I am quite impressed with the Hydrosys system - this is exactly what i was looking for to control my irrigation in Arizona. So far i have 6 soil moisture sensors for my palm trees and 1 control for the irrigation (2 zones). Here's a quick photo of the esp8266 nodemcu setup (not shown is the solar panel that goes inside), with solar charging features. I also was able to integrate lorawan sensors that i had from a previous attempt to control the irrigation. I used chirpstack to integrate with MQTT then obviously captured by Hydrosys. What i am finding out is the lorawan sensors are more energy efficient compared to the esp8266 nodemcus. Next step is to see if i can use the cube cell htcc-ab01 (lorawan micro) to work as well.
Again, Hydrosys is a great system, a bit overkill for my needs. I am trying to find out how to modify the home page to show the current values as oppose to averages but not a big issue yet.
based on my reading it seems to be a great solution at an affordable cost. Although not officially lora, it seems very close. I will look into it a bit more and see if i can integrate the HC-12 into a smaller package i.e. within the Raspi 3a+. I probably could achieve the same at 915 mhz - lora with a benefit to reach longer range. Great job.
Also as an aside, i manually upgraded to your latest version and noticed it messed up my "MAC" address - every booth it changed the address. I did add the following to rectify (which was not needed before):
If Network-manager is installed.
To disable the MAC address randomization create the file:
Code: Select all
/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/100-disable-wifi-mac-randomization.conf
And add:
Code: Select all
[connection]
wifi.mac-address-randomization=1
[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no
Hello There,
Thanks for the support!
I also have some updated about the 433MHz long distance communication using the HC-12. It is not LoRa, but I think it is the cheapest way to connect sensor for quite long distance. Below the Link for the setting:
Any comment or feedback is appreciated.
Regards.
Angelo
I should add the Cubecell HTCC-AB01 has a built in battery charger, solar panel pinout and VEXT that can be turn on and off for the sensors. Although more expensive then an ESP8266 but with all of the built in features this board can be very competitive. I understand there is a way to connect the devices without a gateway which i have not done given i had a gateway already. By the way i did find the contribution button.
Thanks again,
Angelo, again thank you for your great work! I am nearly done moving away from the ESP8266 to cubecell HTCC-AB01 and Dragino (lorawan) mostly because of the power efficiency - i can run cubecell ($12-14) and dragino indefinitely with a solar cell and increases the distance to up to 2 km. I am using 2 soil sensors and 1 temperature for each board. Information is transmitted via my gateway (bought for $65 but now is $119) to Chirstack that is installed on the same device as Hydrosys4. By using Chirstack i can use specific conversion formula for each sensors which are not necessarily a straight linear as in your software - for example one of my sensor conversion is the following: y=-0.0156x + 80.772 (y being the % while x the sensor reading).
Here's a photo of one of the prototype. I also ordered a few of your digital soil sensors which should simplify this device given it will use I2C directly with the board.
The valve control will remain on an ESP8266 with four valve controls as it is connected directly to power without a battery.
I to would like to contribute $$ or time. I will look for your donation button.
Cheers and let's continue to enjoy this project.
If you are looking to gather data from a farmer then perhaps the longer range makes sense. One of my node is from a friend of mine that owns Vinduino that focus on irrigation for vineyard. I also purchased sensors from Tinovi to experiment. Originally i had the sensors connected to TTN but decided to go with Hydrosys for my application hence decided to self host my LoRaWan with Chirpstack installed on the same raspberry pi as Hydrosys. Now that i know the structure of LoRaWan, i believe this could be implemented at a lower cost which is probably good for a farmer and combined with your software i believe this would be perfect.
I am also looking at your digital sensor to add to my development and perhaps add multiple sensors per node.
I am also experimenting with the D1 module with a MUX to expand the number of analog sensors and of course with solar panel.
Regarding LoRaWan, the programming for the 433 MHz and other bandwidth is very similar. The main difference is the distance you are trying to cover, the 433 MHz is rated at 1 km but it also transmits thru walls easier than the other bands. You will need the nodes to transmit and also a receiver to receive and connect to a network - called a gateway with the same bandwidth. There are many gateways available, i have been looking at this one for the 433 MHz ( https://www.tindie.com/products/makerfabs/esp32-lora-gateway/) but have no experience with it. For home the wifi works great but if you want distance then LoRa is certainly the way to go.
Since i had the LoRa modules already i wanted to use them - lorawan modules transmits encoded data (Hex) to my gateway (Pico Lite) connected to my network, Chirpstack gets the data and decodes it then sends it to MQTT. A bit complicated but it works.
Hello,
Many Thanks for sharing, I'm also working to a solar remote sensor (Moisture) using ESP8266.
I found out that the Wemos D1mini consumes less power than the nodeMCU. Also I use the deepsleep function which is essential for this applications.
Regarding the LoRaWan, I really want to start understand more about this protocol. I still do not understand if this can be implemented as an isolated system and if this is really expensive to implement. The board you mentioned htcc-ab01 is very interesting.
Alternatively for the long range communication I'm also started to look at the HC-12 (433MHz) which is very inexpensive but still allow very long range (1Km). Have you have any experience with it?
Thanks Again,
Angelo