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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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Recently through a customer I learned about a product called WireSprout, and it only works with the AC-powered OpenSprinkler but not the DC-powered version. Out of curiosity, I looked into why this is happening. So what is WireSprout? Simply speaking, it allows individually controlling 2 zones using a single zone wire. This is useful in […]

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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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Today I am very excited to introduce OpenSprinkler Bee (OSBee) 2.0: it’s an open-source, WiFi-enabled, universal sprinkler controller. It is suitable for garden and lawn watering, plant and flower irrigation, hydroponics, and other types of watering project. This is the first OpenSprinkler product built upon the popular ESP8266 WiFi chip. It’s designed primarily for latching […]

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A quick note that our Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales are on now: all OpenSprinkler products are shown in discounted prices right now, and the deal only lasts till Monday Nov 28. This is the only time of the year that we offer discounted pricing, so if you are interested in buying OpenSprinkler, grasp […]

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