DIY Control System I am building

[sbash]

The canakit and soarkfun probes has a black coating and mine is going on for 4 months now....

Interesting, so they dipped it in something... Yours is a 1wire, ds18b20? The last I checked your thread you were using an analog sensor?

*** edit:

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11050

They put a casing on it... six or so months ago, this was a 'stainless' end... Interesting...

 

[Ranjib]

Interesting, so they dipped it in something... Yours is a 1wire, ds18b20? The last I checked your thread you were using an analog sensor?

*** edit:

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11050

They put a casing on it... six or so months ago, this was a 'stainless' end... Interesting...

yeah, i have moves away from those analog sensors to ds18b20 , i had to do lot of scale adjustment on readings coming from those probes.. now the official reef-pi temperature build is based on ds18b20. there are several other folks who built it, and its working ok from them, or atleast no big complains so far.. lets see how it works in the long run

 

[sbash]

yeah, i have moves away from those analog sensors to ds18b20 , i had to do lot of scale adjustment on readings coming from those probes.. now the official reef-pi temperature build is based on ds18b20. there are several other folks who built it, and its working ok from them, or atleast no big complains so far.. lets see how it works in the long run

I have been using them for a couple years, they work great long term (as long as they do not rust, lol)... The huge advantage, of course, is that you can easily chain them together, adding as many as you need. For example, I have one on my mixing station to alert me when the temp is up enough to add the salt to the fresh water. Once I figure out how to reliably add the salt, it will all work together... but, I digress... They are great sensors...

 

[Ranjib]

I have been using them for a couple years, they work great long term (as long as they do not rust, lol)... The huge advantage, of course, is that you can easily chain them together, adding as many as you need. For example, I have one on my mixing station to alert me when the temp is up enough to add the salt to the fresh water. Once I figure out how to reliably add the salt, it will all work together... but, I digress... They are great sensors...

What if you maintain a high concentration salt water mix, and dose it instead ?

 

[sbash]

What if you maintain a high concentration salt water mix, and dose it instead ?

I thought of that, but it is still the same problem, I still need to add the salt

For that matter, I could just do my water changes with the saturated salt reservoir and let my ATO dilute it (note: this would only work for large volume tanks)... lol... Anyway, I think I found a solution to convert a reservoir into gumball machine style dispenser, but I need get the mechanics right... *sigh* one day...

 

[njtiger aquariums]

Yes my sensor has rusted but I see no affect on the tank or temp reading. I had one in my sump for over a year with no issues. The current one is right in my DT (cause no sump on this tank) and it been going for 4 or so months. I compare my temp reading once a month to make sure its reading correctly

 

[njtiger aquariums]

Ouch :-/ . hey at least it's working,and ts 60 bucks . not an expensive iPad , on the bright side.

Yea not bad for 60bucks and also I can still access everything from my PC/phone so there no rush to replace it. What sucks is I been looking at project boxes and was hoping to get one soon to put everything in (which would had prevented this from happening lol)

 

[sbash]

Yes my sensor has rusted but I see no affect on the tank or temp reading. I had one in my sump for over a year with no issues. The current one is right in my DT (cause no sump on this tank) and it been going for 4 or so months. I compare my temp reading once a month to make sure its reading correctly

Yeah, my concern was more the probe would go bad after a while. The way mine rusted, it looks like it rusts at a contact/weld point, so that could potentially let water in. Anyway, glad to hear!

 

[njtiger aquariums]

Yeah, my concern was more the probe would go bad after a while. The way mine rusted, it looks like it rusts at a contact/weld point, so that could potentially let water in. Anyway, glad to hear!

