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

[Ranjib]

So tested with the bucked down 12v supply (buck module is rated for 3A), so no issue of under powered supply.
Same results.
The next test was to remove the other 5v supply and source power directly from the pi.
All relays fired!
Only issue was that the individual LEDs on the board (one for each circuit) would not light up. One did once, but then not again. I don't really care about those since they are buried in a box anyway.
So all I can think is that there was difference with respect to GND causing the issue. Though they all have the same GND on the AC side.

Now to decide if I want to pull the 2.5A 5V supply and put it internal to the APC box, then run power to relay board and pi in parallel off of that, or pull power through pi pins.

Did you use the UBEC from adafruit? https://www.adafruit.com/product/1385
I am equally torn on the whole PSU front. My goal is to get three 5v 1amp DC, three 12v 1 amp dc and 8 AC 110 v power out from a single AC power in, with surge & gfci protection. As of now I have tried several combinations of different adaptors and power outlets .. they do the job, and safe. But they look hideous, takes more space.. good starting point, but we need a good PSU for sure..

 

[Ranjib]

I didn't go through the whole thread coz initially I saw a few wires than I fainted. This thing is out of my league. Do we have a dummys guide for building the pi which I can't eat?
Ranjib I hail from your native country.

India?
I am glad you are considering reef-pi,
what about taking these steps:
1) Let us know what all you want solve with this, so that we can spot out any gremlins
2) Start reading this: https://reef-pi.github.io/build-guides/power/
3) Order the initial set of electronics, keep us in the loop, before you finalize anything
4) Keep asking questions,, you dont have to read the thread to build it. the docs are for that, I am improving them, but still its easier to go via docs and ask question here..

 

[Ranjib]

It can be a little overwhelming at first. The good thing is that it is very modular, and you can add as you go.
Really all you need to get started is the pi, a power supply and a microsd card.

What features are you most interested in?

Ditto

 

[HM3105]

All relays charged, no voltage warning

 

[Ryan115]

What is the acceptable time window for # 2 ? last 2 hours? or last 24 hours or a whole week of temperature history?. Your guess is correct this will come at a cost of increased memory footprint (I am yet to quantify that), also I am kinda leaning towards using adafruit.io for longer historical trends

Can you explain a bit more about the ~.85 hrs offset ?

I would agree that the adafruit feed is likely better for this, though everyone may not set that up, 24hrs or 2 days would likely be sufficient. Then again, the amount of data that we are talking about is minuscule.
The .85 hrs was to get moon phase close to a 28 day cycle (24/28=.857).
Didnt know if you could have a chosen ramp start a little later each day, but then loop around past 0000 hours.

Did you use the UBEC from adafruit? https://www.adafruit.com/product/1385
I am equally torn on the whole PSU front. My goal is to get three 5v 1amp DC, three 12v 1 amp dc and 8 AC 110 v power out from a single AC power in, with surge & gfci protection. As of now I have tried several combinations of different adaptors and power outlets .. they do the job, and safe. But they look hideous, takes more space.. good starting point, but we need a good PSU for sure..

Not the UBEC, though I have one at work that I have used to play with a peltier. I used a buck module like this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KPRB8L...t=&hvlocphy=9014055&hvtargid=pla-350410716408

I guess we need to figure what our total power draw could be from all planned attached devices.
I have been thinking about getting a big 5v supply (~30W+) to house inside of the APC and have jacks coming out for other devices.

All relays charged, no voltage warning

Awesome, I may just have to start sourcing my 5v from the pi then.

 

[Ranjib]

Thanks that fixed it. now I can see it on the AIO feed here at work.

I just wanted to add that I'll be working on automatic feed creation and validation around telemetry which will make the user experience lot better in next release,

 

[AshwinRavi]

Evening good folks,
My raspbian had froze around 10:59am this morning and I had no idea. I just caught this few minutes ago and turns out both heater and cooler were on, when it froze, so nothing got too out of hand luckily. here's my status after a restart and log, not sure what caused this. Also, I have no data on telemetry to show for between now and this morning. just wanted to share in case this has happened to anyone before.

Ranjib, let me know if you need any additional data to trouble shoot if you go down that path.

 

[Cary]

Evening good folks,
My raspbian had froze around 10:59am this morning and I had no idea. I just caught this few minutes ago and turns out both heater and cooler were on, when it froze, so nothing got too out of hand luckily. here's my status after a restart and log, not sure what caused this. Also, I have no data on telemetry to show for between now and this morning. just wanted to share in case this has happened to anyone before.

Ranjib, let me know if you need any additional data to trouble shoot if you go down that path.

Dang that is not good. How do your tank inhabitants look?

 

[AshwinRavi]

they look good, tank temperature had stayed at 78, I have digital read outs not connected to pi hooked up to the tank and I spent good part of my evening (2 hours) staring at the tank, so, I kmow they are okay. just got lost on the tank, that I forgot to check on pi

 

[Ranjib]

Evening good folks,
My raspbian had froze around 10:59am this morning and I had no idea. I just caught this few minutes ago and turns out both heater and cooler were on, when it froze, so nothing got too out of hand luckily. here's my status after a restart and log, not sure what caused this. Also, I have no data on telemetry to show for between now and this morning. just wanted to share in case this has happened to anyone before.

Ranjib, let me know if you need any additional data to trouble shoot if you go down that path.

This is not good. Even if raspbian froze , that does not explain whybheater and cooler both were on. Can you first update your reef/pi to latest version . May be tonight ? I am cutting a new release with a bunch of fixes.
There are some external hardware watchdog that we can use to reboot pi when it’s frozen, but this is the first time I am hearing this...

