Controllino-Irrigation

Ethernet-based irrigation controller running on a Controllino Maxi (ATmega 2560 + W5100). Controls up to four water solenoid valves via relay outputs with full Home Assistant integration through MQTT auto-discovery.

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Features

• Controls 4 independent water valves via relay outputs
• MQTT valve entities auto-discovered by Home Assistant (no manual HA configuration)
• Per-valve open/closed state reporting retained on the broker
• Configurable watchdog timer (0–120 min) prevents valves from running indefinitely; 0 disables the timeout
• NTP time-sync with a scheduled 7-day maintenance reboot (2–4 AM window)
• Non-blocking MQTT reconnect with automatic Ethernet/reboot fallback
• Ethernet DHCP with periodic Ethernet.maintain() calls

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Hardware

Component	Details
Controller	Controllino Maxi – ATmega 2560 + W5100 Ethernet
Power	12 V PoE Active Splitter (IEEE 802.3af)
Valves	12 V Electric Solenoid Valves
Protection	Vishay 1N4001 flyback diodes on each valve

Relay outputs

Screw terminal	Valve
DIGITAL_OUT_11	Valve 1
DIGITAL_OUT_10	Valve 2
DIGITAL_OUT_09	Valve 3
DIGITAL_OUT_08	Valve 4

Relays can switch higher voltages or provide galvanic isolation if needed.

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Getting started

1 – Prerequisites

• PlatformIO (CLI or VS Code extension)
• MQTT broker (e.g. Mosquitto) on your local network
• Home Assistant (optional, for GUI control)

2 – Create your private configuration

cp include/Exampleprivate.h include/Private.h

Edit include/Private.h and fill in:

• secret_mqtt_server – your MQTT broker IP/hostname
• secret_mqtt_username / secret_mqtt_password
• secret_byte – a unique MAC address for each controller
• MQTT command and state topics for each valve
• ntp_server – NTP server (default: pool.ntp.org)

Private.h is listed in .gitignore and will never be committed.

3 – Select your target controller

Two configurations are supported. Set IRRIGATION_CONTROLLER in platformio.ini (or use the named environments below):

Value	Description
1	Front Garden
2	Back Garden (default)

4 – Build and upload

# Build for Back Garden (default)
pio run

# Build for Front Garden
pio run -e front_garden

# Build for Back Garden explicitly
pio run -e back_garden

# Upload to Front Garden controller
pio run -e front_garden -t upload

# Monitor serial output (115200 baud)
pio device monitor

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MQTT topics

Valve command payloads follow the Home Assistant valve standard:

Direction	Payload
Open valve	OPEN
Close valve	CLOSE
Valve open state	open
Valve closed state	closed

The watchdog duration (in minutes, range 0–120) is also exposed as a Home Assistant number entity on topic Home/Irrigation/Watchdog/Command. Set to 0 to disable the watchdog timeout.

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CI/CD and Automation

The project includes GitHub Actions workflows for:

• Build Pipeline – Builds firmware for all three environments on every push/PR
• Release Pipeline – Builds and attaches firmware binaries to GitHub releases
• Dependency Check – Weekly scan for outdated library versions

Firmware artifacts are available for download from the Actions tab.

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Scheduled maintenance reboot

The firmware reboots once every 7 days during the 2–4 AM window (UTC). NTP is synced on boot via pool.ntp.org (configurable in Private.h).

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Matching Home Assistant configuration

https://github.com/Genestealer/Home-Assistant-Configuration

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Screenshots

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Bill of Materials

• Controllino Maxi
• 12 V Electric Solenoid Valve
• Active 12 V PoE Splitter – IEEE 802.3af, 10/100 Mbps

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PlatformIO configuration summary

The platformio.ini follows PlatformIO best practices:

• Global [platformio] section for project-level settings
• [common] section for shared flags and dependencies (DRY principle)
• Version-pinned library dependencies for reproducible builds
• Three named environments: controllino_maxi, front_garden, back_garden
• Compiler warnings enabled (-Wall -Wextra)

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Based on the earlier ESP8266 variant: https://github.com/genestealer/Irrigation-Controller