Hi

I redid the inputs. I used 3 different relays out of the four with different times. All seems to be working. I have turn .off and off different relays. They now seem to be working. I was actuating different combos, with the switch being open by hand.

If it keeps working, I will have some write ups and some pictures. Again great project.

Good Day Mr.Angelo,

I did some preliminary water times and testing. The water is about 11 seconds per .5gals. The fertilizer is about 22secs for 15mls.I set up the Hydrosys with one switch for both water and fert Used different relays, Just to test I used 11 seconds for water and 22 secs for the fert. The water always turns on, but the fert is intermittent. Most of the time it does not turn on.When they both tun on it runs great. 11 secs for water 22 secs for fert.

I will play around tonight to see if I can figure it out. You may know the problem and how to correct it.

Thanks for all the help.

Skip

Hello,

You are currently using the default seeting, you should load one of the preset hardware configuration. If you are using one of my boards there is a preset configuration specific for the board.

Go to "hardwaresetting", in the section "Select and Load preset HW config" choose the config that fit most with your plan.

I got a little side tracked with project.. So now I am moving forward. I had 3.24 SW and I read it had some problems. I download 3.27b. Now the problem I am running into is that 3.27 only shows 8 relays in in actuators test where before it showed 16.. I have 2 banks of 4. . I will need to use 5 relays for pumps. One for filling reservior with water and one for fertilizer. The other 3 will be controlling the the irrigation. water plan. I am figuring out the time needed to fill tank and how much fertilizer.

Also when I run the actuator test, it uses buttons 1,2,3 and 6 on the 8 water test buttons . The old SW used 1-4 on bank one and 5-8 buttons relay 2. Let me know what I have to do. Hope to have times in the next few days.

Skip

Hello,

For the refilling, as we do not need to be fast activation, I think it is better to use the automation function.

I wrote a post abut it in the below link,:

hydrosysblog.wordpress.com

In this post I’m going to explain some basic steps to configure the water level sensors (ON/OFF type) as input of the hydrosys4 system and some example of configuration using automation to re…

The parameter we require to evaluate is how many liters/Gallon per seconds the refill pump can make. I expect that activation of about 10 to 30 seconds per time will be ok.

It is needed to make the same setting in the "Automation" page for the relay going to the water pump and the relay going to the fertilizer pump, only difference will be the activation time which will require some experimentation to provide the right water/fertilizer ratio.

Let me know it things work.

Regards,

Angelo

Hello,

I have the watering plan working. So I think I need the program on how to do the refill of the water and fertilizer. I have found some food grade buckets that are about 4.5 gals. These are square so I can mount senors easy. The water time is about 5-15 mins depending on the stage of growth and weather.Iuse about a gallon to 1.5 gals. The fertilizer is 10 ml per gal. I will be using a Gikfun 12V DC Dosing Pump Peristaltic Dosing Head with Connector for Arduino Aquarium Lab Analytic DIY AE1207 from amazon for fertilizer. I would like the refill to start about a hour after the plants are watered or what is easy for you to program.. I will do experiments to see how much water is used so I can set the amount of fertilizer needed. I use organic fertilizer so a higher amount will not hurt the plants. The watering I may just do it daily and use smaller amounts of water. Still thinking about it. If you nweed this information , let me know.

Let me know if you need any more info. As I start building the system I will send pictures.

Thanks

Skip

Hi,

The project looks good. I think I'll write a post about it so that other people can also get some ideas from it.

Regarding the irrigation every two days, even if not perfect I think better to use the watering plan as you mentioned above.

Indeed there is a way to periodically activate an actuator using the automation "timetrigger" but I don't think is suitable for this purpose.

So, what part do you want to start with?

Regards,

Angelo

Hello,

New year is started, hopefully better than the previous one...

I think there is no big issue for the case you described above. Important that you have some space for the water to go above the sensor level.

Anyway it is also possible to chose the time of the day when the refill will be active, in this case you may avoid to water and refill at the same time.

As I understood the water you use for irrigation is not recirculating back to the tank.

Good Day Angelo,

Question. My tanks are about 15 gals. At this time I am figuring on watering about every other day. Which is about a gallon to a gallon and a half. As the water does down it will go beyond the the movement of the sensor. Will that cause any problems, since it will be filling as the output is still running?

Have a great New Year.

Skip

I think your project is quite clear, the challenging point is about the Water and Fertilizer mix ratio.

Assuming that the plain water is supplied to the RODI/FERT tank using a pump, if we can precisely control the duration of the pump activation for example N seconds, we can assume the amount of new water in the tank will be the same for each activation. Then if for each water pump activation we also activate for M seconds the fertilized pump (peristaltic) we can have a good constant ratio of fresh water/fertilizer.

