Irrirgation Controller

Hi All

Was using a couple of Sonoff 4ch controllers (tasmotised) for 8 irrirgation solonoids in the past. wifi connected they were very good. Since selling my house travelling and rebuying a house I have pulled them out of the storage box to setup again. But it appears they are not functioning as expected.

Can anyone recommend what is standard use for irrigation solonoids now. I have 8 solonoids but dont believe Sonoff do an 8ch or if their is something better.

Supporting information is: 12volt, Australian location, wifi connected for an irrigation contoller environment.

Appreciated in advance.

Peter

cheers, any preferred hardware ?

Hi Peter, that’s the difficult point: what hardware is available at your location, where do you want to buy, …

Depending on whether you want to pull you sleeves up or just buy and install, there going to be a lot of options and whether you want to control with HA will filter a few out.

Anything you got in hand that is compatible like your sonoff controller for example. You can also build something yourself or use a random guys controller with esp, beken or supported realtek chip :muscle:

If your 12 Volt is DC you might find this type of device for cheap :point_down:

I am using this type of board flashed with Tasmota+ 12v solenoids + irrigation unlimited (HACS)

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mtKIZIb

I wanted direct AC supply so this is the exact one I am using (2x 4ch)

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLwCccb

Out of curiosity: why Tasmota and not ESPHome?

Been using Tasmota forever, prior to ESPhome being available. Works like a charm, mature, GUI, great community. Not closed to integrating ESPHome eventually but I prefer to keep a limited set of platforms. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it I guess.

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Thankyou all for the input.

Im leaning towards 2 x sonoff 4ch controllers with tasmota.

Reason is only because I have done this before and historically has proven to work and work well.

Questions though… the Tuya model listed above… can that be incorporated in the tuya integration in any way

Has anyone used the HACS integration for sonoff

cheers

I used an Olimex PoE ESP32 flashed with ESPhome. Then connected up a generic 5V relay board (you can get these with plenty more relays to suit your needs). This way the ESP and relay board are powered by the PoE connection allowing me to only require a 24V ac power supply at the location of the whole setup which powers the standard irrigation solenoids via the relays.

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I designed and built a 25 zone irrigation controller using an RPi zero W and a 16 relay board (5 on + 5 on -, and diodes) to drive DC solenoids. This got complicated but worked and is still working fine,

Since then I’ve been considering a 24VAC to 5V power supply, an ESP-01 with ESP-01 relay board plus 3D printed box and 4 Wago connectors for every solenoid (under USD$4)

This configuration would allow for a 25 zone control for under $100. Only two wires for the whole area (of course a couple of spares, though) These 25 devices would require ~2A @ 5V continuous, or 10W. This would simplify maintenance and increase reliability because they operate independently.

Personally, I like SIP as the GUI. Configuration would be easy once you figure out how to utilize the SIP jinja phrase that is sent to an MQTT broker and passed onto HA (see example below). The ESP-01’s would be Tasmotized.

The big downside is that my Asus router can only handle about 25 WiFi connections, So another hundred bucks for a router. And you’d have to have a dedicated computer to run HA, SIP and MQTT, So all-in $300

alias: SIPcontrol
description: >-
  Ver 06 30 Sep 24 do not change anything until zone is set
    added delays of 2 seconds after each write to MQTT and helper
  Ver 05 30 Sep 24 took monitoring count and flag Version 04 30 Sep 24 turn on
  signal is not getting the MySensors until the turn off signal from SIP arrives
  Version 03 Receives data from SIP (Sustainable Irrigation Platform) and passes
  on to MySensors
triggers:
  - topic: SIP/zones
    trigger: mqtt
conditions: []
actions:
  - action: input_number.set_value
    metadata: {}
    data:
      value: "0"
    target:
      entity_id: input_number.zonetowaternumber
  - delay: "00:00:02"
  - repeat:
      count: "25"
      sequence:
        - if:
            - condition: template
              value_template: "{{ (states('sensor.sip')|from_json)[ repeat.index - 1] == 1 }}"
          then:
            - data:
                value: "{{ repeat.index }}"
              target:
                entity_id: input_number.zonetowaternumber
              action: input_number.set_value
            - delay: "00:00:02"
  - if:
      - condition: template
        value_template: "{{ states('input_number.zonetowaternumber')|int == 0 }}"
    then:
      - data:
          value: "0"
        target:
          entity_id: text.zone
        action: text.set_value
      - delay: "00:00:02"
      - action: switch.turn_off
        metadata: {}
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id:
            - switch.start
    else:
      - data:
          value: "{{ states('input_number.zonetowaternumber')|int }}"
        target:
          entity_id: text.zone
        action: text.set_value
      - delay: "00:00:02"
      - action: switch.turn_on
        metadata: {}
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id:
            - switch.start
mode: single

Maybe. But personally I would not want to do it and rather prefer full local control and ownership. ESPHome does not only work with ESP based devices but also on many tuya devices that use beken and realtek chips. :tada:

For my use case I got some sets of this cheap (~$8) 4-relay type boards which come with housing and supercharged them with espHome. In the past I used to build my own (sub $10) controllers:control_knobs:

The obvious advantage of a esphome based solution is the spinkler/irrigation component running directly on the node making it a one-stop-shop to setup and more resilient (not depended of HA for example). Only caveat is the needed time source which can ether be sourced by adding a rtc or my probe via (s)ntp when a network connection is present :clock1:

Thanks all for the input.

Hi All

question. I have ordered 2 x new sonoff 4 pro3’s. Whilst waiting I found an older pro2 that I used to use (tasmotized).

I decided to give esphome a crack. I have actually shyed away from it mainly because my HA is on a VM and was to lazy to go through the usb passthrough etc but it was simple as and Im actually starting to see a lot of merrit in esphome.

My question is though my old sonoff appear to be working fine with one exception. Buttons work both manually and in HA. Blue LED is working etc. However I am seeing zero voltage comeing out the connectors. Tried measuring this with an LED strip and a multimeter.

I changed from a 5v DC power pack to a 12 volt pack measured 12v at the sonoff power in.

Not sure if I have screwed up the code or if the sonoff is actually stuffed.

I checked the jumpers and they are S6: 1 K5: all 1 K6: all 0

Has anyone seen this before.

Cheers.

Hi Peter, can’t help you with your issue but maybe it’s better to start a new thread for this.

yep just thought someone above might have specific experience with it…

will do thanks Nick

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