poor man's garden sprinkler

[BraveSirRobbin]

Yes, I agree, BSR, it is not very hacker friendly when compared to the AC units. But it was designed for low power battery operation. I'd say they achieved their design goals.

You could hook it up to a parallel or serial port with a relay and a couple 9v batteries and just toggle the bits on the port... IF your PC still has those ports! ;-)

Maybe we can get Midon to offer a little 1-wire board to plug them into and manage them through a 1-wire interface?

Yea, I'll mess with this some more when I get my caps in. It does take a lot of energy. If done with a relay directly (i.e. no cap) make sure the closure is momentary as the resistance of that solenoid is very low (almost a direct short).

 

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Yes, I agree, BSR, it is not very hacker friendly when compared to the AC units. But it was designed for low power battery operation. I'd say they achieved their design goals.

You could hook it up to a parallel or serial port with a relay and a couple 9v batteries and just toggle the bits on the port... IF your PC still has those ports! ;-)

Maybe we can get Midon to offer a little 1-wire board to plug them into and manage them through a 1-wire interface?

huggy,

Do you a pinout for the serial port? I have few serial and parallel cables that are not in use anymore. Can you draw a diagram of that approach. It looks very interesting.

Thanks!

 

[RichTJ99]

So if we have to go the AC part route, does anyone have an online source of what parts we need? My local HD only has that DC valve.

I really would enjoy using a remote to turn the water on & off instead of running to the spigot to turn it on & off.

 

[roussell]

huggy,

Do you a pinout for the serial port? I have few serial and parallel cables that are not in use anymore. Can you draw a diagram of that approach. It looks very interesting.

Thanks!

I don't think you want to go there. It's isn't hard if you're comfortable with electronics...but there are several considerations. You will have to built a driver circuit and develop a custom application of some sort to tie the parallel port into whatever HA app you may use. Yes there are samples of each to help you along the way, but knowledge is power here. You can easily damage a parallel or serial port, or even the entire motherboard if something goes wrong. Stick with the ELK or X10 route mentioned earlier. Also, some PCs pulse the pins on the parallel port during POST. That could wreak havoc with whatever you're controlling, not to mention be potentially dangerous if your PC reboots at the wrong time. Again, yes there are ways around these problems as many (myself included) use the parallel port for control/monitoring, but you'll need a decent understanding of how the I/O ports operate, and how to communicate with them. I'm not trying to discourage you, but this could quickly turn from a "poor mans sprinkler controller" to something way more expensive if a motherboard gets toasted.

If you want to learn more about controlling devices with a parallel/game/serial port; there are a ton of resources on the 'net. A good place to start is here.

Terry

 

[v1rtu0s1ty]

So if we have to go the AC part route, does anyone have an online source of what parts we need? My local HD only has that DC valve.

I really would enjoy using a remote to turn the water on & off instead of running to the spigot to turn it on & off.

I think this was mentioned somewhere in page 2 or 3. BSR recommended to me an ELK relay(smarthome or automatedoutlet) which costs like $8+, $11-$14 for the ELK 24vac or $10+ for RadioShack 24BVAC.). Then match wire gauge from the valve and can be bought at RadioShack.

 

[v1rtu0s1ty]

huggy,

Do you a pinout for the serial port? I have few serial and parallel cables that are not in use anymore. Can you draw a diagram of that approach. It looks very interesting.

Thanks!

I don't think you want to go there. It's isn't hard if you're comfortable with electronics...but there are several considerations. You will have to built a driver circuit and develop a custom application of some sort to tie the parallel port into whatever HA app you may use. Yes there are samples of each to help you along the way, but knowledge is power here. You can easily damage a parallel or serial port, or even the entire motherboard if something goes wrong. Stick with the ELK or X10 route mentioned earlier. Also, some PCs pulse the pins on the parallel port during POST. That could wreak havoc with whatever you're controlling, not to mention be potentially dangerous if your PC reboots at the wrong time. Again, yes there are ways around these problems as many (myself included) use the parallel port for control/monitoring, but you'll need a decent understanding of how the I/O ports operate, and how to communicate with them. I'm not trying to discourage you, but this could quickly turn from a "poor mans sprinkler controller" to something way more expensive if a motherboard gets toasted.

