A new way to control water!
h20 Shield
Update: I've updated the design of the board and the transistors used to ensure better compatability with the Orbit valves. I was getting reports from folks that some valves would open but not close with the shield. The updated design can be downloaded at the bottom of this post.
I've been working on a rather large project for some time now and while my new h20 shield is just one piece of the larger project, I thought it deserved it's own post and documentation. I can see this shield being quite useful for lots of folks wishing to control water using one of the fairly inexpensive Orbit 62035 garden hose valves.
First, allow me to give credit where credit is due, the hard work for the control circuit and voltage booster came from this incredibly smart gentlemen and the shield wouldn't be possible without his hard work figuring out how to control the valves! His design for controlling the valves works wonderfully!
This shield is a three valve controller with LED indicators for valve status. I used the long headers thinking I'd make the shield stack-able but the 50v cap scrapped that idea. If I make another version, I'll use a different cap/layout to ensure you can stack this shield, as it now, this will just be the top shield in my project. I also used only through-hole parts (I normally would have used nearly all SMT components) to make the shield easier for folks to solder and I had many of the components in through-hole package on hand.
h20 Shield
The circuit is quite simple really, it's comprised of two main parts, the 24V voltage boost circuit which is required to open and close the Orbit water valves and three open/close control circuits. The shield uses 7 digital pins and 3 analog pins. I have one pin each for open and close for each of the three valves, they each drive a transistor which close the 24V through one of the two valve connections. One will open the valve and the other will close it. The final digital pin is used to control the LT1303, when held high, the circuit will shut down thus saving power as the 24V is only needed when opening and closing a valve. I've used the three analog pins to control the LED indicators for the three valves, I needed the other digital pins for other shields that are part of the bigger project I mentioned earlier.
I got the 3.5 mm connectors from SparkFun.com and the rest of the components I either had on-hand or purchased through digikey.com.
I've included high-resolution pictures of the completed board along with the Eagle schematic and board files and a sample Arduino sketch for those interested! As you can see from the video below, the board works perfectly! If you find a use for this design, let me know, I'm always fascinated by how folks use controllers like this!
- Title : h2o shield Project Files
Caption :
File name : h20Shield.zip
Size : 13 MB
- Title : h2o shield Project Files
Caption :
File name : h20Shield.zip
Size : 13 MB
The A new way to control water! by Jay Collett, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
May 27th, 2011 - 21:01
Hey, just wondering if you could make me one of these?
May 27th, 2011 - 22:31
Sure, $20 US plus shipping from USA and I’d be glad to make one for you.
May 29th, 2011 - 15:59
How do I contact you?
May 30th, 2011 - 22:57
Any chance I could persuade you to make one more..?
June 6th, 2011 - 19:28
Add me to the list of clients!
I could use a shield with 4 or more outputs also
June 9th, 2011 - 18:55
Jay, would you be willing to produce two of these for me? If so, please send my your info so we can get this started. Thank you!
June 9th, 2011 - 21:16
Just wanted to update everyone that I’ve sold out of the shields for now. New shipment of shields should be here and ready to ship next Friday (6/16/11). I’ve also had to raise the price just a bit to cover my costs of parts and assembly (hand built and tested). The new price per shield is $30.00 US plus shipping.
June 10th, 2011 - 18:32
I would be interested in at least two of these. And maybe a third unassembled so I can pretend I know what I am doing
June 17th, 2011 - 09:13
Just wanted to let everyone know that there are some valves that seem to not want to close with this shield. It appears that those valves that don’t want to close have a different resistance between pins 1 and 2 (the base of the plug and the center). I’m working on a solution to this, in the meantime if you have a valve that will open but not close with the shield and works fine with the Orbit controller, please let me know what resistance you measure between pins 1 and 2.
July 4th, 2011 - 15:08
Plenty of boards are available now for anyone who wants one.
August 6th, 2011 - 00:03
Jay, I’m interested in the PCB. can you let me know how much it cost for the PCB alone? Also I don’t see the link for the schematics in your post.
August 8th, 2011 - 10:15
Sorry about that. I updated WordPress and it nuked my attachments, it appears…I’ve attached them to the post again. $5.00 US per board which includes shipping anywhere in the USA via USPS. I’ve got about 20 of them, so let me know how many you want.
August 11th, 2011 - 21:42
Jay,
Thanks for uploading the file. please let me know your email address or email me at pmreghu at yahoo dot com
October 8th, 2011 - 20:59
I’d love to buy 3 of your assembled boards (or the bare boards if that’s all you have). How can I go about that? Can I PayPal you? My e-mail addy is bruce@brucejones.org.
October 13th, 2011 - 10:25
Bruce,
I only have the boards left, I sell them for $4 each and free shipping via USPS postal mail. You can send payment and your address via paypal. I’ll email you the paypal address.
January 2nd, 2012 - 12:14
Hi,
Very interested in a [built] board. What is current availability?
March 6th, 2012 - 14:01
Hi Jay,
Were you able to fix the problem you reported over at Ray’s blog (some valves not closing)? If so, would you happen to have some PCBs left? If you have some I am very interested in buying two right away (watering season is about to start). I am about to place a SparkFun order and would like to include some of the parts needed to assemble h2o shields. If you could email me to let me know either way that’d be great. My email address is obviously in my profile for you blog.
Thanks!
May 15th, 2012 - 09:51
Has anyone found replacement (rebuild) kits for the valves? In the hot summer here the rubber tend to mold itself a bit. Then after 1-2 years the valves stop sealing properly. These valves use the water pressure to help seal itself (off). Just curious if anyone has sourced the parts. I’ll checkout the links on the page
Really only a diaphragm and a rubber valve that goes to the solenoid to replace if they can be found 
Thanks!
p.s. awesome project!
May 15th, 2012 - 17:34
Hi,
I have both 62035 and 91592 control valves. Will this be able to control both valves?
May 15th, 2012 - 20:39
@gooseflight: Nope, I sold off all the completed boards and the raw PCBs as well.
@eloy: I was able to resolve that issue, was just a matter of ensuring enough current could be dumped through the coil to activate it, the transistors used in the original build were replaced with a few other minor parts and I never got any further reports of coils not closing. The schematic on the site is the latest.
@David Burkhardt: Thanks for the props, I’ve actually not had time to implement this board in my final project yet, we extended our family with a wonderful new baby boy so I’m a bit preoccupied. I have plans to use this shield with my wifi shield and create some smart software to really up the sophistication!
@rahul: I haven’t tested this design with the 91592, I suspect they connections to the valve would be the same but you’ll need to verify, coils are fairly forgiving so unless those are a complete redesign, this would work. That being said, I’ll reiterate, I have torn one of the 91592 apart yet.
May 15th, 2012 - 21:03
Thanks Jay. Please let us know here (I’m subscribed to this discussion) if you end up ordering more PCBs in the future.
Congrats on the new member of the family.
Cheers!