I think there is no need to have a delay between the water pump and the fertilizer pump, activating them together will help mix the water with the fertilizer in some way. I suppose we are speaking about some milliliters of fertilizers for some liters of water.

If we activate the water refill using a level sensor, then it is necessary to know if this is Open or Close when the water level is low.

Let's assume the we are using the GPIO14 connected to one wire of the level sensor and the other wire of the sensor to the ground.

First thing to do is to check in page "hardwaresetting" if the PIn 14 is already used in the table, in such case the row that uses the pin 14 should be removed using the "edit Table"

Then using again the "Edit Table" the interrupt should be created.

the following parameters should be set in the "add" row:

after each change in the hardware Table, the "Confirm and Save" button should be clicked to make it effective.

Now it is necessary to set up the activation of the fertpump and waterpump when the interrupt is activated.

There are two options for this, one using the automation which is slower to react in the order of one minute, the other is the interrupt which will react faster.

Lately I made some changes to the interrupt algorithm, so better to get the latest SW release of the hydrosys4. (to avoid reconfiguring the system again after re-installation, you can try to save the configuration and reload it in the updates SW - setting page)

Let's setup the interrupt, go to "interrupt" page and select the tab relevant to the waterpump:

below the configuration that will activate for 20 seconds the pump. If after 40 seconds from the activation the level is still low, it will activate for other 20 seconds and so on until the level is high.

For the fertpump tab the same can be configured, but with its specific activation duration, the activations will be synchronized between the waterpump and the fertpump but with different duration.

In case the sensor is closed when the level is low, then the "Activation mode" should be set to "first edge + level".

In case you can make some test, let me know the results.

Regards,

Angelo

Here are the steps.

1 RODI filter fills the RODI holding tank,using a mechanical valve and an overflow sensor.

2 This holding tank fills the RODI/Fertilizer tank.

3 The RODI/FERT supplies the garden with the water/fert mixture.

4 The Rodi/fert tank is refilled after a certain amount of water is used up in the garden.This amount of waterto be filled will always be the same. It can be controlled by water level senors.

5 After that amount of plain RODI water is added back. Then fresh fertilizer is added back into the RODI/Fert tank to bring the ratio back up.

I hope you understand my crazy ideas....lol

Thanks again.

Skip

Almost. I will draw a picture to show my lay out. Will send it later today. Thanks

Hello,

Understand now, before I misunderstood because I thought the flow sensor was on the fertilizer line.

So the water in the tank is recirculating, this looks similar to a hydroponics system.

I'm thinking to a simpler solution to keep the ratio of water/fertilizer, for example when the level sensor indicates low water, it can be possible to activate both the pump that will pump the water in the tank for N seconds and the peristaltic pump for M seconds. this should keep the ratio more or less constant.

The flow sensor can be anyway useful to check the water consumption.

Hello,

I will be looking for hardware and cost. Now the 2nd tank I use for irrigation and fertilize.I am using recirculating system for fertilizing. So the whole tank is water and a certain percentage of fertilizer. So I want to know when I use a certain amount of water (same all the time). so I can pump in the needed amount of water and fertilizer. Ex. when I use 4 gals of mixture I put in 4gals of water in and the 40ml of fertilizer.I want to make sure I always replenish the same out of water so I do not need to change the amount of fertilizer. This will maintain the correct ratio. I also want to be able to change the ratio. So if all can be done I would like to try it.

Thank you Thank you for all your help.

hello there,

Some thoughts about the project implementation,

- For the first tank, the mechanical valve is a good option, anyway I have a bad personal experience with it. There was a leakage of this mechanical valve in one of my tank which was not frequently visited I discover the problem only few months later, after I wasted a lot of water (and money). If the tank is not easily accessible, my suggestion is to add also a kind of alarm with a water level sensor put in higher position respect to the valve. This sensor can be connected to the raspberry to send email or activate other things.

- Pump feeding the second tank, for this pump activation, the hydrosys4 can be completely bypassed, as a the level sensor can activate the pump directly. Anyway if you want it under the hydrosys4 control, it can be done as follow: Every minute the sensor is controlled by the SW, when the sensor indicates low water level the pump is activated for N seconds. After one minute if the sensor still indicating low level, the pump will activate for other N seconds and so on until the sensor stops indicating low water. If N>60 you will have continuous pump activation.

- Fertilizer, I'd avoid to use water flow sensor, they are not very accurate especially for small flows of fertilizer. I'd rater use a peristaltic pump, which is quite accurate or a normal mini-pump. The activation duration will determine the quantity of fertilizer.

- Fertilizer 10min before the watering. The SW support the activation of Fertilizer just before the watering. Unfortunately I did not have a field in the graphical interface to add the amount of time before watering. But I think I could implement it....

In case you want to implement some of the above I'll provide support for the configuration. (and I'd like to see some pictures of the project when finished)