I will continue to provide a VirtualBox image which has everything needed for compilation set up and ready to go. Also, starting from firmware 2.0.0, the source code can be compiled in Arduino 1.x (latest stable version is 1.0.5), and this is also the recommended Arduino version to compile OpenSprinkler code. More exciting firmware features will be gradually added over time. In terms of software, OpenSprinkler 2.0 is currently flashed with firmware 2.0.0, which is functionally the same as firmware 1.8.3, except for the additional options such as LCD contrast and backlight, and the support for a higher number of expansion boards and programs. Finally, as many users have been waiting for 2.0, I don’t want to suddenly get into an overload situation, where the number of orders exceed our capacity to process them. This is an important process to get user feedback, and to iron out all engineering issues before the official release. Second, I’ve been experimenting with minor changes of the 2.0 design, and we’ve been shipping several small batches, each with slight different hardware design. The first is that due to the Maker Faire and the vacation after that, I haven’t had time to finish the documentations, and I’m reluctant to officially release a product when the documentations are not ready yet. Why not make it public? Well, there are several reasons. If you are wondering what I mean by ‘shipping these underground’ at the beginning of the post - we’ve been automatically upgrading the recent orders of assembled OpenSprinkler v1.4s to v2.0s. There have already been multiple delays, so I won’t be surprised if there are more… Other than the difference in the enclosure design, the pre-release 2.0 hardware is the same as the final 2.0. While that is already in production at SeeedStudio, I can’t give a reliable estimate of how long it will take for the final products to arrive. The reason I call this the Pre-Release 2.0 is that the official 2.0 will use the injection molded enclosures I blogged about in this post. Here is an annotated diagram of the actual hardware:Īlso, just for fun, a diagram that shows each module of the circuit and where they are located on the PCB: OK, that’s quite a detailed list of new features. The other un-used pins are made available in the pinout area (including three analog pins, two interrupt pins, two digital pins, as well as TXD, RXD, SDA and SCL). Other Features: given the plentiful GPIO pins available on ATmega644, I’ve added support to adjust LCD contrast and backlight (using two PWM pins), a set of pin headers for plugging in an off-the-shelf RF transmitter (for interfacing with wireless devices).By checking the voltage using an analog pin, the mcu can easily calculate how many boards are linked. The implementation is actually quite simple: it uses a pull-up resistor on the main controller and one pull-down resistor on each expansion board to form a voltage divider. Expansion Board Detection: this allows the main controller to automatically detect the number of zone expansion boards linked to the controller. Hence adding microSD card support is a no brainer! A standard microSD card shares the SPI interface and requires only one extra GPIO pin to operate. This s great for a lot of purposes, such as logging, storing a lot of sprinkler programs, Javascript files etc. Added microSD Card Slot: microSD card is useful for expanding the storage size of a microcontroller.Details about this change can be found in this blog post. The same circuitry is now also used in OpenSprinkler Pi. As more users are powering WiFi adapters through OpenSprinkler’s USB port, it’s important to make the power conversion section robust.
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