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

Ranjib · Oct 20, 2017

marspeed said:
how about normally on and normally off some people don't know what NC AND NO mean

I would assume "normally open" and "normally closed" equally cryptic for novice users. Or may be we are over thinking, this is a DIY project, so users have to go through all these learning as part of the build process.

Ranjib · Oct 20, 2017

marspeed said:
it 10:30 in NJ see you all tomarrow

Sleep tight

Ryan115 · Oct 20, 2017

Ranjib said:
I would assume "normally open" and "normally closed" equally cryptic for novice users. Or may be we are over thinking, this is a DIY project, so users have to go through all these learning as part of the build process.

I would agree with this. If they are wiring up their own power controller, they would hopefully have come across NO/NC. It is also labeled that way on most of the relay boards.
I think it would be fine to have the check box say NC, but maybe spell it out more in the documentation.

marspeed · Oct 21, 2017

Ryan115 said:
I would agree with this. If they are wiring up their own power controller, they would hopefully have come across NO/NC. It is also labeled that way on most of the relay boards.
I think it would be fine to have the check box say NC, but maybe spell it out more in the documentation.

I would agree with Ryan

Somnifac · Oct 22, 2017

@Ranjib

With the 0.7 release, when I open in with Chrome I just get a line across the top of my screen. This is true on both my laptop and my phone. If I open the web interface with Firefox on either device everything seems to work OK. I wanted to report that.

Onward.

I have my relay board, some jumper wires and the software all installed. So, I wired up one of the relays. It's wired to GPIO 12 (Pin 32). I also wire a ground to the relay board (Pin 6) and 5V (Pin 2). I get a light on the channel indicator on the relay board.

I then go into reef-pi and add an outlet on Pin 32. Then add a piece of test equipment on that outlet so I can try toggling it. Equipment added, click the On/Off button to toggle and nothing happens. No relay fire, no change in light. Hmmm...

So, pull out my multimeter and start reading things. I'm getting power to the relay (4.85V), but regardless of the state of the outlet (On/Off) I get no voltage across the GPIO 12 (Pin 32). I can change to other GPIO pins with the same result.

My question is this: Should I be seeing voltage changes at the pins when the state is toggled? I was assuming "Yes," which is what has me confused.

Cary · Oct 22, 2017

I had to reload the page on my phone and log in with reef-pi reef-pi on the system tab and displayed the reef pi. Still on my phone, I entered a new id and password and was able to display reef pi.

Now, my computer (since it is a different device) I had to do the same thing, because i could not log in with the new password and id. But...I still have not gotten my computer to accept the id a password.

If I figure it out I will update the thread

Somnifac · Oct 22, 2017

@Ranjib

With regard to the blank screen, that was a stubborn cache issue it seemed.

Now, my issue switching the relay. When I first installed the software, I went into System and unchecked everything other than Equipment, since that's all I'm playing with. This included removing the check from Devmode. I hit "Update" and even rebooted.

I then define an outlet on pin 37. I go to the Equipment tab (and even though all other tabs, other than system, have been disabled, they still show up) and define something on the outlet I set up. When I click on the On/Off button and look at the log it says:

Code:

Oct 22 14:45:22 reef-pi reef-pi[737]: 2017/10/22 14:45:22 Dev mode on. Skipping: 37 On: true
Oct 22 14:45:23 reef-pi reef-pi[737]: 2017/10/22 14:45:23 Dev mode on. Skipping: 37 On: false
Oct 22 14:45:24 reef-pi reef-pi[737]: 2017/10/22 14:45:24 Dev mode on. Skipping: 37 On: true
Oct 22 14:45:25 reef-pi reef-pi[737]: 2017/10/22 14:45:25 Dev mode on. Skipping: 37 On: false

I uninstall 0.7 and installed 0.6 to see if there was a persistence issue on Devmode in 0.7 and the same thing continued to happen.

Thoughts?

Ranjib · Oct 22, 2017

Somnifac said:
@Ranjib

With the 0.7 release, when I open in with Chrome I just get a line across the top of my screen. This is true on both my laptop and my phone. If I open the web interface with Firefox on either device everything seems to work OK. I wanted to report that.

Onward.

I have my relay board, some jumper wires and the software all installed. So, I wired up one of the relays. It's wired to GPIO 12 (Pin 32). I also wire a ground to the relay board (Pin 6) and 5V (Pin 2). I get a light on the channel indicator on the relay board.

I then go into reef-pi and add an outlet on Pin 32. Then add a piece of test equipment on that outlet so I can try toggling it. Equipment added, click the On/Off button to toggle and nothing happens. No relay fire, no change in light. Hmmm...

So, pull out my multimeter and start reading things. I'm getting power to the relay (4.85V), but regardless of the state of the outlet (On/Off) I get no voltage across the GPIO 12 (Pin 32). I can change to other GPIO pins with the same result.

