SprinklerD

More details & pics to come

linux daemon to control sprinklers. The control is done through GPIO pins, so simply connect a relay board to the GPOI. Provides web UI, MQTT client & HTTP API endpoints. So you can control your pool equiptment from any phone/tablet or computer, and should work with just about Home control systems, including Apple HomeKit, Samsung, Alexa, Google, etc home hubs. It is not designed to be a feature rich solution with elaborate UI, but rather a solution that can be controlled from smart hubs. It does have a web UI and calendar for scheduling zone runtimes, rain day delay etc. But advanced features like rain censors and web forecast delays should be done through your smat hub. It does support a master valve or pump. (ie turn on a master device with every zone).

It does not, and will never provide any layer of security. NEVER directly expose the device running this software to the outside world, only indirectly through the use of Home Automation hub's or other securty measures, e.g. VPNs.

Builtin WEB Interface.

In Apple Home app.

The Setup I use.

Pi Zero W, 8 channel relay board & 2 channel relay board.

All rain delays are set directly from my home automation hub, and not any locally connected sensors. ie :-

• if rain sensor detects rain, cancel any running zones & delay 24h.
• if rain sensor accumulates more than 5mm rain in 24hours, delay sprinklers for 48 hours.
• Poll DarySkys API if rain forecast is higher than 50% enable 24h delay.

Valves for each zone are connected to the relays, and relays connected to a 24vac power adapter, similar to wiring in the image below.

TL;DR Install

Quick instal if you are using Raspberry PI

• There is a chance the pre-compiled binary will run, copy the git repo and run the install.sh script from the release directory. ie from the install directory sudo ./release/install.sh
• try to run it with :-
  • sudo sprinklerd -v -d -c /etc/sprinklerd.conf
  • If it runs, then start configuring it to your setup.
  • If it fails, try making the execuatable, below are some instructions.

Making & Install

• Get a copy of the repo using git.
• run make
• run sudo make install
• edit /etc/sprinklerd.conf to your setup
• Test every works :-
  • sudo sprinklerd -d -c /etc/sprinklerd.conf
  • point a web browser to the IP of the box running sprinklerd
• If all is good enable as service
  • sudo systemctl start sprinklerd

More Advanced make

• sprinklerd uses it's own basic GPIO interaction through sysfs, this may not be enough for all types of relay boards, especially ones that require the use of the GPIO's internal pull-up or pull-down resistor. So sprkinlerd can make use or WiringPi which is a powerful GPIO library.
• To use WiringPi :-
• install WiringPI first http://wiringpi.com/download-and-install/
• Make sprinklerd with the below flag
• make USE_WIRINGPI=1
• Make sure to use the WPI_PIN and not GPIO_PIN in the configuration for the pin numbers.
• you can also use GPIO_PULL_UPDN option in the configuration.

Note:-

The install script is designed for systemd / systemctl to run as a service or daemon. If you are using init / init-d then don't run the install script, install manually and the init-d script to use is in the xtras directory. Manual install for init-d systems

• copy ./release/sprinklerd to /usr/local/bin
• copy ./release/sprinklerd.conf to /etc
• copy ./release/sprinklerd.service.avahi to /etc/avahi/services/sprinklerd.service
• copy ./extras/sprinklerd.init.d to /etc/init-d/sprinklerd
• copy recuesivley ./web/* to /var/www/sprinklerd/
• sudo update-rc.d sprinklerd defaults

Hardware

You will need relays connected to the PI. (add some crap about that here)

Raspberry Pi Zero is the perfect device for this software. But all Raspberry PI's are inherently unstable devices to be running 24/7/365 in default Linux configrations. This is due to the way they use CF card, a power outage will generally cause CF card coruption. My recomendation is to use what's calles a "read only root" installation of Linux. Converting Raspbian to this is quite simple, but will require some Linux knoladge. There are two methods, one uses overlayfs and if you are not knolagable in Linux this is the easiest option. There are a some downsides to this method on a PI, so my prefered method is to simply use tmpfs on it's own without overlayfs ontop, this is easier to setup initially, but will probably require a few custom things to get right as some services will fail. Once you are up and running, You should search this topic, and there are a plenty of resources, and even some scripts the will do everything for you. But below are two links that explain the process.

Good overlayfs tutorial on PI Forums

My prefered way to impliment

I have my own scripts to do this for me, and probably won't ever document or publish them, but thay are very similar to the 2nd link above.

sprinklerd Configuration

Please see the [sprinklerd.conf] (https://github.com/sfeakes/sprinklerd/blob/master/release/sprinklerd.conf) example in the release directory. Many things are turned off by default, and you may need to enable or configure them for your setup. Specifically, make sure you configure your MQTT, Pool Equiptment Labels & Domoticz ID's in there, looking at the file it should be self explanatory.

