Sorry to hear it. Have you yet diagnosed whether it is the Shield or the Arduino?
I’ve only had mine a few weeks - and, so far, great - but I do worry about longevity. It’s in an outside box that’s mostly shaded but still reaches the mid-90’s inside. I threw a temperature probe inside, positioned right next to the Arduino+Shield and typically saw temps of 102.
I’ve been having this issue more and more lately (the switches not initiating or getting their state lost). I unplug it and plug it back in and it goes back to working. Not sure if this is a software bug, but it seems coincidental that several people would all be having boards go bad at the same time.
I’m still using the same board and shield from a couple years ago. It’s mounted in my non-climate controlled garage which gets quite hot in the summer (90+) and freezing in the winter. No issues yet.
@Rigging65, I saw your post from 21 days ago. Hopefully you have downloaded the code update from my main branch. It reduces the number of logs posted to the “Recently” tab in the device handler and makes it more reliable. Meanwhile, when I get a chance later this week, I’ll rebuild my development system and run it hard to look for any issues.
I don’t see anything new in the repo. I’m on v3.0.2 for the DH…is that the most recent?
Yeah v3.0.2 is the newest for the device handler.
What relay’s are people buying? I need a 16 channel one.
Thanks
I use the Sainsmart 16 channel relay which you can get on Amazon. You power it with a 12V DC adapter and it has a 5V output to power the Arduino.
EDIT: Ok, I did a bit more reading on the Arduino forums. If you plan to use the 5V output from the Relay Module (above), then its recommended you supply the power to the Arduino through the USB port (cut a USB cable and wire in that way). Although it technically works to power the Arduino through the 5V pin, you can easily fry your board.
Another alternative is to use the 5v 16 channel relay modules. Since you only run one module (or at most two) at a time, the Arduino has enough power. You can get these on eBay. The quality probably varies!
First of all, thank you Stan and Matthew for writing the Smarter Irrigation. I am having troubles with the communication between the device type and the smart app. I have followed your instructions and the device type (irrigation controller) is working and I can manually turn on all the different sprinkler zones. But, when I create the smart app (Irrigation Scheduler) while on the display of the controller on my phone, the two don’t seem to communicate. I can watch the log of the smart app and I see the log entry “Zone 1 watering for 10 minutes”, but the log of the device type never receives a zone 1 switch. I am picking sprinkler controller in the “switches” preference of the smart app. Any advice for connecting the two? Thanks
Edit: The device type does have a log entries ‘Sprinkler Controller received "’, but it ends after the first double quote. I’m using the latest code update I see in branch Notifications_and_Event_Handling.
Answer: While being very careful I had somehow installed an older version of code on my Arduino. It was expecting ‘allOn’ instead of the newer ‘allOn1’. Thanks, problem fixed.
@strongAmerica,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. Please only use the code from github that is from our latest release or from our master branch. Try downloading the code from the master branch
EDIT: changed “main” to “master”
Solution is working great. I have it set to water for 15 minutes at three times during the night and it is faithfully following the schedule. Thanks.
im having trouble with the scheduler. I can manually control all of my zones from within the app, no issues. I scheduled my zones to run every day in the morning for a few minutes and in the evening. Ill get a notification saying the sprinklers are on, but within a minute i get another notification that they are off. The system never turns on the first pump in the system.
I see there is a new version of the scheduler app (i was on 2.97, installed 3.0 this morning), but when i try to set it up through the IDE, i get an error. I paste the raw code from GitHub as a new smart app, i can save and publish for me, and it all seems to work. Then i select the (only) hub, edit the options i want (days of week, amount of time, etc), and click install. then i get a giant red error on the top of the page
I see a lot of other people have installed it without issue, so im sure its something i am doing. Any suggestions on where i might have gone wrong?
Thanks!!
anyone have amazon link to a good arduino board for this project. I only have arduino UNO and it looks like I need the mega.
Thanks
I’m using an Uno for the sprinkler and, AFAIK, it’s sufficient. However, this is what I bought a couple of weeks ago for the @d8adrvn alarm panel integration which does require a Mega.
$12.88 . I’m no Arduino expert so I can’t vouch for it in detail, but the sketch loaded and it’s been running fine.
What project are you following for security panel?
Was really easy and the integration with ST is truly useful.
I put together the 8 Station version and it appears to be working fine. Just some quick feedback of my experience.
For the Scheduler, if it is not kicking off check the Zipcode or PWS code you entered. I tried a PWS code and the schedule would not work, so I switched to my zip code and tested and it is now working.
Scheduler app when it kicked off the duration of each zone does not appear to be correct. I put in 15 minutes and noticed it only stayed on for 7 minutes. I’ll dig a little deeper, but it is possible I have conflicting schedules fighting with each other.
It would be nice to have a local display to see information such as last watered (syncing date and time fro the SmartThings Shield), and last zone watered. Also if it is currently watering. Also syncing in the default time locally for each zone, and possibly a way to name each zone and sync that as well. A manual button that triggers a cycle through each of the configured zones, as well as halting.
I have viewed a few other smart sprinkler arduino projects out there that are similar, so I think this should not be too difficult to add or modify. Here is a video of a similar project DIY Smart Sprinkler. I’ll atempt to take a shot at this but my coding skillz are still at the begining stages on both groovy and Arduino, so it might take some time.
Otherwise I’m pretty happy with the outcome, and once I figure out the duration issue on the sprinkler timer I should be set for watering.
Here is another example for a push button add for manual operations.
So later in the day noticed that the remaining schedules did not kick off. I’ll rebuild them from scratch and try again.
I may look at altering the code to cache the schedule locally on the arduino, and send a notification to smartthings if it is online when schedules kick off. Also syncing the date/time if available as needed. This appears to be how other arduino sprinkler timers have accomplished this.
Update: I did figure out that I can use the Light Automation built into Smart things, which I can use for things like my drip irrigation. I do this by pointing it at the virtual switches that I use for the minimote. I’m checking again later today to see if my schedule kicks off for the rest of the system as planned.
@d8adrvn I love this solution! Thanks for all of your hard work!
I can run each zone manually, however, I cannot run it based on the scheduler and I cannot run it by clicking on Start for the Sprinkler System.
Any thoughts for troubleshooting this issue? Thanks!
Hello, I am new to the ST and I wanted to try out this Smart Sprinkler system. I am good with h/w, but, not with s/w! So bear with me on my queries.
I was able to get everything to work following the great instructions.
I can manually turn on/off any of the 16 relays via the manual mode on my iPhone. Yes!
I noticed that the individual valve tiles do not change color to gold or blue as indicated in the doc. All it shows is “sending”. Is this correct or am I missing something?
My biggest issue is with the Scheduler app. I followed the instructions, the copy and paste of the groovy code worked fine, create, save and publish worked.
When I went to the Marketplace / SmartApps on my iPhone, I cannot find the My Apps section or the scheduler smartapp. I see other sections such as Climate Control, Lights and Switches, but, nothing called My Apps. What did I do wrong?
