Irrigation Board for Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi Irrigation Board is designed to handle just about anything you could need in a basic garden irrigation system. This version ships fully assembled!

The board has 6 independent driver circuits, perfect for controlling solenoids, small pumps, or relays controlling higher voltage / current equipment (each circuit is capable of driving in excess of 1.5A @12V without getting too hot). Each channel has an LED indicator showing when it is triggered and an integrated snub diode to protect your Pi from any power spikes caused by inductive loads.

In addition to controlling, it is also designed to work with a bunch of sensors right out of the box. We have broken out the 1 Wire interface for a DS18B20 temperature sensor. No need for a pull-up resistor, it is already on the board! GPIO24 is set up as a plug and play input for a flow sensor. Next, we have added our favourite ADC – the ADS1015 4 Channel 12-bit Analog To Digital converter. This allows for 4 analog sensors to be connected. All 4 channels are broken out to induvial 3 pin pads for your preferred 0.100” / 2.54 mm connector.

Because this is designed for irrigation, we have added an extra feature to each of the analog inputs. Beside each of these analog channels is a solder jumper; this is used to choose your 3.3V source. By default, this is set to the 3.3V power provided by an onboard regulator but we have also allowed each analog to be powered via a separate GPIO pin. This is done specifically for soil moisture sensors and helps prevent unnecessary corrosion caused when the sensor is powered in moist soil. Since the sensors draw a very tiny amount of voltage, they can be powered this way. Simply trip the connected GPIO pin HIGH and read the analog sensor, and turn off the pin.

For external sensors and additional hardware, we have also broken out the SPI, I2C, and Serial Port from the Pi to individual 0.1’/2.54mm pads.

And if that wasn’t enough, on top of that, we also added a spot to install one of Pololu’s 5V 2.5A step-down regulators (Pololu 2858). Simply install the regulator and this will power the Pi from the 12V input. No need for an external adapter.

We ship these boards with a free GPIO riser header as we find the PoE pins on the Pi 4 and 3B+ are a little closer than we’d like!

Features