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

[bishoptf]

bs=4

have you tried bs=4mb ? how are you restroring the image? using dd? it should work

Yeah all of bs options and other options doesnt matter, not trying to even write the image, I can mount the .img file easy enough in linux and the rootfs is always unrecognizable and not mountable when using DD, it's not a good image. Now maybe its my card reader etc, but it's really odd since DD should work everytime.

 

[Cristiano Souza]

Hello friends, lately I'm having a problem, I can't find raspberry pi in my country, just importing, and it's getting absurdly expensive, impractical!
Has anyone had or knows any experience installing reef-pi on a non-official raspberry board?
Like banana pi, orange pi, raxda?
Has anyone tried?
It works?

 

[Schreiber]

Hello friends, lately I'm having a problem, I can't find raspberry pi in my country, just importing, and it's getting absurdly expensive, impractical!
Has anyone had or knows any experience installing reef-pi on a non-official raspberry board?
Like banana pi, orange pi, raxda?
Has anyone tried?
It works?

No experience with non-official ones. However, are you looking at all models of Raspberry Pi? It doesn't have to be the latest, most powerful one. Reef-Pi runs just fine on the RPi 3 or even the Zero W.

 

[bishoptf]

Hello friends, lately I'm having a problem, I can't find raspberry pi in my country, just importing, and it's getting absurdly expensive, impractical!
Has anyone had or knows any experience installing reef-pi on a non-official raspberry board?
Like banana pi, orange pi, raxda?
Has anyone tried?
It works?

I've actually done some reading up on various clones and the only one that I think MAY work would be the banna pi, all the others are to different with GPIO etc to work properly. IMHO the main issue is most and I think this applies to a banna pi also, they will not run raspbian. So you have to run a different OS and make sure you configure all the bits and see if it works and I have not seen anyone report out etc. If you do try it please post back with results.

Here is something that may help find you one - https://rpilocator.com/ and then you can check his twitter feed for in stock alerts...

Update...looks like they may have a version of raspbian that will run on a bannapi - http://www.banana-pi.com/ecase_view.asp?id=43

Would have to do some more research, big YMMV...

 

[bishoptf]

No experience with non-official ones. However, are you looking at all models of Raspberry Pi? It doesn't have to be the latest, most powerful one. Reef-Pi runs just fine on the RPi 3 or even the Zero W.

Yeah but even lowly zero w are going over $40 on ebay etc, crazy prices. I have a couple of zero w that I purchased from Microcenter back in the day for $5ea, lol. Crazy times...

 

[Cristiano Souza]

No experience with non-official ones. However, are you looking at all models of Raspberry Pi? It doesn't have to be the latest, most powerful one. Reef-Pi runs just fine on the RPi 3 or even the Zero W.

Yes, I'm looking at all the models, but they are absurdly expensive, especially the zero w, which is the cheapest, but it's very expensive, unfeasible for my project!

 

[Cristiano Souza]

I've actually done some reading up on various clones and the only one that I think MAY work would be the banna pi, all the others are to different with GPIO etc to work properly. IMHO the main issue is most and I think this applies to a banna pi also, they will not run raspbian. So you have to run a different OS and make sure you configure all the bits and see if it works and I have not seen anyone report out etc. If you do try it please post back with results.

Here is something that may help find you one - https://rpilocator.com/ and then you can check his twitter feed for in stock alerts...

Update...looks like they may have a version of raspbian that will run on a bannapi - http://www.banana-pi.com/ecase_view.asp?id=43

Would have to do some more research, big YMMV...

I researched a lot about compatibility and gpio, really the closest thing is the banana pi m2!
I'll get one of these then, it's 1/5 the price of the raspberry!!!
I will do the installation and all possible tests with the reef-pi and report here!

 

[bishoptf]

I have some of the @Michael Lane reef-pi hats that I had made up available for purchase. I still need to test more but they should be available soon. See Mike's original Tindie page for more information - https://www.tindie.com/products/ranthalion/ml-reef-pi-hat-goby/

What I originally used and wanted a spare and a few others for testing etc, just as cheap to make 10 vs 5 etc, so I made some extras. Anyone interested shoot me a PM...

 

[BenB]

Connecting an ADS1015 with a TDS meter is working great! I use the PH tab and get a reading. around 410 is saltwater and around 200 is freshwater (uncalibrated).

Only when I calibrate the values are sticking between 7 and 12, it looks like the calibration part is only created for PH. @Ranjib can you include the possibility for Calibrating TDS in mg/l? The range will be from 0 up to 1200.

 

[Ranjib]

Connecting an ADS1015 with a TDS meter is working great! I use the PH tab and get a reading. around 410 is saltwater and around 200 is freshwater (uncalibrated).

Only when I calibrate the values are sticking between 7 and 12, it looks like the calibration part is only created for PH. @Ranjib can you include the possibility for Calibrating TDS in mg/l? The range will be from 0 up to 1200.

