reef-pi :: An opensource reef tank controller based on Raspberry Pi.

[brian.badge]

I have reefpi running with pi 3b+ and a leviathan board. I am setting up an auto water change, but have been having relay issues. Tonight my fill pump, tunze DC pump, stuck on and so did my empty pump, tunze as well. After unplugging them the fill relay shows 120v on or off, but I can here it trying to switch. The empty relay works as expected without the pump.

I have heard advice about snupper and flyback etc, but don't have a clear understanding of what they mean or how they apply to what I am seeing.

I am staring to wish I bought an off the shelf water change device rather than doing it this way. Can anyone help?

 

[robsworld78]

I have reefpi running with pi 3b+ and a leviathan board. I am setting up an auto water change, but have been having relay issues. Tonight my fill pump, tunze DC pump, stuck on and so did my empty pump, tunze as well. After unplugging them the fill relay shows 120v on or off, but I can here it trying to switch. The empty relay works as expected without the pump.

I have heard advice about snupper and flyback etc, but don't have a clear understanding of what they mean or how they apply to what I am seeing.

I am staring to wish I bought an off the shelf water change device rather than doing it this way. Can anyone help?

A little confused about using a tunze DC pump but you read 120v, that sounds like AC?

What do you use for power bar? If Arduino module there is no snubber so you should have 0v or 120v, if you have a snubber inline you will read 120v off, you need a load on it to drop to 0v.

 

[robsworld78]

Ive been away for awhile. Wondering if @Ranjib ever got it where steppers could be used for dosing? want to build a doser, but want the precision that a stepper would deliever.

He hasn't officially but maybe working on it behind the scenes.

 

[brian.badge]

A little confused about using a tunze DC pump but you read 120v, that sounds like AC?

What do you use for power bar? If Arduino module there is no snubber so you should have 0v or 120v, if you have a snubber inline you will read 120v off, you need a load on it to drop to 0v.

120v out of the relay and then there is a ac to dc converter on the pumps plug which supplies the pump with 12v DC. The problem is one pump stuck on while connected to the pi, but its relay appears to work fine when the pump is disconnected. The other pump the relay is stuck on no matter what.

 

[Mikeneedsahobby]

120v out of the relay and then there is a ac to dc converter on the pumps plug which supplies the pump with 12v DC. The problem is one pump stuck on while connected to the pi, but its relay appears to work fine when the pump is disconnected. The other pump the relay is stuck on no matter what.

Check your relay signal side return or ground wires. I’m had relays stick open when the signal wire return side didn’t all go to a common ground in the controller. It would work with okay one relay at a time but when two came on then one of the relays would stick open.

 

[Schreiber]

I have reefpi running with pi 3b+ and a leviathan board. I am setting up an auto water change, but have been having relay issues. Tonight my fill pump, tunze DC pump, stuck on and so did my empty pump, tunze as well. After unplugging them the fill relay shows 120v on or off, but I can here it trying to switch. The empty relay works as expected without the pump.

I have heard advice about snupper and flyback etc, but don't have a clear understanding of what they mean or how they apply to what I am seeing.

I am staring to wish I bought an off the shelf water change device rather than doing it this way. Can anyone help?

Hmm, interesting. Just so I'm clear, you're saying the empty relay works without the pump? So if you just have the empty socket, it outputs 120V when toggled on & 0V when toggled off?

When you say you can hear it trying to switch, what do you mean? Have you measured to see if you're getting the 3.3V out from that GPIO pin?

 

[brian.badge]

Hmm, interesting. Just so I'm clear, you're saying the empty relay works without the pump? So if you just have the empty socket, it outputs 120V when toggled on & 0V when toggled off?

When you say you can hear it trying to switch, what do you mean? Have you measured to see if you're getting the 3.3V out from that GPIO pin?

Relay 1 was stuck on with pump connected, but worked fine with pump disconnected.

Relay 2 no longer works and is stuck on. I hear it try to switch but compared to the others its muffled and quiet. I have not checked the pin.

 

[brian.badge]

Relay 1 was stuck on with pump connected, but worked fine with pump disconnected.

Relay 2 no longer works and is stuck on. I hear it try to switch but compared to the others its muffled and quiet. I have not checked the pin.

What pin should I check?

 

[Schreiber]

What pin should I check?

Depends exactly how you set it up. Whichever pin is powering your second relay would be the one to look into.

Though, by the sound of things, i'd say it's almost certainly a relay issue if you hear it trying to switch. Sounds like it's getting the signal, but it's just stuck.

 

[brian.badge]

Depends exactly how you set it up. Whichever pin is powering your second relay would be the one to look into.

Though, by the sound of things, i'd say it's almost certainly a relay issue if you hear it trying to switch. Sounds like it's getting the signal, but it's just stuck.

Ok I follow so it would be the jumper connecting to the relay board for that relay. Does a stuck relay = replacing the relay board?

Should I be doing anything different to protect the relay or make them more reliable? I am concerned that they may not be reliable enough for water changes.

