Another reef pi build

[lilgrounchuck]

I originally bought this pi years ago to run an indoor garden and some dart frog vivs after reading about this dude that automated whole greenhouses with an arduino. I ended up moving and forgot about it. Fast forward a few years and I started a reef tank and remembered I had this thing still sitting in a moving box. Time to get started.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

I started out reading the original reef-pi thread when it was started, but life got in the way and I drifted. By the time I finally decided to build one (last week) the thread is coming up on 700 pages! So, I started diving through some of the shorter build threads and came along some nice prebuilt boards. After looking at a bunch of them, the ones from @Michael Lane fit the bill. I grabbed a goby hat, ph board, dp4s board, and the mars aqua pwm board.

In addition to the boards I grabbed some temp sensors, a pH sensor, 4 pin aviation connectors for fittings, 22 AWG 3-wire for the light control cables, a dual 5V 12V power supply, and a box that I hope I can tetris everything in to.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Redid my SD card with a fresh install of raspbian and installed reef-pi 3.1, then got to soldering. I really like these aviation connectors. The solder points on the male and female side are very easy to work with.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Boom!

Temp 1 and Temp 2 reading!

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Got the pH board hooked up. The board is getting power and showing up (pH is board is @

45), but reef-pi isn't seeing the probe for some reason. Any thoughts?

 

[Michael Lane]

Those aviation connectors are looking nice and clean! The build seems to be moving along pretty smoothly.

I have notes on setting up a pH probe with reef-pi in the main thread. You'll need to add a ph board driver and an analog input.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Those aviation connectors are looking nice and clean! The build seems to be moving along pretty smoothly.

I have notes on setting up a pH probe with reef-pi in the main thread. You'll need to add a ph board driver and an analog input.

Awesome! Thanks for the link. That thread has become a forum of its own. My eyes started going crossed last night digging through it and I gave up at about 1 am.

It took me a bit to find all my old soldering stuff. It’s all a bunch of old Radio Shack things (iron, solder, flux, despiser, etc) and I’m shocked the iron still worked. I think the last time I used it was to fix someone’s red ring of death on an Xbox about ten years ago. First few connections came out a little rough but I remembered what I was doing again.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Now that I have the pH probe sorted out and calibrated (don't know why I thought hardware would work without drivers...) I finished up soldering together the connections for the Mars Aqua board and the cables to connect them up. Now I just need to swap out the light with the Orbit I started the tank with (I knew I held on to it for a reason) so I can take the Mars apart and get it all hooked up and tested.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

My doser and power supply should be getting here today, but before I finish hooking everything up I want to make sure I'm looking at this jebao adapter board correctly:

 

[Michael Lane]

The power is correct, but the signal gnd is on the other side where you have the yellow line.

 

[Ranjib]

Godspeed . Love to read through new builds. The main thread moves faster than any of us can keep up. Dont hesitate to ping us here if you have questions.
You have to add a driver first for the ph board. Then create an analog input connector with the driver and then assign the connector to ph module.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Godspeed . Love to read through new builds. The main thread moves faster than any of us can keep up. Dont hesitate to ping us here if you have questions.
You have to add a driver first for the ph board. Then create an analog input connector with the driver and then assign the connector to ph module.

Thanks, I really appreciate everything that all of you have contributed to help the rest of schmucks along. Hopefully I can return the favor at some point.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Boom! No more manual dosing! Well, once I get it calibrated. Next steps are clean these cables up and get it all mounted in box, configure the light cycle, and calibrate and schedule the dosing pumps. I still need to pick up power switching components, but I think I’m going to go with an HS300 over the ADJ switch. I can’t seem to find them anywhere for under $70 and at that point, I figure the benefits of having something I can program on it’s own for certain functions should the pi die on me is a nice option.

 

[Michael Lane]

You probably already figured it out, but here's an annotated view of the dosing adapter.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Yeah I got it, but thank you. These boards made things so much easier. Without them I’m sure I’d wind up with a serious rats nest in a box trying to get everything put together with breadboards and jumper wires. I really like how the 12v is delivered to the DP4S with the rj12 so there’s only one cable for the dosers.

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Got the light board hooked up and running. For anyone wondering, the mars aqua board from @Michael Lane works just fine on the 300W light as well. Only difference is the distance of the cables from the divers to the jxt connectors. I had to cut one connector off and I soldered another one of the premade 4 pin cables he sent with the goby hat to get the second channel plugged in.

 

[Ranjib]

Got the light board hooked up and running. For anyone wondering, the mars aqua board from @Michael Lane works just fine on the 300W light as well. Only difference is the distance of the cables from the divers to the jxt connectors. I had to cut one connector off and I soldered another one of the premade 4 pin cables he sent with the goby hat to get the second channel plugged in.

Woot :0-) . Great way to start the Sunday . Thank you for sharing

 

[lilgrounchuck]

I got everything moved to the tank today. I calibrated the pumps on the DP4S for my chems and everything was fine. Once the first dosing cycle kicked in for each pump the light above it just kept blinking. Is this normal or is something off? I shut them off for now because I don’t want them completely dumping their contents into the tank overnight.

 

[Michael Lane]

That's not the behavior I experience. What does are you running?

 

[lilgrounchuck]

Seachem reef fusion 1, set for 2 seconds @ 80% at hrs 0,2,6,12,18. Reef fusion 2 set for 2 sec @ 80% at hrs 1,3,7,13,19. Reef plus set for 2 seconds at 65% at hrs 7. All other time values are set to *. What’s weird is it doesn’t happen when I manually run it with the calibrate option. After the programmed job runs, it keeps blinking. I turned the jobs on and watched it this morning and the doses ran for the correct times, but then kept blinking. about 30-40 sec after each dose it ran that same dose again.