Configuration with home automation hubs

Two interfaces are ofered, MQTT and WEB APIs, take your pick as the the best option for your own setup, details of each and some generic setups are below.

MQTT

sprinklerd supports generic MQTT implimentations, as well as specific Domoticz one described above. To enable, simply configure the main topic in sprinklerd.conf.

mqtt_topic = sprinklerd

Then status messages will be posted to the sub topics listed below, with appropiate information.

  Status of stuff (message is 1=on 0=off)
  sprinklerd/zone/1
  sprinklerd/zall
  sprinklerd/24hdelay
  sprinklerd/calendar

To turn something on, or set information, simply add set to the end of the above topics, and post 1 or 0 in the message for a button. Topics sprinklerd will act on.

Turn stuff on/off (1 is on, 0 is off, but can use txt if you want)
sprinklerd/zone/1/set 1
sprinklerd/zone/zall/set 1   // Cycle all zones using default runtimes.
sprinklerd/24hdelay/set 1
sprinklerd/calendar/set 1

All other hubs (excluding Apple HomeKit) Amazon,Samsung,Google etc

Obviously details will be diferent on each device, and I won't document them all. Basic idea is create a switch for item you want to control (zone(s), 24hdelay, calendar schedule etc). Then add the following URL to program the switching of each device. If you use a hub on you local lan like smartthings, then this is super simple. If you use cloud only device, like Alexa then you need to make a connection from your lan to amazon cloud since you should not put this web interface on the internet (since there is no security). There are 1001 ways to do this, but a MQTT bridge may be the easiest, search MQTT to <my cloud-based hub> bridge and pick one you like.

http://sprinklerd.ip.address:port?type=option&option=24hdelay&state=off

* // Info options
<host>?type=firstload               // JSON status Include cal schedule
<host>?type=read                    // JSON status no need to include cal schedule
<host>?type=json                    // JSON full array style, need full parser to pass.

*  // Cfg options
<host>?type=option&option=calendar&state=off    // turn off calendar
<host>?type=option&option=24hdelay&state=off    // turn off 24h delay
<host>?type=option&option=24hdelay&state=reset  // reset time on 24h delay
<host>?type=option&option=24hdelay&state=reset&time=1529328782  // reset custom time on delay (utime in seconds)

*  // Calendar
<host>?type=calcfg&day=3&zone=&time=07:00      // Add day schedule and use default water zone times
<host>?type=calcfg&day=2&zone=1&time=7         // Change water zone time (0 time is off)
<host>?type=calcfg&day=3&zone=&time=           // Delete day schedule
  
*  // Run options
<host>?type=option&option=allz&state=on        // Run all zones default times (ignore 24h delay & calendar settings)
<host>?type=zone&zone=2&state=on&runtime=3     // Run zone 2 for 3 mins (ignore 24h delay & calendar settings)
<host>?type=zrtcfg&zone=2&time=10              // change zone 2 default runtime to 10
<host>?type=cron&zone=1&runtime=12'            // Run zone 1 for 12 mins (calendar & 24hdelay settings overide this request)

The JSON that's returned is completley flat, this is so it can be passed with really small lightweight passers, even grep and awk. If you want a full JSON with arrays that's easier to use with full json parsers you can use the below

<host>?type=json

Apple HomeKit

For the moment, native Homekit support has been removed, it will be added back in the future under a different implimentation. Recomended option for HomeKit support is to make use of the MQTT interface and use HomeKit2MQTT to bridge between sprinklerd and you Apple (phone/tablet/tv & hub).

• If you don't already have an MQTT broker Installed, install one. Mosquitto is recomended, this can usually be installed with apt-get
• Install HomeKit2MQTT. (see webpage for install)
• Then copy the homekit2mqtt configuration file found in the extras directory homekit2mqtt.json

You can of course use a myriad of other HomeKit bridges with the URL endpoints listed in the All other hubs section, or MQTT topics listed in the MQTT section. The majority of them (including HomeBridge the most popular) use Node and HAP-Node.JS, neither of which I am a fan of for the RaspberryPI. But HomeKit2MQTT seemed to have the least overhead of them all. So that's why the recomendation.

Domoticz

Does naivety support domoticz, need to add documentation.

• enable MQTT in domoticz
• add virtual censor for every zone and buton
• add the domoticz ID's in he sprinklerd config.

License

Non Commercial Project

All non commercial projects can be run using our open source code under GPLv2 licensing. As long as your project remains in this category there is no charge. See License.md for more details.