 

[brian.badge]

Ok I follow so it would be the jumper connecting to the relay board for that relay. Does a stuck relay = replacing the relay board?

Should I be doing anything different to protect the relay or make them more reliable? I am concerned that they may not be reliable enough for water changes.

So I am mostly guessing here based on limited research. The relay that won't turn off, but tries to may have
1. plates welded together
2. Broken spring
3. Too much residual voltage

Is there a way to diagnose?

 

[Ranjib]

Hi all one question about adafruit feeds. Ihave free acount with 10 feeds. Ok since I updated to 4.1 I get feeds about leds witch I dont need, I need feed about ph. So how can I delete led feeds and manually add ph feed? Anyone has a clue? Thank you! Or so I need to delete leds add ph and when feeds are shown add leds again to reefpi? Thats lot of work..

I dont have a good solution to this. What you end up doing?

 

[Ranjib]

Ive been away for awhile. Wondering if @Ranjib ever got it where steppers could be used for dosing? want to build a doser, but want the precision that a stepper would deliever.

Nope. But this is on my list, just didnt get the time.

 

[Ranjib]

Can anyone provide any details for getting ATO to display properly in grafana, I thought I had it working but it is not showing run time correctly. It shows when its run but always shows the same run time vs the actually run time.

Thanks...

Just specify the metric name, for example, my ato usage is emitted as ato_pico1_usage , where the ato name is pico1. You can skip the {job="pico1-app"} bit. I have 5 different things that is running ato, it is there to distinguish among them.

 

[Mwdsonny]

Nope. But this is on my list, just didnt get the time.

anything I can do to help? I have parts and can test code, Just dont know how to write code.

 

[bishoptf]

Just specify the metric name, for example, my ato usage is emitted as ato_pico1_usage , where the ato name is pico1. You can skip the {job="pico1-app"} bit. I have 5 different things that is running ato, it is there to distinguish among them.

Thanks yeah I understand that much the problem I am having is the scale I believe, I have it in seconds and looks like you are using milliseconds? I dunno something is not right since it always just shows my check frequency of 5 sec. I know the graph on the front page is correct showing how long it runs but not in prometheus and grafana. I'm on the older code so it could be something related to that but I have basically the same set up that you have above and its not that...

Here is a new panel with the defaults notice the always the 5 seconds, maybe I dont have grafana configured to scrape prometheus or prometheus set up correctly...what are you using for a scrape interval from grafana? I was using the default 15s, should that be something else?

Let me know what you think, I'm just trying to reproduce the graphs that are on the main dashboard.

 

[bishoptf]

Looks like it's a bug in the version that I am using which I believe is 3.3, but I changed the check frequency to 7 and the next time it topped of it registered 7 instead of the actually fill time.

I will look into upgrading to the latest version, just always hate to do it when things are running stable...

 

[bishoptf]

Updated to 4.1 and its reporting correctly the usage but it doesn't reset to 0 once it runs, the reading stays at the last value. I thought it would read the value and then reset to 0 like its doing on the ATO graph, I'm obviously missing something.

Here is the journalctl entries...

Feb 09 12:55:57 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:55:57 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt  usage: 10
Feb 09 12:56:02 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:02 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt state: 1
Feb 09 12:56:02 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:02 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt  usage: 10
Feb 09 12:56:05 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:05 API Request:'   GET /api/atos/3/usage' from: 10.99.99.146:52618
Feb 09 12:56:07 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:07 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt state: 1
Feb 09 12:56:07 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:07 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt  usage: 10
Feb 09 12:56:12 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:12 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt state: 1
Feb 09 12:56:12 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:12 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt  usage: 10
Feb 09 12:56:15 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:15 API Request:'   GET /api/atos/3/usage' from: 10.99.99.146:52632
Feb 09 12:56:17 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:17 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt state: 1
Feb 09 12:56:17 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:17 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt  usage: 10
Feb 09 12:56:22 octopi reef-pi[17454]: 2021/02/09 12:56:22 ato-subsystem: sensor: ato-dt state: 1

Looks like at the top of the hour it reset to 0, scratching my head now since I am not sure how this is supposed to work.

 

[brian.badge]

So I am mostly guessing here based on limited research. The relay that won't turn off, but tries to may have
1. plates welded together
2. Broken spring
3. Too much residual voltage

Is there a way to diagnose?

I shut the controller down, wiggled some wires, and then rebooted. I an certain I didn't do anything, but now every relay works. I suspect something is going on that I don't understand. I am lost here and don't know what to do to get my relays working reliably....help. For now I will add my equipment again and test.

 

[GaryE]

Thanks, I've been meaning to put something together listing compatible lights and how to connect to PWM output. If you have more pics of it finished or anything special to remove to access those JST's but these are more than enough to get the job done.

I ended up removing the pot from the equation. Direct connect from the reef pi to the pen input on the lights.

One of the lights didn't play nicely with the pots in the mix.