If you want to learn more about controlling devices with a parallel/game/serial port; there are a ton of resources on the 'net. A good place to start is here.

Terry

Thanks Terry. I was just curious. I also like doing some experiments as long as I have something to follow. I built an IR blaster for my mythtv box using LIRC. I did some soldering and it was fun. Anyways for this project, I'm sticking with the design that BSR gave to me. I will just buy the pipe adapters. Actually, they look cool!

 

[v1rtu0s1ty]

Thanks for the link. It's totally cool. This reminded me of my sleeping project. Since I don't have ELK ethernet module, I have tons of old machines sitting in my basement. I will use 2 linux machines to envelope serial traffic over ip. Traffic is bidirectional and bits will be raw unmodified. This will allow me to run ELK software from my bedroom and control M1 which is in the basement.

 

[RichTJ99]

So to recap, you need the following parts for an AC solution:

1 AC Valve (using the Ace Hardware one as an example)
1 AC 24V power connection (is this a radio shack item)
1 X10 Appliance "Unit"

some 16 guage wire
the right plumbing parts to connect the vavle to a standard garden hose.


Some questions:

1. Can the AC Valve get wet (there are two wires sticking out)? Leakage, etc
2. Can the AC valve be "plugged" directly into the water spigiot or should you go from the spigot, to a small hose, to the valve to the main hose?
3. The steps should be - 1. Water spigot, 2 Valve, 3. Valve is connected to main hose, 4. Wire side of valve goes to the 24v power connection, 5. 24v power connection is plugged into X10 module.

Is it that simple or am I missing something?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[huggy59]

I dug up a parallel port package that let you twiddle bits via VB without having to go through allthe crap that the hardware abstraction layer programming puts you thru. I wrote a little utility years ago to use the parallel port lines to toggle SSR's on and off for outside Christmas lights when I was in FL. The software could easily pulse the SSR. All it took was a 5VDC power supply with some pull-up resistors, some solid state relays rated for 2-12VDC trigger and switching AC, and some outboard gear to wire it up.

I'll see if I can dig the references up if anyone's interested. But this is not a basic beginner level project. You should be pretty familiar with electronics and computers to do this.

 

[RichTJ99]

Great!!! Safemart sells it.

http://www.safemart.com/index.asp?PageActi...amp;ProdID=5947

Is this something we can use as a cheap AC transformer? I know it says Elk, but could you wire the valve to this transformer, then plug that into a X10 appliance module?

I am not using Elk at all, but for the price that is an inexpensive transformer.

 

[v1rtu0s1ty]

here it is RichTJ99.

Please see page 2 for BSR's design. Also on page 2, IIRC, there are many pictures especially pictures that can help you with your connectivity questions.

- relay module
912 relay module, http://www.elkproducts.com/products/elk-912.htm

-sprinkler valve
Orbit sprinkler valve, http://www.orbitonline.com/products/Valves/02/16/04/643/

-wall wart
24ac, ELK-TRG2440 http://www.elkproducts.com/products/elk-trg1640_2440.htm
or http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...rentPage=family

-fuse
1amp inline fuse
fuse holder, http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...rentPage=search

Also wires, I think 18 gauge is what we need.

Thanks,

Neil

 

[RichTJ99]

Neil,

Is the relay you mentioned only used for an Elk system? I am not sure what that is use for.

Thanks for the list!

Rich

 

[RichTJ99]

I stopped at two home depots tonight & cant seem to find the orbit valve (or any 24v valve). Is this something a plumbing store might have? Sadly, all the home depots in the area have put all the local hardware stores out of business.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

I stopped at two home depots tonight & cant seem to find the orbit valve (or any 24v valve). Is this something a plumbing store might have? Sadly, all the home depots in the area have put all the local hardware stores out of business.

I'm working on a How-To that should help you out. Hopefully it will be published sometime Saturday.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

[How-To] Create a Poor Man's Watering System (Using a Standard Sprinkler Control Valve)