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

brandon clow · Jan 13, 2019

I am only using the PCA for the PWM side of things. All of the other wires are running from pi to PCA. I should be running the PCA input ground to the Mean Well PSU as well?

brandon clow · Jan 13, 2019

I see the picture did not attach

brandon clow · Jan 13, 2019

Well I added a ground into the pca circuit to my meanwell psu and that really made a big difference!

Bigtrout · Jan 13, 2019

brandon clow said:
I am only using the PCA for the PWM side of things. All of the other wires are running from pi to PCA. I should be running the PCA input ground to the Mean Well PSU as well?

No you need a wire from the PCA pwm output ground to the light PSU ground.
What you are doing is making sure both grounds are common to each other so voltages have a common reference point. The meanwell driver takes +3.3v on the pwm pin to work. + 3.3v above its GND. When you send a seperate signal to the LDD that signal is referenced to what? Its not referenced to anything. By connecting the PCA output GND to the GND of the light PSU that +3.3 volts is now referenced to the LDD gnd.
Without a common reference point the PWM was a "floating" signal and may have been your problem.

brandon clow · Jan 13, 2019

Bigtrout said:
No you need a wire from the PCA pwm output ground to the light PSU ground.
What you are doing is making sure both grounds are common to each other so voltages have a common reference point. The meanwell driver takes +3.3v on the pwm pin to work. + 3.3v above its GND. When you send a seperate signal to the LDD that signal is referenced to what? Its not referenced to anything. By connecting the PCA output GND to the GND of the light PSU that +3.3 volts is now referenced to the LDD gnd.
Without a common reference point the PWM was a "floating" signal and may have been your problem.

I did this and it works great, no more issue and it seems the general output is now increased by quite a bit per my par meter/visually! Thanks!

Bigtrout · Jan 13, 2019

No problem, glad I could help. This is why reef pi is awesome, great software, and good support if you run into trouble.

Bigtrout · Jan 13, 2019

Im good on the electronic end of things with reef pi, but I do have a software question. Can reef pi be setup to interface to IFFT or home assistant or the like?
Would be awesome to tell Alexa, im going to feed my fish, and have a macro started to shut off my filters for a time...etc

b4tn · Jan 13, 2019

Bigtrout said:
Im good on the electronic end of things with reef pi, but I do have a software question. Can reef pi be setup to interface to IFFT or home assistant or the like?
Would be awesome to tell Alexa, im going to feed my fish, and have a macro started to shut off my filters for a time...etc

Now that would be cool!

tatties · Jan 13, 2019

could someone with no coding experience do this reefpi? sounds interesting.

b4tn · Jan 13, 2019

I’m having an issue with macros. Specifically turning off times. I need to switch off my power heads as part of a feeding routine. Since all my power heads are on timers if I select to turn it off it just comes back on after 30 seconds or so. I built a macro to turn off all my power head timers then turn them back on after 5 seconds to test and when I hit run nothing happens. Does this function not work yet?

Ranjib · Jan 14, 2019

tatties said:
could someone with no coding experience do this reefpi? sounds interesting.

Yes. You need some familiarity with computer, but no programming required

Ranjib · Jan 14, 2019

Bigtrout said:
Im good on the electronic end of things with reef pi, but I do have a software question. Can reef pi be setup to interface to IFFT or home assistant or the like?
Would be awesome to tell Alexa, im going to feed my fish, and have a macro started to shut off my filters for a time...etc

There’s api , so you can do pretty much anything you want. I know there are reef-pi google home assistant integration out there

rushbattle · Jan 14, 2019

Ranjib said:
Yes. You need some familiarity with computer, but no programming required

I wouldn’t know where to even begin coding something very simple, but I use reef-pi pretty easily.

Ranjib · Jan 14, 2019

b4tn said:
I’m having an issue with macros. Specifically turning off times. I need to switch off my power heads as part of a feeding routine. Since all my power heads are on timers if I select to turn it off it just comes back on after 30 seconds or so. I built a macro to turn off all my power head timers then turn them back on after 5 seconds to test and when I hit run nothing happens. Does this function not work yet?

I think it’s a bug. Let me take a look

dmolavi · Jan 14, 2019

Ranjib said:
There’s api , so you can do pretty much anything you want. I know there are reef-pi google home assistant integration out there

There is? Where? I use Google Home and it would be cool to have this (maybe...assuming my kids don't get carried away and shut everything off with it).

dmolavi · Jan 14, 2019

tatties said:
could someone with no coding experience do this reefpi? sounds interesting.

You don't need any programming knowledge unless you want to modify the existing software baseline to support custom hardware (this is my case). Otherwise, as long as you're comfortable with hardware, you should be good to go.

Ranjib · Jan 14, 2019

dmolavi said:
There is? Where? I use Google Home and it would be cool to have this (maybe...assuming my kids don't get carried away and shut everything off with it).

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/reef-pi-home-assistant-build.525856/ by @sfgabe

Diamond1 · Jan 14, 2019

@Ranjib I don't know if anyone has mentioned this or if you have thought about this for a future release but I was looking around the Adafruit site and came across this TSL2561 light meter chip.
https://www.adafruit.com/product/439
Might be nice to look at for a future module.
It uses I2c interface and 3-5v power/logic control.

Would be nice to have a built in light meter that can give Lux value that could be converted into par. It could give a baseline at the water surface to get a better idea of how much light is getting into a tank and for those of us using t5 lights, it could give a heads up on reduced light output indicating time for a bulb change.

Bigtrout · Jan 14, 2019

Diamond1 said:
@Ranjib I don't know if anyone has mentioned this or if you have thought about this for a future release but I was looking around the Adafruit site and came across this TSL2561 light meter chip.
https://www.adafruit.com/product/439
Might be nice to look at for a future module.
It uses I2c interface and 3-5v power/logic control.

Would be nice to have a built in light meter that can give Lux value that could be converted into par. It could give a baseline at the water surface to get a better idea of how much light is getting into a tank and for those of us using t5 lights, it could give a heads up on reduced light output indicating time for a bulb change.

That one only goes to 40,000 lux, reef lights may saturate it.
This one goes to 120,000 lux, still uses i2c may work better for intense reef lighting. Its based on the VEML7700 chip
https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1620.html

Im not a coder but the code to read the DFrobot sensor looks fairly simple its in this wiki:
https://www.dfrobot.com/wiki/index.php/Gravity:_I2C_VEML7700_Ambient_Light_Sensor_SKU:_SEN0228

I migjt add that the DFRobot Gravity P channel mosfet boards I receieved were very well made quality PCBs

Diamond1 · Jan 14, 2019

Bigtrout said:
That one only goes to 40,000 lux, reef lights may saturate it.
This one goes to 120,000 lux, still uses i2c may work better for intense reef lighting. Its based on the VEML7700 chip
https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1620.html

Im not a coder but the code to read the DFrobot sensor looks fairly simple its in this wiki:
https://www.dfrobot.com/wiki/index.php/Gravity:_I2C_VEML7700_Ambient_Light_Sensor_SKU:_SEN0228

That does look like a better option for reef tank lights.