[Samer]

Yes, some changes for 2.1.4 were accidently pushed to the master branch and as a result your running the latest working copy of 2.1.4 (unreleased). Apologizes for the confusion.

[Samer]

Hello,

The version number is wrong because some upcoming changes for 2.1.4 got accidently pushed to the master branch and since the instructions tell you to clone master branch, you ended up with the latest working copy of 2.1.4.

1) On the home page, each station is listed with a gear icon on the right hand side. As the manual explains, if you tap this gear icon it opens a popup with some settings for the station selected. Currently, the app won’t let you rename master stations but this will be changed in the next version but every other station can be named without issues. The work around for master station naming, is to remove the master station, rename the station, and set it back to master station.

2) The app is constantly polling the controller and if it cannot reach it, it will show a network error banner across the bottom. Is the app or web page device on a remote connection or local? The web-page has no timeout period, so it is quite odd so see a network error however the app has a 6 second timeout on attempts to poll the controller (and retries 3 times before considering the attempt failed) hence why you might see the error.

Thanks

[Samer]

This could be an issue with latency. The Arduino is very slow at reading the SD and likely the app is timing out the attempt.

The direct IP method has no time out so see if this works any better?

Also glad you figured out the conversion because I was wrong.

[Samer]

I believe the update frequency with WUnderground is quite aggressive so I would imagine there is little difference unless bandwidth is an issue for you.

Maybe run some point tests by opening data from both and comparing periodically?

[Samer]

This is already written and will be released in the next update, 2.1.4. The mobile app has added supported and will be released in 1.4.2 to change these settings. Expect this to be released soon with full details from Ray.

[Samer]

I can also confirm we are found when searched on tapatalk. Not sure what was going on but I enabled and then disabled incognito mode on our forum. Seems to have done the trick.

Update: it was a tapatalk outage. A representative got in touch with me today to let me know a majority of the forums were not searchable for a 48 hour period.

[Samer]

The Android app currently supports both and yes you are correct you have a choice between the Python firmware (Dan’s OSPi) or the C++ firmware (Ray’s Unified).

[Samer]

@Claudio, I will let you know once things have stabilized. The OSPi release of the Unified firmware is very new and had a rocky start with some bugs and installation issues however thanks to everyone for reporting issues and also submitting guides like this one really helped. We are trying to integrate all this into a more robust firmware package and apperciate your understanding.

Thanks again!

[Samer]

Well, in that case, the only real suggestion I have is to downgrade the firmware back to a version that supports manual mode (2.0.9 or below). Since all the new features don’t matter in a setting where the controller gets sent instructions to turn on or off I think that should be okay.

You could also just append the largest value possible to the time value (18 hours for 2.1.3) and let it run until the OpenHAB instructions OpenSprinkler to turn the station off. Although the station would turn off after 18 hours regardless, I hope this would cover the majority of durations needed.

[Samer]

This is actually the expected behaviour. Since we removed manual mode starting with firmware 2.1.0, we no longer allow indefinite durations for zones. The reason is the controller is always in scheduling mode and a station open indefintely means no other stations will be queued behind it since the station doesn’t have an end time.

Is there a reason you need to open a station indefintely?

[Samer]

I also want to thank you for providing these instructions and also the startup script. We actually have merged your script into our repository for all users here: https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinklerGen2/blob/master/OpenSprinkler.launch. The script is installed if OpenSprinkler is not detected in the init.d folder when running the build.sh command. This means steps 6 through 9 of your steps will no longer be needed moving forward.

I also changed the build_ospi.sh into just one build script (to reduce the amount of build scripts in the long run). So now, for step 5, it is best to run: ./build.sh ospi. The available options are: ospi, osbo, and demo with ospi being the default option.

Thank you!

[Samer]

The version number is available in the About page which is linked on the left side panel (swipe right).

I thought Tokol is further than Taksony? If you want to use Taksony instead of Tokol, use the location, “pws:IDUNHAR2” without the quotes.

[Samer]

I understand it exactly and already explained the discrepancy in the web vs the app and already explained how to resolve it.

The location is not accurate in 1.4.1. It happens to work for you however in the next version I’m changing how the name works and it will accurately reflect the weather station shown.
So addressing your issues:

This will have no UTF-8 issues. So not sure why you mention this again.

“Not perfect place for weather info” this isn’t my fault. The closest weather source to your location is Taksony.

Hope this helps.

[Samer]

Hi Alex,

The tip about replacing the ifupdown script is a great suggestion, thanks!

In regard to the NFS for data folder, I think this would work fine so long the folder is mounted in the data directory.

[Samer]

Okay, good news. I have figured out how to properly get the sublocality shown while still using Google Geocoding so I can avoid Weather Underground station names (which contain UTF-8 errors).