My question is this: Should I be seeing voltage changes at the pins when the state is toggled? I was assuming "Yes," which is what has me confused.

Do a hard refresh of the browser page , I think it’s using the old cached pages. Generally it’s f5 or Ctl+Shift+f5
Use gpio PIN number while creating outlets not serial number . For example pin32 is gpio 12, so you have to use 12 in reef-pi ui as PIN number

Ranjib · Oct 22, 2017

Cary said:
I had to reload the page on my phone and log in with reef-pi reef-pi on the system tab and displayed the reef pi. Still on my phone, I entered a new id and password and was able to display reef pi.

Now, my computer (since it is a different device) I had to do the same thing, because i could not log in with the new password and id. But...I still have not gotten my computer to accept the id a password.

If I figure it out I will update the thread

If you updat username /password , then make sure you reload reef-pi to take that into effect

Ranjib · Oct 22, 2017

Somnifac said:
@Ranjib

With regard to the blank screen, that was a stubborn cache issue it seemed.

Now, my issue switching the relay. When I first installed the software, I went into System and unchecked everything other than Equipment, since that's all I'm playing with. This included removing the check from Devmode. I hit "Update" and even rebooted.

I then define an outlet on pin 37. I go to the Equipment tab (and even though all other tabs, other than system, have been disabled, they still show up) and define something on the outlet I set up. When I click on the On/Off button and look at the log it says:

Code:

Oct 22 14:45:22 reef-pi reef-pi[737]: 2017/10/22 14:45:22 Dev mode on. Skipping: 37 On: true Oct 22 14:45:23 reef-pi reef-pi[737]: 2017/10/22 14:45:23 Dev mode on. Skipping: 37 On: false Oct 22 14:45:24 reef-pi reef-pi[737]: 2017/10/22 14:45:24 Dev mode on. Skipping: 37 On: true Oct 22 14:45:25 reef-pi reef-pi[737]: 2017/10/22 14:45:25 Dev mode on. Skipping: 37 On: false

I uninstall 0.7 and installed 0.6 to see if there was a persistence issue on Devmode in 0.7 and the same thing continued to happen.

Thoughts?

PIN number is wrong :-( . Use gpio PIN number not serial number
https://goo.gl/images/bebZsc

Somnifac · Oct 22, 2017

Have it working. I'm just not very smart sometimes.

UI Suggestions:

It would be nice if configurable items were editable, rather than needing to delete and re-add them.
When displayed, anything configured (outlets, equipment, jacks, etc), it would be nice for them to be displayed in a sortable table. i.e. able to be sorted by state, by name, by outlet they're connected to, etc.

Somnifac · Oct 22, 2017

Also, I've figured out a reasonable method for getting the Pi running on WiFi entirely headless. No need to plug it into anything other than power. I'll write something up.

Ranjib · Oct 22, 2017

Somnifac said:
Have it working. I'm just not very smart sometimes.

UI Suggestions:

It would be nice if configurable items were editable, rather than needing to delete and re-add them.
When displayed, anything configured (outlets, equipment, jacks, etc), it would be nice for them to be displayed in a sortable table. i.e. able to be sorted by state, by name, by outlet they're connected to, etc.

Editing or updating existing outlet and equipment is possible via api, I have not had time to build the ui. I’ll make it a thing for 2.0

Ranjib · Oct 22, 2017

Somnifac said:
Also, I've figured out a reasonable method for getting the Pi running on WiFi entirely headless. No need to plug it into anything other than power. I'll write something up.

That will be awesome. If you want, you can add content to this one as well: https://reef-pi.github.io/additional-documentation/remote/

Ranjib · Oct 22, 2017

I am working on implementing notification in reef-pi. The idea is to use it for anything wrong, including system error or equipment failures etc.
I hope to get basic email notification done before 1.0, and wondering what are the most important things we would like to get alert for?
My current list is:
- Temperature outside a range
- Equipment failures (not every single of them, but a consolidated list of failures in a period, if present)
- ATO pump running too long
Anything else ?

Somnifac · Oct 22, 2017

Notifications would be perfect once leak detection capabilities were added. That one would be pretty high on the list of "emergency situations".

Ranjib · Oct 22, 2017

Somnifac said:
Notifications would be perfect once leak detection capabilities were added. That one would be pretty high on the list of "emergency situations".

I am of the assumption that we need it even for just ATO or temperature controller. Everything fails :-/ , and pretty often, from the perspective of a reef tank's life time

Ranjib · Oct 22, 2017

by the way, it wont be hard to support leak detectors... I should add this in my post 1.0 todo list.

Ryan115 · Oct 23, 2017

If support starts for multiple float switches, then I would think those would warrant an alert as well. Though I can see those having to be more customization by the user, depending on where the extra switches are (overflow, sump, ATO tank, skimmer , etc...).

Along with warnings would reminders be an option. Such as clean pumps, refill dosers/ato, etc...
I am thinking it would be more for the less frequent maintenance.