[OBSOLETE] Smart Sprinkler System

I really wish SmartThings would stop allowing people to use this forum for its competition.

@d8adrvn, I had spoken too soon. It is not working anymore, all_on command does not work still. Individual “on” or “off” works just fine.

@VikHeg and @S_M,
Are you both using the 16 zone system?

Ok, the issue seems to be that Smartthings now limits the payload to 25 characters. So when you press the main button on a 16 zone system set to 1 min per zone, you generate the following 37 character payload:
allOn,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1

This is kind of bad news because it means we need to split the payloads up and send in smaller chunks. I had at the same problem on the 24 zone system under the old payload limits. The solution was not elegant.

Note, if you have an 8 zone system, you will have the same issue if you have more than 4 zones set to double digit times. The bandaid is to limit the number of zones with double digit times and just schedule extra waterings if needed.

I will put in a ticket to @smartthings_support and do some searching in the community and meanwhile continue to think through a different fix. It might also be that the webCoRE piston from @Cal7 may be the simplest fix? I haven’t explored that yet, since the system has worked nearly flawless for multiple years.

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@d8adrvn that is great! I will try splitting it up. I have 8 zones, most zones with double digit times.
Thanks again for your help!

@d8adrvn Splitting watering times and limiting each instance to single digit has fixed the issue.

Mine is 8 zone, only 6 zones used and each zone configured to run for 20 minutes

@d8adrvn I can confirm that this is the issue I have and your workaround seems to work.

@S_M @VikHeg @CedarParkJb

The issue is clearly that Smartthings/Samsung have mysteriously reduced Thingshield payload from 63 characters to 25 characters. Of course, when you contact Samsung support the response is “SmartThings no longer provides support for the Arduino Thingshield and there has been no changes made
” But that doesn’t explain why my 3 systems, your systems and two others have all just stopped working.

In any case, we can still eek out a little extra life from our systems. I have placed updated Device Handlers (Device Types) in my GitHub repository that will fix the issue. Good news is that you only need to replace the device handler. Your smartapps and Arduino sketches do not need to be updated (ironically, Samsung support blamed it on the Arduino and they “recommend reaching out to Arduino for assistance with this issue”).

When you manually activate all zones or trigger the zones from the smartapp, each zone will turn on one by one with a three second delay. So it will take 24 seconds and 48 seconds for all 8 or16 zones to queue up, respectively. I tested both the 8 zone and 16 zone device handlers and both work after 10 tests each. If you notice any issues with zone skipping or other weirdness, don’t hesitate to reach out. We might need to increase delay from 3 sec to 4 sec.

Enjoy!

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Ok, so after a few more tests, I saw one zone get skipped in the queue, which I attribute to either Arduino being sluggish or some type of zigbee network sluggishness. In any case, I think 4 sec delay is more prudent. I will be updating the GitHub repository to v3.1.1 and including 4 sec delay between ThingShield payloads

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As I do more testing, I see that one of the unexpected outcomes is that when you manually activate or activate all zones via smartapp, the program gets “a mind of its own” and will continue to activate zones, even if you try to send an “alloff” command. I’ll think about this issue some more, but we might have to live with just having to wait until all zones turn on before we can turn off all the zones at once

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@d8adrvn

Hi Stan,
Thanks so much for helping us out! I’m back up and running once again! I’m used to debugging code in an environment that allows me to step through it, some of this stuff with Smartthings is a bit rough. I knew it had to be something with the handler and arduino but could not figure out the gap. Any pointers on the best way to debug this stuff going forward?

I have a problem that where i live we have frequent power interruptions.
This seem to cause my linknodeR4 to go into initial startup mode.
And i have to manually reset the the device

My linknode IP is static should it not be possible to modify code so if
it does not respond send a reset command before giving up

Any ideas how this can be done ?

Put it on a backup battery. But if you have to reset it after power interruptions, I would check with the manufacturer.

is there any way to edit this code to run an orbit (Iris) valve with only one ‘zone’. When i run this pretty much everything works except turning on the valve. Error is tossed saying that this device does not support zones.

Thank you so much in advance!

I solved this and will post a sketch

Since the weatherunderground shut down can we now use The accuweather device

Well I went out and bought my own weather station for other issues that I was having without WU. However, is there any way to reprogram so that it pulls data from a local device instead of going out to WU. Because I am not sure how all this works it is hard to figure out how to change the code and pull the precipitation, wind gust
from another device. I am not asking you to help me program but just clue me in on what I might need to change.

Well I guess this project is dead now. All the temps and rain amounts are based on the last day of WU API. If anyone has been able to edit the code to something different please let me know. I am not versed enough to make the changes myself. I have about a month before I will have to turn on my sprinkler to see if it works and what its status is.