Now the future app updates will show: Spinaceto, Lazio. The logic behind the naming is as follows for anyone interested:

1) Grab the observation coordinates of the weather station (this is given to me from Weather Underground)
2) I use Google Geolocate by providing the same coordinates and getting a list of addresses
3) Sort through the results by selecting the first result with a sub-locality (if available) or locality
4) Dissect the address components looking for the sub-locality (if available) or locality and also identify the administrative_level_1 (in the USA this is the state name for Italy this is the main level and for you it’s Lazio)
5) If no administrative level is given, use the country name
6) Combine the (sub)locality and the top administrative level into a comma separated string

Thanks for the data and hope this provides the solution needed. Expect this in 1.4.2.

[Samer]

Okay, the current naming solution is rather accurate and I know why the distances are off from your location. I have attached a screenshot of the app which pulls up all the weather stations in your area (which is available in the app to the right of the location input). You will notice the nearest weather station is Taksony, Pest country.

Since you are inputting a city name into the location field, Weather Underground is picking a weather station for you and sometimes it picks Tokol and sometimes the other which is why your text is changing. Furthermore, the nearest station to your city is in fact in Taksony which is why your city name doesn’t match your actual city name.

To enforce Taksony weather station, use the following location, pws:IDUNAHAR2. This appears to only be 4.8km apart.

I hope this helps clarify things and with this knowledge I am planning on proceeding with using the locality, administrative_level_1 (or country) as the location name on the home page as this helps identify which location’s weather is influencing your OpenSprinkler.

If you want more accurate results, you can setup your own Weather Station and register it with Weather Underground. To make the app only use a specific weather station, you may select it from the map tool or use “pws:ID” where ID is the weather station ID.

Attachments:

1. 

   overall.png
   

[Samer]

The Raspberry Pi 2 Version B has the exact same form factor as the Raspberry Pi 1 Version B+ and will work with he current OSPi Plus board available for sale.

[Samer]

If you notice, the queued stations will show a scheduled start time. When you stop a station, the queue does not get moved up and therefore the next station will start at its scheduled time (which is after the first station turns off regardless if it is actually on or off).

I hope this clarifies what you are seeing.

[Samer]

Okay thank you for explaining the structure a little more. Makes complete sense. Unfortunately, your station is one of the few where the observation location is actually more accurate than the geo lookup I’m using. Furthermore, Google doesn’t give the name of Spinaceto however I will see if other location lookup tools work better and go from there.

At least I know I could proceed with this method for now, if need be. Thank you!

[Samer]

In regard to the location, I see what you mean but it is quite difficult to get exactly right since weather underground data is not accurate. I am having to use the GPS coordinates to geolocate the city and get the name that way. It seems a lot better than junk characters. For now, 12km seems a lot more acceptable than foreign characters.

With that said, I will see what I can do to improve the accuracy further.

Thanks!

[Samer]

If you are seeing changes in your UI then that means you are using the beta UI. In order to change back to the release version open the /su page and change the betaui to ui in the URL field.

Keep in mind the /su page needs a MD5 hashed password now. We are going to try to make this page easier to work with in the future.

[Samer]

Ah okay yes, an older firmware logged to the root directory of the SD but we did change this to a sub directory.

Like I said earlier the file name is the epoch time of the day divided by 60. So you can multiply it by 60 and you will have the time in seconds since January 1, 1970.

As to why moving them didn’t work, I am not sure but since it sounds like a firmware thing maybe Ray can chime in.

[Samer]

I have been working on a solution and at first using the observation location instead of the display location seemed to resolve the issue however it turns out the observation location can be poorly encoded for international countries using UTF-8 characters. Therefore, I have written a small function to parse the GPS coordinates into a location name. For your weather station this becomes: Roma, Lazio.

Does this sound acceptable?

[Samer]

Hi,

The first 2 things you are describing are normal and basically the granularity of the watering time changes as the value increases. The way it works is as follows:

1) You can set durations of 0 to 59 seconds, after that, seconds are disabled and the granularity becomes minutes
2) You can set minute values so long the total hours are under 3, after that minutes are disabled and the granularity becomes hours
3) You can set the hour value up to 18 in the current firmware however this is changing to 16 hour maximum in firmware 2.1.4 to allow new duration values (sunrise-sunset and sunset-sunrise).

In regard to the last issue with program copy, this sounds like a bug and I will look into it and get back to you.

Thanks!

Update: I tried to perform a copy and subsequent save and never recieved an error. Can you specify which app version you are using (found in the About page accessible via the left side panel).

Update 2: I have tracked the copy program bug down and resolved it. This should work in the upcoming update to the app (1.4.2).

As a work around, I believe the top right button should work on a copy however you have to make some change, like day of week.

Thanks!

[Samer]

Hello,

sprinklers_pi is written by Richard Zimmerman and is a 3rd party firmware. With that said, I checked the repository and the latest version is 1.0.7, however I am unsure of the changelog from 1.0.6.

Recently, the Unified firmware has been released which is the microcontroller firmware now available for OSPi and OSBo. For more information please visit: https://opensprinkler.com/forums/topic/announcing-opensprinkler-unified-firmware-2-1-3-for-avrrpibbblinux/

Thanks!

[Author]

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