Been busy with the documentation work recently. I am hell lotta slower with documentation compared to coding :-/ . Probably because I find it super boring. To keep myself motivated, I was toying around with different power supply options ( a result of all my recent readings around different Power Supply Units, aka PSUs).
Till now, all my builds had dedicated wall wart adapters for each of different power requirements. For example, the very fist build had an AC socket, which then powered a 5v 2.4A wall wart and another 12v 2a wall wart. Those, in turn, would power pi or peristaltic pumps, all hidden inside the hiding. This increased the size of the controller housing, but was frugal. The second and third build has connectors for each of those power supply, so the controller housing is smaller, but the wall wart are outside and I have three wires only to power different part.
Other than having wall wart ugliness, there was another problem with using 12v power supply for kessil, which expect 10v . I had to configure reef-pi to limit pwm output to not exceed 10v (though originally the code was used to avoid flickering at low pwm values). ,.. overall I learned pretty quickly that PSU is not solved, and my readings reflected the same from other makers..
Anyhow.. long story short I am trying out couple of new ways of powering reef-pi electronics, and till now, I absolutely love the new way..
The first one is a voltage regulator, lm2596. This bad boy is step down regulator that can regulate 3-40v. It can be configured to generate any voltage from 3 to 40v as long as the input is 1.5 volt higher. These are inexpensive and can be sourced in bunches with preconfigured capacitors/potentiometers , like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GJ0SC2C/ , 6 of them for 12$. I am using couple of these to power a kessil controller. The controller has only one 12v barrel jack input, and inside the housing, one of the lm2596 generates 5v for the pi & pca9685 board, and the other generates 10v for feeding the npn transistors. This drastically simplify the design, avoids wall wart, adds the benefit of a regulated power supply. Too much awesome. I am so excited about this, that I am thinking of adding them in recommended Bill of materials. These can easily be configured to generate DC power for almost all reef related equipment, like dc power heads or LED bulbs directly . This chip can regulate upto 120Watt (40 volt x 3 amp)
The second one is a AC to DC converted module with dual output , 5v and 12v.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LENMPUO/
This one eliminates the need of a any dedicated dc power source and useful where the controller already has AC power, like power bars /relays. I can see one of this coupled with couple of lm2596 module can fully replace my all in one controllers for the pico. .. excited time
The only disadvantage of these modules is they require the user/builder to do some sort of soldering :-/ . But I think thatsa ok assumption, for at least some of the DIYers,, right ?
I have done that already, I didn't like the two button interface that I shipped with 0.9.1, though it made things more intuitive, its somewhat space consuming and redundant. So, four days ago I made another update in the equipment UI. In the new UI, equipment wont have on/off buttons, there will be only one button with equipment name as the label, and if that button is green ,. its on, if not its off. There is no more red color buttons, there is no more on/off text toggling. I hope you all like it, i for one, love this one 
