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Introduction More than a decade ago, I published a blog post titled Understanding 24 VAC Sprinkler Valves. In that post, I took a close look at the sprinkler solenoid’s inrush vs. holding currents under 24 VAC, performed theoretical analysis and actual measurements, and explained the difference in the solenoid’s electrical behavior under AC vs. DC. […]

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This post documents some of the tips and tricks I learned while integrating ESP8266 into my own circuit designs. Some of them help reduce the components needed thus minimizing the cost, while others have to do with selecting and using GPIO pins. For breadboard prototyping, you can certainly use one of the popular ESP8266 development […]

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It’s hard to believe that two years have gone by since my last post. Lots of things happened during these two years: on the good side, we have our first baby born during a year of pandemic, and he is bringing joy to the family every day. On the bad side, there is a pandemic, […]

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Can’t believe I have been silent on this blog for more than a year now. I would really like to get back to blogging more regularly, and hopefully this post serves as a good starting point. As the first order of business, I would like to showcase a number of student projects from a new […]

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Update: the technique described in this article is possibly no longer necessary for the current version of OSBee, as it now supports setting a different opening vs. closing voltage. Recently when helping a customer, I came across an interesting case of how to control Gardena 1251 latching solenoid valve using OpenSprinkler Bee. This valve is […]

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