I had one go bad on me and it ran for about 2 years. I don't think it was rust but salt creep on my connections but will keep an eye on my current one

 

[Ranjib]

Yea not bad for 60bucks and also I can still access everything from my PC/phone so there no rush to replace it. What sucks is I been looking at project boxes and was hoping to get one soon to put everything in (which would had prevented this from happening lol)

Hindsight is always 20/20

 

[sbash]

I had one go bad on me and it ran for about 2 years. I don't think it was rust but salt creep on my connections but will keep an eye on my current one

For that matter, it would be easy enough to put in a simple data validation and alert for when (and if) one goes bad... I just bought a bunch for the tanks in my frag tank/fish room at $1.50 a piece (CAD), so it would not break the bank to have a few on hand.

 

[njtiger aquariums]

For that matter, it would be easy enough to put in a simple data validation and alert for when (and if) one goes bad... I just bought a bunch for the tanks in my frag tank/fish room at $1.50 a piece (CAD), so it would not break the bank to have a few on hand.

Yup already can tell when they go bad cause it either read a temp of 32f or 186f (which is it's boot temp)

Also I ordered a pack of 5 so agree about keeping some on hand

 

[njtiger aquariums]

just playing around a little. Decided that this one panel on my dashboard looked bare to me so I added some system stats. I still need to clean it up but it displays how long the system has been up since the last reboot. I also getting the temp of the pi as well; I might code it if the temp reach a high level to send an alert out. This information is update every second

 

[njtiger aquariums]

So I been wanting to get an ATO working with my controller. I have a JBJ but for some odd reason it been acting up. I decided to try and turn one of the float switch into a float switch for my controller. I had to GPIO pin to use the built in pulldown resistor to prevent false reading. I then added code to read a python script every second. It will display "add water" or "Don't Add Water" on my touch screen. I plan on making this section a little better looking and more information (such as what equipment is on/off/enable/disabled/etc...). I will run this way for a little to make sure the code is working and when I have time/money I will work on adding a lift pump and have it run correctly.

 

[njtiger aquariums]

Had to take my youngest to a birthday party today but got some work in today. First thing I did was find a bash script that will check for wifi connection and if not connected force it to reconnect. It will run as a cron job and set to run every min. Second I added more to my system status panel. I made an icon for my lights (black when off and green when on) This indicate the status of the outlet the light is plugged into. I need to mess around with a little more (seeing how I have two lights) but this is a working concept right now. I hope to create icons for my ATO and ATO reservoir.

 

[njtiger aquariums]

Well decided to do a little more. Made icons for the ATO and Reservoir. Green means they are at the correct level and clear means need to add water.

 

[njtiger aquariums]

So I was not a big fan of what I was using to make the charts. It took a long time to load (about 17.5 seconds). Doing some searching I found what seems to be a better way. I am now using javascript/html5 to build the chart. The page now loads in about 13 seconds. I also put the dotted lines as indicator of my high/low set limits so by the chart I can see when it goes over (yes I still get the text alerts). Still playing around to get the right look but so far seems to be much smoother than what I was using. For those who might be wondering I was using jpgraph and now I am using plotly.js

 

[Ranjib]

So I was not a big fan of what I was using to make the charts. It took a long time to load (about 17.5 seconds). Doing some searching I found what seems to be a better way. I am now using javascript/html5 to build the chart. The page now loads in about 13 seconds. I also put the dotted lines as indicator of my high/low set limits so by the chart I can see when it goes over (yes I still get the text alerts). Still playing around to get the right look but so far seems to be much smoother than what I was using. For those who might be wondering I was using jpgraph and now I am using plotly.js

Nice.
13 second is still pretty high. Are you using browser from raspberry pi itself ?

 

[njtiger aquariums]

Nice.
13 second is still pretty high. Are you using browser from raspberry pi itself ?

Yes 13 is still high. No it was my mac refreshing the page. I have other things loading as well. I just ran another test and its now 6sec total but the chart is loaded with in 3.

 

[njtiger aquariums]

So I just changed the chart on my report page. My temp log every 1hr so between the start, Jan 1 2017 and today there about 6,383 data points. My old chart took a good amount of time to load. This new chart load in less then half the time. Also I have to option to dive deep into the chart without reloading the page.