Jumping back in

[ard jonker]

> A used or refurbished mini is the way to go. I wouldn’t go further back than something that can run at last 10.11 or 10.12 as you won’t have much time before newer XTension versions can’t run on it anymore.

Chipping in here: made in 2011 is about the latest version that you can easily hack. Heck, I've got four around here ;-0

> I’m not aware of any directly controllable irrigation valves, but there are many ZWave ones that will work fine with the Vera. All you really need is something to control relays to switch 24v to regular irrigation valves which are very inexpensive.<..>Or even roll your own with an arduino on wifi and a very cheap multi-relay board.

I'm very happy using a RPI, that has an i2c 16-channel output, connected to a "PCF8575 16-bit SMBus I/O ports IIC I2C I/O Extension Shield Module" (ebay) and controls a  "KEYES 5V 2/4/8/16 Channel Relay Board Module". Code required is next to nothing, the fun about RPI over arduino is that a few apt-get commands automatically get you all the modules you need (php, i2c). IMHO much easier that arduino (that I tried too, for a long time).

The only tricky things are a) that almost all of the PFC8575 modules have a routing problem (you have to drill away a through hole) and b) that the 5V relays are powered off whatever power supply you have, even though they suggest being 5V. The 5V version is easy to power the RPI off, and with a single drill hole destroying a PCB trace and a single wire connecting the 5V to power the relays, you are fine to go.
 
ard


ard