Garden Irrigation

Search for solenoid valves (or solenoid ball valves). Any that open when a voltage is applied will work.

Are you wanting an off-the-shelf solution or happy to DIY something together?

Thanks for asking, off the shelf would be best but i can do some little tinkering too. Most difficult is that I don’t have an power outlet next to the water valve so I figure I would need something battery powered.

I googled for that but as I understood, I would need some kind of power outlet for that.

They seem to range from 12v, with the higher quality ones being 24v.

But honestly how do you contemplate having an automated water system without power?

I tried to keep the setup simple, and use somethin like this:

Original GARDENA System - GARDENA to get 4 independet water outlets and then attached valves by Woox Woox R7060 control via MQTT | Zigbee2MQTT to it. they work with batteries that last 3 month. enough for me - like 4 independent water hoses. unfortunately the woox itself is not a great product as it looses the connection pretty often so I was asking if one could recommend something similiar?

Perhaps you need to make your zigbee network better.

Thanks for linking me to this thread @sparkydave

I think i’m fairly comfortable with the configuration and yaml side of things. What is blowing my mind is the electrical side of things. I simply cannot find a clear guide on how i would wire this thing up.

As mentioned elsewhere i have purchased an ESP 12-F relay from aliexpress
image

I had assumed i need one power supply going into the top (left of centre) connector and then it would output from the 8 relays at the bottom. With people talking about needing rectifiers and failing to find a wiring diagram that does a bit more than identify the name of a pin i’m feeling stuck.

The power connector at the top will not provide power out the relays connections, it only powers the board but looking at it and given it has a 24V connection you could simply rectify the 24Vac to dc to use that 24V power input. Using a 24Vac power supply will simply make things easier for you with regards to powering standard solenoids.

You will need to wire one side of the 24Vac for the solenoids in to the ‘COM’ connection of each relay and then out the ‘NO’ connection.

I’ll knock up a sketch and reply shortly.

That would be incredible but i think i’m with you based on your post now.

So a 24VAC power supply. Black to GND and red to a Y juntion. One side of the Y goes to COM1, other side to an AC to DC converter then to the 7-28V connector.

Then some short wires joining all the COMs to the next one. (unsure if the last COM then needs to go back to somewhere)

Then long irrigation wire from the NOx throughout the garden to 24VAC solenoids. They obviously need a GND too so need to understand where that goes back to ( using another core of the irrigation wire)

Hopefully getting on track now

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Perfectly clear. thank you so much

No worries mate. One thing to be careful of though is when you rectify AC to DC with only a bridge rectifier, the result is a higher voltage so you will likely need to add in a capacitor to smooth things out or even just use an external regulator which can handle the higher voltage so you don’t blow up your relay board.

I think you really need a capacitor don’t you otherwise you get a voltage as per the purple line? image

Edit: also that is exactly the little regulator I used.

Exactly what I mentioned above :wink: The pulsed voltage is often not the issue but the resultant voltage is also higher which can fry things.

is it used instead of the bridge rectifier or both are needed?

The rectifier (4 diodes) changes the AC to DC but as Dave said the output will be at a slightly higher voltage than the input and also the output voltage will be “lumpy”. The capacitor smoothes the lumpiness.
Then you have to check if the output voltage exceeds the maximum of you boards 28V. It is close to the limit so finding a regulator which can take more might reduce risk of a failure. The ones Dave linked can take up to 35V

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Use both as Gav said. Bridge rectifier first, then the small regulator board to give you a nice smooth 24Vdc.

When I tested a 24Vac transformer going through a bridge rectifier only, I was getting around 33V rippled dc. The reg board sorted it out nicely. That was my old design but now I run the relay board from a PoE ESP32 controller.

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I’m considering rewriting my system but wanted a spare board to use while testing. I currently use an 8 relay board with a separate ESP32 but these (new?) ones with the board integrated look good.

However I cannot see anywhere that it documents which IO controls which relay.

Sorry if this is a stupid question…

I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet :slight_smile: but just found this ESP-12F 5V/7-28V 8 Channel Relay Board (ESP12F_Relay_X8) Configuration for Tasmota

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