 

[AshwinRavi]

Another thing that I just never got around to fix, full disclosure, please call me an idiot and help me fix this if I am wrong, I totally won't mind.

I have the relay hooked up and under equipment I have the outlets assigned. The two main outlets of concern are, outlet AC2 and AC8.

Their GPIO layout is as follows,

Under equipment I have the heater assigned to AC8 (GPIO21) and fans attached to AC2 (GPIO 19).

Under control, I have them assigned as shown below.

since the temperature is 78.46, as per the logic I should have the heater turned off and fans on correct?

but for the life of me, I couldn't get it to work, the only way I get it to work and control properly is if I switch the heater to fans and cooler to heater under this section, (as shown below) then it works flawlessly as I did just that before leaving town for 10 days and it worked fine, as I kept remote logging into pi to check.

sorry for the extremely long post, hope to resolve this soon will everyone's help.

 

[AshwinRavi]

This is not good. Even if raspbian froze , that does not explain whybheater and cooler both were on. Can you first update your reef/pi to latest version . May be tonight ? I am cutting a new release with a bunch of fixes.
There are some external hardware watchdog that we can use to reboot pi when it’s frozen, but this is the first time I am hearing this...

will update it tonight. thank you sir.

 

[Ranjib]

This is not good. Even if raspbian froze , that does not explain whybheater and cooler both were on. Can you first update your reef/pi to latest version . May be tonight ? I am cutting a new release with a bunch of fixes.
There are some external hardware watchdog that we can use to reboot pi when it’s frozen, but this is the first time I am hearing this...

This : http://blog.ricardoarturocabral.com/2013/01/auto-reboot-hung-raspberry-pi-using-on.html?m=1

 

[Bronc]

You'll need receptacles and relay for the equipment controls : https://reef-pi.github.io/build-guides/power/
For the temperature probe you'll need a ds18b20 probe and a 3.7k resistor: https://reef-pi.github.io/build-guides/temperature/ (this guide is still work in progress)

Received the Pi today and got it up and running pretty easily and have Reef-Pi installed. I’ll figure out how many receptacles I need tomorrow and get that equipment along with the temperature probe stuff ordered. (also got VLC Viewer installed).

 

[Ryan115]

Another thing that I just never got around to fix, full disclosure, please call me an idiot and help me fix this if I am wrong, I totally won't mind.

I have the relay hooked up and under equipment I have the outlets assigned. The two main outlets of concern are, outlet AC2 and AC8.

Their GPIO layout is as follows,

Under equipment I have the heater assigned to AC8 (GPIO21) and fans attached to AC2 (GPIO 19).

Under control, I have them assigned as shown below.

since the temperature is 78.46, as per the logic I should have the heater turned off and fans on correct?

but for the life of me, I couldn't get it to work, the only way I get it to work and control properly is if I switch the heater to fans and cooler to heater under this section, (as shown below) then it works flawlessly as I did just that before leaving town for 10 days and it worked fine, as I kept remote logging into pi to check.

sorry for the extremely long post, hope to resolve this soon will everyone's help.

This sounds similar to an issue I have with the one timer I have running, I had to tell it to turn off when I want it to turn on, and vice-versa. Mine are connected to the NC pins of the relay.
I think reef-pi expects things connect to NO on the relay, at least in the timer/temp section
Currently, when the timer is set to turn off, the GPIO is pulled low (0) so relay goes to default state (NC). When timer turns on, GPIO goes high (1) and connects the relay to the NO poll.
In the equipment tab I am interpreting whatever the button is showing to be the current state of the outlet. However these seems backwards from the timers. If the button says On and I click on it, it changes to Off, and the log shows that the pin was pulled high.

 

[Ryan115]

Received the Pi today and got it up and running pretty easily and have Reef-Pi installed. I’ll figure out how many receptacles I need tomorrow and get that equipment along with the temperature probe stuff ordered. (also got VLC Viewer installed).

I would install Putty as well, on your other computer. I use it more often now than I do VNC, mostly for viewing logs and activity.

 

[Ryan115]

Evening good folks,
My raspbian had froze around 10:59am this morning and I had no idea. I just caught this few minutes ago and turns out both heater and cooler were on, when it froze, so nothing got too out of hand luckily. here's my status after a restart and log, not sure what caused this. Also, I have no data on telemetry to show for between now and this morning. just wanted to share in case this has happened to anyone before.

Ranjib, let me know if you need any additional data to trouble shoot if you go down that path.

That is scary to have something fail on. I never thought much about it before (though never had a controller before), but Ryan on the BRSTV about heaters made a good point. If you have the heaters thermostat held slightly higher than you are keeping the tank temp, if something fails with the controller, the heater will stop on its own, maybe 0.5-1 deg higher than normal.

 

[AshwinRavi]

That is scary to have something fail on. I never thought much about it before (though never had a controller before), but Ryan on the BRSTV about heaters made a good point. If you have the heaters thermostat held slightly higher than you are keeping the tank temp, if something fails with the controller, the heater will stop on its own, maybe 0.5-1 deg higher than normal.

yes, I saw that too and since then I have the same. amazing how something so simple, is so effective!

 

[Ryan115]

yes, I saw that too and since then I have the same. amazing how something so simple, is so effective!

I always love redundancy, just trying to beat Murphy's Law.

 

[TherealplexiG]

What features are you most interested in?

If only I could control the wife. Lol
On a serious note, I'll shortly post the necessities.