![]() ![]() Hopefully, the savings on water bills justifies the project. OSPi integrates with a weather system and rain sensor, which means no watering when it isn’t required. The OSPi user interface is very intuitive. $ indicates a command executed in a terminal window on the MacBook and usually is being executed on the Raspberry Pi.I’ve attempted to credit every source used.text enclosed in spades, like this ♣replace-this♣ should be replaced with an actual value.At a minimum, I would need to upgrade the Rainbird controller. My house came with a Rainbird ESP-M controller, which is not WiFi enabled and cannot be accessed from the web. In general, I try to water as little as possible, but because it runs in the middle of the night I forget about it. If I water on the wrong day, during the wrong hours (after 10pm and before 7am), or if water runs into the street, then I get a $50 fine. My neighborhood is under severe watering restrictions. I used a MacBook to communicate with the Raspberry Pi, but any computer can be used.įor the last ten years, Central Texas has been in a severe drought. Also, the parts list in the OSpi Manual is not complete. So, I had to take the RPi and OSPi apart, insert the micro SD card. However, once the Raspberry Pi and OSPI are connected, the micro SD slot is not accessible. For example, when following the OSPi User Manual steps, I connected the Raspberry Pi to the OSPI (Step 2) and then many steps later imaged the micro SD card (step 8 = 7 hardware steps plus 1 software step). I changed the order of some OpenSprinkler steps. This is a great source for the latest OpenSprkler documents. The OpenSprinkler v1.4+ User Manual (updated May 31, 2015) is the basis for this document. Add soil sensors (I haven't done this yet – not supported by Open Sprinkler as of publish date).Integrate with weather reports (built in to OpenSprinkler).Add functionality to the irrigation system.Control the irrigation system from the web.Don’t lose any functionality from current Rainbird irrigation system.If you are looking for a first project, do this one. This is the perfect home automation project. This instructable simply documents my progress in Home Automation. OpenSprinkler doesn't need an instructable. It is an easy and low-cost solution to transform a Raspberry Pi into a capable sprinkler controller with 8 zones for lawn and garden watering. To accommodate this, I am planning to add PCB holes for these diodes in the future, which will make it easy to solder these extra components.OpenSprinkler Pi (OSPi) is an open-source sprinkler / irrigation extension board for the Raspberry Pi. The flyback diode is important to protect the transistor under inductive load. However, in this case, you need to add an additional flyback diode (between the collector of the transistor and the +12V line). It is also possible to use the NPN transistors to directly drive the relays. The OpenSprinkler running a self test that turns on each station for 3 seconds. Here is a video showing the relay board in action. When a station is open, the shift register pin outputs high, turning on the corresponding NPN transistor, and driving its collector low (to ground). So all NPN transistors are turned off, and the collectors are pulled high by the relay board. The way it works is that normally the shift register outputs low. The remaining step is to connect the station wires to the corresponding relay control pins. The only modification I needed to do is to replace the triacs (used to drive AC solenoids) by NPN transistors. ![]() Even if you connect the power supply in the wrong direction, it shouldn’t cause any damage because there is a protecting diode D1 that prevents reverse polarity. As long as you keep in mind the polarity, it should work right away. OpenSprinkler can run on 12V DC power supply without any modification. So before you go ahead and make changes, make sure to find out the type of your relay board. This means normally the relay control pin is pulled high when the control pin is set low by the microcontroller, the relay will be activated. This particular relay board I received is an active low type. It is designed to work directly with microcontroller pins. First of all, the relay board has built-in opto-couplers and flyback diodes. ![]() Since it may be useful for other folks, I am writing a post here to briefly describe the modifications. It turns out to be relatively easy to do. Recently I received a request to customize OpenSprinkler for a 12V DC external relay board. ![]()
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