Do rain8net controllers work?

[ChrisO]

thanks!

Thank you everyone for sharing your expertise and experience!

[Pete]

So do the master valves act as a saftey valve for each manifold?

Are the master valves next to the manifold or are they inside of the house?

Here I decided last year to continue to utilize X-10 for my Christmas decorations; I set all of the addressing to one house code/number and turn on all the lights with one command. I tried the year before last with Z-Wave and it was a bit time consuming for a temporary setup.

Off the subject the Maestro software TS's are running just fine off of the HS standard box running V.58; but I never could get it installed on the HS Pro box.

Here now almost one entire wall in the basement is plywood between metal MM cabinets. I use 2X4's tacked on to the cement wall using a hammer drill then the plywood goes over the 2X4'a. They are permanent now as I have electrical conduit / boxes on the plywood these days. The edgeports are tacked on to the plywood with one USB cable over to the HS box on the wire rack about 15 feet to the side.

[pbibm]

Pete, yes there are two master valves for my system, one at each manifold. Each EZrain loses one zone to automatically trigger the mastervalve.

Ironically, my server is now mounted to that same piece of plywood so I could have used some sort of usb or serial IO solution to trigger the valves instead. However I don't regret chosing the ez rains and the cost is not that high given how i have had no trouble with it at all. As soon as I completely remove X10 from my system, probably later this year, I may move the server again and will not have any dependencies there.

[Pete]

Paul, great stuff there!

The master valves are the water valves for the manifolds?

I remember many years ago ripping apart my Rainbird ESP controller and using a multimeter just to "check" so see what I could do with it. No luck with that. I then wrote to them asking them if they had some sort of serial module that I could hook up to my ESP system. This all lead to a DIY with a serially controlled controller (but now this was many years ago); but not the days of arcnet or vampire clamp networks.

[pbibm]

The EZ Flora controller is insteon based and you can extend the placement of of the controller over the powerline fairly far away, much futher than x10, without having to pull ET cable. Its two-way and the message delivery is managed internally by the devices.

We get a reasonable amount of lightning here and haven't had and problems with that.

Here is a pic of a 14 zone system with 2 mastervalves, If you zone wiring required it, you could put the ezfloras any where you needed them

[reidfo]

What I like about this thread and the board in general is the positive focus. While it still may leave the reader in a quandry as to what to do, it does not derate specific products or individuals as is common in other media outlets.

Well said Michael. After all, this is supposed to be fun. This board is the main reason I purchased HomeSeer and continue to support HST.

[Michael McSharry]

What I like about this thread and the board in general is the positive focus. While it still may leave the reader in a quandry as to what to do, it does not derate specific products or individuals as is common in other media outlets.

[Pete]

Jim,

Funny you mention irrigation / crop yield et al.

I was looking at the irrigation of a small XX acre landscaping company just a few weeks ago. There was no automation that I could see; just folks turn on and off water valves all over the place.

I was impressed with a staging area that the landscaping company had installed. The subject of automation came up while I purchased a new "tree" to replace an weather/storm damaged tree.

This and last year while helping a friend build a home 3.5 miles from nearest town on his farm I suggested a 3.5 mile internet pipe from his apartment buildings in town to his new home. (easy and cheap today).

[jiml@quicksmart.com]

One thing to consider is where you'll locate the controllers. If all can be located relatively close to the HomeSeer PC then any of the available controllers might be okay. An Ethernet controller such as EtherRain or OpenSprinkler has a limitation of 100 meters from the nearest switch.

Well maybe, if you are using CAT5 or CAT6 cable. An Ethernet fiber link will run over a mile; (Ethernet fiber media converters than can drive 100BaseT 2 kilometers are $50 ea) Several of my customers are using WiFi and "can-tenna" type antennas going 500 to 1000 feet, reliably. "Can-tenna" used to be the realm of the hobbyist but now there are some commercially established narrow beam WiFi antenna suppliers that offer very long range WiFi, again reliably. They supply the agriculture market where fields are being automated. Technology marches on!

Also, if it's a farm and your irrigation impacts your crop yield and therefore your income you should pay attention to design for lightning and surges including establishing a high quality ground, and you should have a budget for on-hand spares or a backup system.

Jim

[Mario23]

I'm very happy so far with my Etherrain.
I just have 4 zones though but its nice to have such a simple ip connection.
With mscsprinklers it does everything I need.

[Michael McSharry]

As a general rule I prefer the IP interface since every computer has one of those and is well supported natively in every OS. Serial was good when we had native serial ports, but with adapters there is just one more variable. The EtherRain, if its operating constraints are acceptable, would be my first choice for a new install.

Reidfo is pioneering a more DIY solution with OpenSprinkler. I hope it turns out well.

In my case I use the original Rain8 X10 since 2004 and have had no issues. I have no lightning concerns so my electronics do not tend to get fried.

The Rain8 family provides may connectivity options so somthing like a distant location over powerline with Rain8UPB could be a good choice. The only Rain8 I did not like was the Wireless which was a X10 RF driven by CM17A. The signal was just not reliable enough for my taste.

[Uncle Michael]

I've been using 3 Rain8Net controllers for about 5 years. I had a problem with the serial connection that turned out to be caused by my serial server. I now have them connected with a USB adapter. No problems at all with the Rain8s.

If you have 25 zones, you'll need 4 units. They have capacity for only 8 zones per unit.

[Pete]

I lost two Rain8net's in a lightning storm a few years back. They had been running for about 8 years or so via an RS-232 cat5e cable from the Digi Edgeport in the basement to the garage Rainbird box. That said mostly because of their small footprint purchased two more and they have been fine so far. I have 10 zones so second one is only being utilized for 2 zones. Today the two are connected to a Seagate Dockstar running Arch Linux MCSSprinklers off a 2GB CF card.

[reidfo]

I will say that while my Rain8's worked, they worked very well. Being in the lightning capitol of the world, I'm wondering if I didn't just take a few surges.

[langenet]

While my implementation hasn't been in for too long, I have no issues with reliability so far and my rain8net+ modules are in my pool shed some 70 feet from my house. I use an eithernet over poweline to a GC IP2SL and all seems fine. Mind you, I had a terrible time at first since mcsSprinker wouldn't communicate directly to the GC IP2SL. I ended up having to use a serial port emulator provided by GC, then created a FireDaemon service out of the application (as my HS is a service). Works fine ... now all it has to do is last a long time!

Rob