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You can use “pw”. So here’s how I run a program from Tasker on my phone: http://:8080/rp?pw=password&pid=1.
@rederikus wrote:
There is one very simple way to do this and it is to make a stand alone system that simply manipulates to outputs of opensprinkler. This would then not require any changes to any opensprinkle and would be connected in series with each output. When the desired soil moisture was reached, it would simply cut off that channel until the humidity dropped. This method has the advantage that there is no hardware or software needed. The moisture threshold would be set by potentiometers on each channel The down side is, of course that moisture sensor management would be entirely manual which is not that great.
I think that it would be best to integrate it with opensprinkler. It would be nice and helpful to have access to the moisture levels in the interval program. Then we could easily monitor the humidity and make adjustments to the variables based on how our plants react to different levels of humidity.
I’m pretty sure this is totally unrelated, but I had some issues with the interval program a few days ago (slow/incomplete page loads, inability to connect). It was caused by my rootfs being 100% full. Even though I was using a 4GB card I had forgotten to expand the pi’s file system after starting with the preconfigured SD card image. If you’re curious you can check yours from a command prompt by typing “df -h”. To expand it just type “sudo raspi-config” and choose “expand filesystem”.
The security method described earlier in this post would do exactly what you want (require a username and password to access the pi). The mobile app and the web app both support it out of the box. However, I don’t think it could easily be made into a script or SD card image. This is because an SSL certificate is required and you have to go through several steps to get a certificate from a third party that is specific to your device and domain.
Also it probably wouldn’t be necessary to have an on/off switch because once it’s setup it’s pretty seamless and I can’t think of a situation where you would want to disable it.
The nice thing about the pi is you can easily make a copy of your SD card. So if you mess up on your security settings, you can just restore your working copy and you are back in business.
Thanks for your suggestion – I suspected it was the self signed cert and you confirmed it. I wasn’t able to use startssl to create a cert because I’m using a dynamic address provider. So I exported my PEM cert as a CRT, installed it on my phone and everything works. For those who may be wondering, you can convert your PEM to a CRT with the following command: “sudo openssl x509 -inform PEM -outform DM -in mycertname.pem -out mycertname.crt”.
For android users, copy that CRT to your device. I connected my phone to my laptop and copied it. Then go to Settings > Security > Install From Storage and you’re all set! you might have to add a pin lock to your device if you haven’t done so already.
Thanks for the info Ray. It was hard to tell if the 5V was still available. In the manual it looks like the 5v pins are still being used to power the pi (like my board). Is that correct?
If so, is there any way to access 5v to power a separate relay?
btw… The OSPi is really great. Thanks for making it!
@eecyclone wrote:
How did you do this?
I’m on an earlier version of the OSPi board (1.2?). With that board all the gpio pins are accessible. There is a two wire cable that goes from the GPIO (board pins 2 – 6 I think) to the OpenSprinkler board. Disconnecting this cable cuts the power to the RaspPi so you just connect a MicroUSB cable to it and power it that way.
Unfortunately, the newer boards flip the RaspPi over and all of the GPIO pins are plugged directly into the Opensprinkler board. I don’t have access to a newer board, but I think they don’t give you access to the 5v pin anymore. One workaround would be to disconnect the RaspPi, flip it back over, and use jumper cables to connect it to the Opensprinkler board.I think you would only need to jumper the odd pins from 1 through 15. The even pins are only used to power the pi on my board.
I’ll try to post some pics tonight.
It sounds like you are interested in future capabilities, so I’d say the RPi is going to give you more options in the future. It’s quite a bit cheaper as well ($77 + $35/RPi + SD Card). Of course it’s not quite plug and play, but the preconfigured SD card really makes setup easy. It helps a lot to have some basic linux knowledge (if you have 3 Rpi’s already you’re probably good-to-go). Functionally, they are pretty much the same. With the RPi, you need to access it from another device (computer, phone, tablet) to do anything with it. The ATMega version has a screen and some buttons so many, but not all, of the options can be set from the device itself. It’s kind of nice to be able to see some information without having access it from another device.
If you don’t mind a little extra setup the RPi is what I’d recommend. I did the same thing last year – moved into a new home with an old sprinkler controller and I promptly replaced it with an OpenSprinkler Pi.
@Dan in CA wrote:
EDIT: Got an idea.
We could add a “plugins” button to the home page (or all pages) that opens a drop down menu that could be populated from a global dictionary with links to any number of plugin pages.What do you think?
Dan
That would certainly work.
EDIT: Doh. So I’ve got too many projects going on at once and mixed up Python and PHP. Too many late nights. Anyway, I think that it would be wise to move to a better templating system. As it stands now you need to edit every single HTML page if you only want to change something simple like the footer. A more modular approach would make it easier to manage/edit the web interface and open the door to user additions. It’s really easy to do in PHP, but I’m not familiar enough with python to suggest how to implement it.
