Rain sensor connection

[gonzales]

hi, first thanks to Dan for this wonderful software!!
i'm testing now at bench with saint smart relay board with the relay plugin and all seem working really good till now.

just now i was wondering, how to connect eventually a rain sensor?
in the page is possible to enable and disable a rain sensor and in main page put a delay,
Just i can't se anywere in the forum or in the wiky how must be connected and at what pins of the raspberry...
i suppose is a a simple switch soit shoul be connected between a gpio and a ground, just at what gpio should it be connected?

thanks in advance

[dan]

Good question. I should update the documentation to include this.

It is a bit complicated because different board reves of the Raspi have slightly different pin numbering. Also there are a couple of different GPIO libraries that have different pin functions. And there are two ways to number the pins on the Pi, Physical and BMC.

If you are using a recent rev of the Pi you should be able to use physical pin 8 (BMC pin 14) for the rain sensor.
See this link for more info about the pins:
http://pinout.xyz/

Let me know if this does not work.

[gonzales]

Thanks, I read the source code and informed in internet about pin Numeration physical and BCM of raspberry and and seem a bit complicated...  anyway I thought about the pin 8 , just I seen is also for UART so I was not sure. So you means the contact should be from physical 8 and ground?
Anyway yesterday I tried the system with 6 valve sistem, and relay board saint smart. The system work , in manual all valve can be in drived. 
Just a problem I noticed that if I make a single pass program, anyway the system generate a recurrent program even in the json file and anyway it doesn't run.
Also I noticed a very slow connection with android mobile now that system is isolated (not connected to internet) this can be generate some problem? I will go through further testing next days and will let you know results. Thanks!

[gonzales]

Hi, now that internet connection is ok all is working really good and fast! I tried also the connection with the android app open sprinkler and it work! Just I prefer the sip web app.
System is setup and working in really few time, thanks for the job! Would be interesting know where to make the correct change, to make it work also with my piface.... in future could come handy!
Thanks!

[22ndst]

I just set up SIP with a Raspberry Pi 3 and the TIAO Smart Sprinkler Pi v2.0 board.  It is one of the best projects I've used with the Pi.  Thank you.

My question has to do with the rain sensor setup.  The TIAO board has a Rain Sensor hookup on pins 5 & 6 of the small external connector.  Can the SIP Software read these pin and use the status with the default SIP Software.  Right now I am not seeing any change in status within the SIP application when Pins 5 & 6 change state.

Can you shed some light on how to use my rain sensor (Rain Bird)?  Will I have o wire it directly to BCM 14 and Ground?

Thank you again for such a fine product.

[dan]

On the Options page there is a Rain Sensor section.
Click the check box next to "User Rain Sensor".

You may also need to change the "Normally open" box but I think the Rainbird sensor is normally open so it probably does not need changing.