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Edited: May 30, 2020

RPi Zero W GPIO Issues

Hi Angelo,

Appologies for the earlier off-topic post.

I'm using spare parts to set up a system. RPi Zero W, 4 channel 5V Relay with opto isolators.

Picture below of hook up. I've edited Pin assignment in HardwareSetting table (pic below) for both GPIO # and board pin #, eg GPIO4 = Pin16. 5V power Pin2 and GND Pin4.

POST EDIT: The Pinout Chart below is INCORRECT. If you happen to stumble on this post looking for a pinout solution for your RPi, this one is not the droid you're looking for! (I'm leaving it here rather than delete the image so that people can see what they should NOT be going by.)

Attempting to operate IN1 with GPIO4/Pin16 without success. Recommendations appreciated. The screenshot above says Pin4, I've tried with both 4 and 16 in the field.

TIA

18 comments

18 Comments

Will Waterston

May 31, 2020

I've been doing a bit of research and it seems that there are some dev components missing in the debian and armbian images for opi, that are obviously included in raspbian.I'll have a look at it when I get some time, but right now the priority is to get the watering system working.

Will.

hydrosys4

May 30, 2020

I also was thinking about MQTT to implement a couple of integration, like sensors and actuators.

I'll open a new post about it, Your comments will be wellcome

Will Waterston

May 31, 2020

Replying to

Great! I haven't thought a great deal about it yet, but some initial thoughts are -

a single config for the mqtt broker/server settings, it would be unlikly you would need more than one broker
you would probably want to have the ability to setup as many mqtt subscribing devices as you like, each device would have its own topic and message structure
for a limited purpose you could just implement a message for on/off, that would be enough to control another board that only had relays. for more flexibility you would probably want to be able to schedule any given topic/message at any time - ie on your schedule for each subscriber it would be time,topic,message
ideally you would monitor state changes on subsribed devices, so if the device had its own state recognition and the state changed independenly of control coming from hydrosys then hydrosys would recognise, and possibly respond in some way, to the state change

hydrosys4

May 29, 2020

I thought that the OrangePI was compatible with Raspbian, if not, things get a lot more complicate.

Raspbian should be a branch of debian, but for sure there are a lot of differences.

I see a lot of work ahead, anywya I think the best way to proceed is to segment the Hydrosys4 install file and control for each step what was is the problem and try to address it.

For example Pillow is a program to manipulate images, it is strange that it is not installed properly.

Will Waterston

May 29, 2020

Replying to

it seems that only certain opi versions have raspbian support, the zero not being one of them. it may be more trouble than its worth, there are probably other higher priorities you already have.

I was thinking about a post that another user put in about controlling an esp8266 board,as i was wondering about this myself. im using one of these to control an indoor watering system using those mini submersible pumps. The idea i thought of was to have hydrosys to send mqtt commands to slave systems, that way you could use the smart scheduling and web interface of hydrosys which is a lot more difficult to achieve on those tiny boards.

hydrosys4

May 28, 2020

Great!

if you succeed with the orangepi zero, let us know!

Small thing, the raspberry zero has two versions one without wifi and one with wifi which is called Zero W, be sure to choose the one with WiFi.

Cheers,

Angelo

Will Waterston

May 28, 2020

Replying to

Yeah, I did get the W version (but I think it was just luck!) I didnt realise there were two.

Will.

Will Waterston

May 29, 2020

Replying to

I've tried both debian and armbian images for orangepi zero and have installation errors in the hydrosys install. I've attached a file with the errors from the debian install; I didnt capture the same from armbian but from memory it was also to do with setuptools.

Probably not a high priority, I have a rpi zero on order, but it would be nice if possible to run on the opi because it has ethernet.

seemed to be having trouble uploading the text file with the errors so pasted in here instead -

running egg_info

writing src/Pillow.egg-info/PKG-INFO

writing dependency_links to src/Pillow.egg-info/dependency_links.txt

writing top-level names to src/Pillow.egg-info/top_level.txt

reading manifest file 'src/Pillow.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'

reading manifest template 'MANIFEST.in'

warning: no files found matching '*.c'

warning: no files found matching '*.h'

warning: no files found matching '*.sh'

warning: no previously-included files found matching '.appveyor.yml'

warning: no previously-included files found matching '.coveragerc'

warning: no previously-included files found matching '.editorconfig'

warning: no previously-included files found matching '.readthedocs.yml'

warning: no previously-included files found matching 'azure-pipelines.yml'

warning: no previously-included files found matching 'codecov.yml'

warning: no previously-included files matching '.git*' found anywhere in distribution

warning: no previously-included files matching '*.pyc' found anywhere in distribution

warning: no previously-included files matching '*.so' found anywhere in distribution

no previously-included directories found matching '.azure-pipelines'

no previously-included directories found matching '.ci'

writing manifest file 'src/Pillow.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'

running build_ext

The headers or library files could not be found for zlib,

a required dependency when compiling Pillow from source.