Which version you are running ? I had removed that check in late 2021 https://github.com/reef-pi/reef-pi/commit/2bc795dac6f11165c96fcfe19b46d5d32a129b69

 

[BenB]

Which version you are running ? I had removed that check in late 2021 https://github.com/reef-pi/reef-pi/commit/2bc795dac6f11165c96fcfe19b46d5d32a129b69

Yes, I can remember that there was a change only never tried it before. I am running version 5.1.
I can try the calibration again and show the results. Do you need any logs or other information as well to get a better understanding? And if so how can I find that info on my PI?

 

[Ranjib]

Yes, I can remember that there was a change only never tried it before. I am running version 5.1.
I can try the calibration again and show the results. Do you need any logs or other information as well to get a better understanding? And if so how can I find that info on my PI?

if its not working, just let us know at which step it is not accepting the target values. i can take it from there. we need logs etc, for bugs that are tricky and we can not produce easily

 

[GaryE]

No experience with non-official ones. However, are you looking at all models of Raspberry Pi? It doesn't have to be the latest, most powerful one. Reef-Pi runs just fine on the RPi 3 or even the Zero W.

As a test, I picked up an Orange Pi 2G-IOT ARM Cortex-A5 32bit. Useless...

It will run reefpi, however, there are too many issues and it chokes right out of the gate. No interface, no sensors, nothing..

And this thing is so painfully slow as to be not useful for much other than holding down a few sheets of paper on my desk. And I suspect it won't do that very well.

 

[bishoptf]

As a test, I picked up an Orange Pi 2G-IOT ARM Cortex-A5 32bit. Useless...

It will run reefpi, however, there are too many issues and it chokes right out of the gate. No interface, no sensors, nothing..

And this thing is so painfully slow as to be not useful for much other than holding down a few sheets of paper on my desk. And I suspect it won't do that very well.

Yeah I think the closest one that MAY work is the bannapi ones but then I am not sure they will run raspbian so its a big YMMV. I started poking around but IMHO unless I can load raspbian and configure it the same, using another distro MAY work but then you have to tweak all kinds of things...which is a major pain.

 

[Ranjib]

I was also looking for a decently priced x86, preferably sbc , with hardware interfaces (gpio , pwm ) . Still didn’t find anything that will do the job without significant sticker shock . Pi is still the best in class

 

[Dave's Reef]

It might be a little over kill but my new reef-pi is almost done. Over the years I have had a few SD cards fail so this time around I wanted to try out a SSD and see how that does

 

[bishoptf]

@Ranjib or anyone know how to fix the Kasa strips on a reboot to begin working without a reload of the reef-pi application? What I have found is that when you loose power or reboot, you have to go into configuration and perform a reload in order to sync back up with the Kasa strips, otherwise it's not able to connect. Is there something that we can delay on startup with reef-pi in order to get it working without manually having to reload?

Thanks

 

[bishoptf]

It might be a little over kill but my new reef-pi is almost done. Over the years I have had a few SD cards fail so this time around I wanted to try out a SSD and see how that does

@Dave's Reef I too used to have those issues and found that when I switched to High endurance SD cards I stopped having issues.

Like these -
Transcend
Sandisk
Samsung

I think the transcend MLC is the best but more $$, if you want even better you can find some that are using SLC but even more $$.

YMMV, just thought I would pass it along..

 

[Dave's Reef]

@Dave's Reef I too used to have those issues and found that when I switched to High endurance SD cards I stopped having issues.

Like these -
Transcend
Sandisk
Samsung

I think the transcend MLC is the best but more $$, if you want even better you can find some that are using SLC but even more $$.

YMMV, just thought I would pass it along..

Thanks for the reply I'm not computer expert I have never even heard of high endurance sd cards lol. Hopefully the SSD will do the trick no more SD card at all. If it doesn't ill definitely go back to using an SD card and will be giving a high endurance one a shot thanks

 

[GaryE]

I was also looking for a decently priced x86, preferably sbc , with hardware interfaces (gpio , pwm ) . Still didn’t find anything that will do the job without significant sticker shock . Pi is still the best in class

Im making pretty good progress with porting some of the functions over to Arduino, specifically ESP32 hardware.

I have a little work yet to do on building the json commands to send to the kaza api, but it's moving along. It would go a bit faster if I actually had a clue what I was doing with C/C++.

I was actually thinking of just using one ESP32 or ESP8266 for each function. Yes, the hardware cost can creep that way, however, if only doing one or two temp sensors and one or two lights, it should be pretty manageable.

As for UI, right now it'll be minimal to nonexistent. Everything for now will be configured prior to uploading to the device and output will be done thru a prometheus metrics export. I've gotten pretty good with that in the last few weeks. I have all sort of things in my house spitting out metrics to prometheus.