pin assignment in the hardware design details:
https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-Hardware/tree/master/OS/3.0
OS 3 (based on ESP8266) does NOT use 74HC595, mainly because ESP8266 does not have enough number of GPIO pins. Instead, it uses PCA9555 IO expander, which is I2C-based so only uses 2 pins and are shared with OLED and RTC.

[Ray]

You are correct that the current ET implementation results in one update per day, and it only uses the weather data from the previous day instead of accumulated over many days.

Part of the challenge of including more data is that the weather service generally charges more for access to more history data. We have never charged our users any subscription fee, so a big increase in weather service bill will be difficult for us to cover.

One possibility to avoid querying the weather service for history data is to simply cache the data locally on the controller. That way, if we keep the past, say, 2 weeks of data, that should be sufficient for ET calculation and won’t trigger additional charges. This is definitely possible, we just haven’t got around time to implement that.

[Ray]

@Craig: after upgrading to firmware 2.1.9, I recommend you to do an explicit factory reset (even though the firmware update should trigger a reset, we’ve found a few cases where explicit factory reset resolved some flash-related issues). The reset procedure is:
– power off the controller, then power it back on, and as soon as you see the OpenSprinkler logo, press and hold the first push button (B1) and continue holding it until the LCD shows ‘Reset?’ or ‘Factory Reset?’
– press and hold third push button (B3) until the controller reboots itself and completes reset.

[Ray]

@blaha: what’s your hardware version?

[Ray]

@firefly: since a few firmware versions ago, we’ve changed the way master zone is implemented, as a result, the master off delay can only be negative, and master on delay can only be positive. However, there is a work-around you can use to achieve the effect of positive master-off, that is, by creating a dummy zone (a zone that’s enabled in software but not a physically connected zone). For example, if you have 16 zones, you can designate zone 17 as a dummy zone. Make sure that zone activates the master (by default it does), and include that zone in your program, for how long you want the master to remain on after the last zone closes. This way, at the end of the program, it will run the dummy zone but since it’s not a physically connected zone it won’t actually turn on any sprinkler, other than keeping the master on for the duration you programmed the dummy zone for.

The latest firmware supports up to 72 zones, so as long as you have not exhausted all 72 zones, you can always designate a dummy zone for this purpose.

[Ray]

If you are looking to buy a set of OS 3.0 enclosure, you can submit a support ticket and we can arrange for a custom purchase.

[Ray]

@slick: the instructions we gave does not rely on any existing Arduino installation. You mentioned ‘arduino-1.8.10’: it should’t need that folder at all. If you follow the instructions it will download esp8266 core and arduino files in a self-contained folder.

Also, ~/Arduino refers to where the Arduino libraries will be installed. Since the firmware relies on several libraries, by default those libraries should be installed in that folder. If not, you can certainly modify the make file to point to the correct folder.

Also, if you still can’t get passed that compilation error, just open server.cpp, find that line and comment it out. It’s not a critical line (it basically tells the processor to stop UDP service before OTA firmware update, but that’s actually not entirely necessary).

[Ray]

Unfortunately I don’t know the part number — the factory sourced all the parts and we don’t know the part number for this header. I do know its spec: it’s SMD 2×4 female pin header, 3.5mm height. If you don’t need to fit everything into the OpenSprinkler enclosure, you can use standard 2×4 female header (or even 1×4 female header as only the top 4 pins are used). This will make the LCD sit higher than expected (so it won’t fit into the OpenSprinkler enclosure, but otherwise it works just fine).

[Ray]

Reboot loop is quite unusual — it would have to do with flash memory, either there is a flash memory corruption or maybe it needs to perform a full flash reset. If you encounter a reboot loop, I would recommend you to submit a support ticket.

[Ray]

Great, thanks for the update!

[Ray]

It’s on our todo list. Technically it’s not difficult as it pretty much just involves duplicating the existing code for master 1 and 2. It does, however, involve a bunch of changes both in the firmware as well as the UI, and it’s currently a low priority item on our todo list. I know this is often easy said than done: but honestly, the reason this entire project is made open-source is to give users the freedom to change the programs and extend features in any way they want, and that they don’t have to be bottlenecked by how quickly we can implement these features.

[Ray]

Hmm, this sounds quite unusual as the ‘NTP syncing’ step is guarded by a timeout (60 seconds by default) so it really shouldn’t be stuck like that for more than 60 seconds. Has this happened again?

[Ray]

The program preview (UI) and firmware use different scripts to calculate sunrise/sunset time, which may result in the difference. Also, if you are previewing today’s program, the UI will use the firmware’s sunrise/sunset time because those are variables the firmware will report to the UI. However, if you are previewing the programs for the next few days, the UI will use its own script to calculate sunrise/sunset time because the firmware does not keep track of the forecast sunrise/sunset times. To diagnose this further, the best way is for you to submit a support ticket with your controller’s configurations saved as a file, so we can import it and try to reproduce the issue on our end.

[Ray]

@venki.das: there is no need to post the same question on multiple threads. Please specify which version of OpenSprinkler you have, and what firmware version.

[Ray]

@venki.das: what version of OpenSprinkler do you have?

[Ray]

I would suggest that you send the controller back to us so we can replace the top layer with another board that has WiFi chip with external antenna plug. If it’s not convenient for you to send it back, you can purchase such a top board and replace it on your controller by yourself. In either case, you can submit a support ticket with the request.

[Ray]

The details of the weather algorithm are documented in the support article here:
https://openthings.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000823370-using-weather-adjustments
the reason it’s not included in the firmware is that the weather adjustment methods are decoupled from the firmware — it’s hosted on the OpenSprinkler cloud server and new weather algorithms may be added at any time without modifying the firmware.

You can customize the weather algorithm by hosting it on your own server and change the weather url to point to your own server. The weather code and instructions can be downloaded here:
https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-Weather

[Ray]

Well, this is a tricky question to answer and it depends on your specific setup. For example, here are two options to begin with:
– extend your valve wires to closer to where the office router is, so that OS can reach the WiFi signal, and still get physically connected to your valves.
– use WiFi range extender or set up a mesh network so the WiFi signal can reach further into the field

[Ray]

Sure, good suggestion. Will do.

[Ray]

are you able to change other settings, like number of zones, location etc?

[Author]

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