Please see the install instructions at:

https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/tmp/pip-build-vg5mrhjt/pillow/setup.py", line 899, in <module>

zip_safe=not (debug_build() or PLATFORM_MINGW),

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/core.py", line 148, in setup

dist.run_commands()

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/dist.py", line 955, in run_commands

self.run_command(cmd)

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/dist.py", line 974, in run_command

cmd_obj.run()

File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/setuptools/command/install.py", line 61, in run

return orig.install.run(self)

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/command/install.py", line 583, in run

self.run_command('build')

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/cmd.py", line 313, in run_command

self.distribution.run_command(command)

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/dist.py", line 974, in run_command

cmd_obj.run()

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/command/build.py", line 135, in run

self.run_command(cmd_name)

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/cmd.py", line 313, in run_command

self.distribution.run_command(command)

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/dist.py", line 974, in run_command

cmd_obj.run()

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/distutils/command/build_ext.py", line 339, in run

self.build_extensions()

File "/tmp/pip-build-vg5mrhjt/pillow/setup.py", line 694, in build_extensions

raise RequiredDependencyException(f)

__main__.RequiredDependencyException: zlib

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<string>", line 1, in <module>

File "/tmp/pip-build-vg5mrhjt/pillow/setup.py", line 914, in <module>

raise RequiredDependencyException(msg)

__main__.RequiredDependencyException:

The headers or library files could not be found for zlib,

a required dependency when compiling Pillow from source.

Please see the install instructions at:

https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html

----------------------------------------

Command "/usr/bin/python3 -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-vg5mrhjt/pillow/setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-59oed6pf-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-vg5mrhjt/pillow/

ERROR --------------------------Installation failed ----------------

will@OrangePi:~$

Thanks,

will.

Will Waterston

May 28, 2020

Thanks for the feedback, very helpful. I'm going to try the zero (I have one on order) and then attempt to get the pinouts working on the orangepi zero, which is a similar spec but also has ethernet.

Regards,

Will.

hydrosys4

May 28, 2020

I have two systems running in my house, one for the greenhouse using the Raspberry pi3 and one for irrigation only using the Raspberry pi Zero W.

In terms of user interaction, there is no noticeable difference between the two, both can load the web interface fast enough (latest SW release is more efficient on this point). Form functionalities, they have exactly the same GPIO Pins, so they can do the same stuff.

I can see three main point of difference:

1) The WiFi of the Zero seems a little weaker than the WiFi of the RPI3 (so it can't be too far from the router). Have to say that also the WiFi of the RPI3 is quite weak, but the RPI3 has the ethernet port.

2) RPI Zero consume less power, so it is more efficient on this aspect.

3) RPI3 has 4 cores, it can easily handle multiple interrupts. I mean the sensors which works on "fast" interrupt like the Flow sensor or wind sensors, which I have in the greenhouse. Slow interrupts as the user buttons or rain sensor can be managed by both.

Bottom line, If you do not make fancy things with your system, better to go with RPI Zero W, it is more efficient.

As you may understand I don't like to waste resources. But I bet that most of the recently made installation of my system are running on RPI4 ...

I invite also other people who have the system running on the RPI Zero to share their view.

Will Waterston

May 28, 2020

How is hydrosys running on the pi zero? any limitations, is it powerful enough, does it have the same number of i/o? I'd be interested to try it myself,

Will.

randombit

May 28, 2020

Replying to

Not sure yet, still getting it set up. Awaiting on a stable power supply for the lights for timing by the RPi0W and setting up the float level sensor. Will report when done and it has run for a couple of days.

randombit

May 30, 2020

Replying to

Quick update... everything seems to be working as installed wrt the timing and relay function. I didn't see a way to make it turn on as programmed after a reboot other than use the Test function in the Settings menu, and that worked. I didn't know whether the timing function would cycle on/off at the times set in the app, and I've now seen it do both. If you reboot during the cycle when the power/relay is 'on', you effectively have to wait until the following day when the power 'on' time rolls around. Working on the float switch and auto notification for water reservoir level.

So far, very pleased with how this is working out with the Pi0W and Hydrosys4 SW.

Thank you, Angelo!

randombit

May 27, 2020

OK, that did it! All 4 relays responsive now. Funny how having the correct pin-out makes a difference!

Thank you for your help.

randombit

May 26, 2020

What the hell! Working atm, will rewire and report back when I have some time. TIA. Rand

hydrosys4

May 26, 2020

Hi There,

That's weird, but the pinout you posted is wrong!

The GPIO pinout of the raspberry Zero is same as the other raspberry types, below a couple of example: PIN position 16 is equivalent to GPIO23, so 23 this is the number you have to put on the "HardwareSetting" to make it work.

Anyway now that we know the issue, I strongly suggest to SW default PIN configuration.

Will Waterston

May 25, 2020

I'd be interested to find out how to do this as well, I have an orangepi zero that could probably do the job, having a pi4 running this currently is overkill I think, then I could repurpose the pi4.

randombit

May 25, 2020

Edit: using 5V pwr pin 2, GND pin 6.