Looks great!
I wrote a plugin for garage door control and status (hopefully I’ll be able to post it when I return from a trip next week). The plugin consists of the plugin py file and one html file in the templates folder. It works fine with version 2.
Here’s my question: Is there a way to add information or buttons to the home page without editing the home page itself? I’d prefer to keep my plugins simple and self contained so I don’t have to redo anything when there are updates to the python program.
So as it stands now – I have a separate page that shows the garage door status and buttons to control them.
Thanks for the detailed response! I saw the rsn command, but wasn’t sure what “reset” meant (i.e. does it clear the station’s name name?) but I guess it re-sets the stations to be closed. Anyway, it’s working great in my script.
I’m going to look into building out the custom commands in ospi_addon.py so my other devices can interface with it at a deeper level. I’d rather have the OSPi do the computing than my phone/tablet.
I’m using the relay I mentioned in my other post. I’m still playing around with the code, but it’s connected to the garage door opener buttons in my garage. So when the relay closes it tricks the garage door opener into thinking a button has been pushed. It’s very simple but very effective.
@salbahra wrote:
@virtus For now @Zapp’s suggestion is the best, assuming you are using git. I have toyed with adding auto-updates but honestly I don’t exhaustively test my updates and sometimes do break things. I would hate to force broken updates on everyone and for now plan on keeping it manual.
Yeah, I haven’t updated it via crontab because I prefer to manually update in case there is a broken update. So maybe at some point it would be nice to see some sort of “about” page with the current version and an update button. Maybe even a link to the changelog. Then we could easily update only when we want. Anyway, your web app has really taken the OSPi to another level!
I haven’t kept up with the last 20 pages of updates, but it looks like there’s been a lot of great development and a lot of updates. Is there a way to add an update button to the app so we don’t have to SSH into the RPi every day? Great work, btw!
Would that relay work with the 24V sprinkler valves? I’m using a smaller version (4 relays) of that to open / close my garage.
Also, I think the OS Pi is more than a bargain when you consider the software/coding, case, design, and instructions. But that’s the great thing about DIY projects, there are a lot of ways to get things done.
Very nice! I’m going to start on my garage door project this weekend and your legwork will come in handy. I’ll look at the code later tonight, but the button should be pretty simple. I’m going to do something similar but I’ll include HTTP commands so other programs can view the door status and open/close them.
Dan’s been working on the program a lot – have you looked into trying to move some of your code out of ospi.py? There is an ospi_addon.py file for some kinds of external code so you don’t have to manually re-add everything whenever the program is updated.
There was a major update on 7/19 which I didn’t have a big announcement so I think a lot of people missed it. The readme notes for it say “It is recommended to re-install the entire OSPi directory from GitHub.” It’s usually a good idea to do that anyway because the readme is usually just a partial list of updates.
Yes, the readme recommends that you do a full re-install this time. You can save the data folder if you don’t want to lose your settings.
I just grabbed today’s update to the interval program and the Master option appears to be working now. Thanks!
@craigmw wrote:
There are several implementations out there using an RPi to check the status of the garage door, including the following which has a web server:
http://ryanfx.blogspot.com/2013/06/raspberry-pi-powered-android-controlled.html
This could likely run on the same RPi running OSPi. Of course, it would be more fun and educational to “roll your own.”
That’s funny because I was looking at the exact same hardware yesterday. However, he uses a 2-relay board and I’ll probably get the 4-relay board from the same manufacturer – just in case I need an extra relay at some point. Plus it’s only a couple bucks more than the 2 relay version.
It’s also worth noting that the magnetic sensor that he uses is relatively weak – it requires the contacts to be within .25″ of each other to be closed. On a garage door I’d prefer something with a little more wiggle room (like .5″ – 1″).
I really enjoyed the info about his authentication system.
@PabloS wrote:
The idea of using a spare garage door transmitter to control my two garage doors seems to be the less complicated.
Since the OSPi system drives solenoids for the sprinkler valves, and the solenoids I use are less than $10 at Home Depot, how hard do you think it would be to build a mount so that a solenoid plunger could push a transmitter button? …
I’ve seen people mod the transmitter. Generally they open the transmitter and put a relay between the button contacts. So basically it’s the same method I’m going to attempt, but they are using the transmitter button instead of the wall button.
Using a plunger would work too, but it will require some sort of anchoring/framework what would keep everything lined up correctly. It would probably be bulkier and more prone to mechanical failure. But it might be simpler to implement if you don’t want crack open a transmitter.
