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

[Ranjib]

How about a trigger to watch for that in a log and restart apache?

Theres no apache :0) . reef-pi is self contained, runs its own http server/tcp stack , control system etc. Its all inclusive binary. We dont rely on anything, not even glibc. The ui is a single static file served by the http server that runs on your browser. I can update the code to have timeout and retry to selectively enable the API/UI without blocking the controller itself, but im not sure if its worth it.

 

[lmm1967]

Theres no apache :0) . reef-pi is self contained, runs its own http server/tcp stack , control system etc. Its all inclusive binary. We dont rely on anything, not even glibc. The ui is a single static file served by the http server that runs on your browser. I can update the code to have timeout and retry to selectively enable the API/UI without blocking the controller itself, but im not sure if its worth it.

It's not worth it to/for me - shortest path is probably just to hide that option.

For folks with a handle on apache/nginx etc - it does create a little confusion - not a huge deal, just a thought.

 

[marekd1]

Theres no apache :0) . reef-pi is self contained, runs its own http server/tcp stack , control system etc. Its all inclusive binary. We dont rely on anything, not even glibc. The ui is a single static file served by the http server that runs on your browser. I can update the code to have timeout and retry to selectively enable the API/UI without blocking the controller itself, but im not sure if its worth it.

Nice!!!! minimal dependency on external libraries poses less risk for things to break if things change down the road.

 

[lmm1967]

Nice!!!! minimal dependency on external libraries poses less risk for things to break if things change down the road.

It also puts the crux of things like security and configuration on you - rather than being able to rely on the rest of the world. Especially with the source code being completely available to the world. I'm not complaining - just pointing out things to be considered.

There's always a plus and a minus.

 

[crusso1993]

It's a work in progress, but I've got the Github page for Leviathan mostly populated. Got the schematic & pcb layout on there, as well as the draft of my documentation. I'm 42 pages in on that, with plenty to go.

GitHub - Schreiberito/Leviathan: Aquarium Automation Circuit Board

Aquarium Automation Circuit Board. Contribute to Schreiberito/Leviathan development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

I checked out your Leviathan and must admit it appears to hit all the check marks and be pretty cool. I hope it takes off for you!

What will the cost of a Leviathan board?

 

[Ranjib]

I checked out your Leviathan and must admit it appears to hit all the check marks and be pretty cool. I hope it takes off for you!

What will the cost of a Leviathan board?

Yay.. @crusso1993 :hugs:, happy to see your comments here sir, we miss you .

 

[marekd1]

It also puts the crux of things like security and configuration on you - rather than being able to rely on the rest of the world. Especially with the source code being completely available to the world. I'm not complaining - just pointing out things to be considered.

There's always a plus and a minus.

You definitely have the right approach!!! Keep you focus on the Reef-Pi on controlling the reef, exactly on how you are doing it now

 

[crusso1993]

Yay.. @crusso1993 :hugs:, happy to see your comments here sir, we miss you .

Thanks, my friend, and hugs back! As you know, I was away for a while and, by "away", I don't mean prison!

I'm not exactly sure how many pages I missed over the last several months but am aware the upgrades to reef-pi have been exceptional. And so many different premade boards to select from now. That Leviathan from @Schreiber is looking very impressive!

I cannot believe @dmolavi is still tinkering with the DLI powerstrip. I figured he would be on release 2.1 by now. Sheesh! Lol (I'm fairly sure he'll be cursing my return!)

 

[marekd1]

Question - Temp feeding Adafruit - Adafruit tied to IFTTT to send out of temp alerts.

But - I get an email every single time the data is updated in Adafruit.io - anyway to control the rate of notifications in this scenario?

I am assuming this is working like message bus, so handling of the messages would have to happen at Adaruit.io.

This is why I am waiting for MQTT support on Reef-Pi and then use Node Red to handle the filters, additional graphs external control interface etc. There is a video on architecture of the reef-pi on youtube but I am not sure how this was done in the demo with out MQTT support. It would be nice if someone could give some clarity on how this was done. I am not sure if person who created that video is part of this forum. If you have not looked at Node Red have a look, its like magic without huge need of coding for displaying graphs, dashboards logic, etc.

 

[Schreiber]

This is super duper cool @Schreiber . I am so happy to see this board coming into life. I hope this will help the community building reef-pi controller easily. Thank you for all your hard work and perseverance. I recall those initial bumpy days in the beginning. Very inspiring, and thank you for sharing

Thanks It's been a long time coming. Just looked back & it's been over 2 years since my first Reef-Pi post & I can't thank you & everyone in this thread enough for helping me along in my journey! I just hope my simple questions throughout the years will help future people searching for answers!

When I started my first build back in 2017, I would have never imagined I'd be this far along with it. Anything past equipment control seemed scary, lol. Now I can put a full setup together without ever looking at the instructions, minus the url for the Reef-Pi download.

 

[Schreiber]

I checked out your Leviathan and must admit it appears to hit all the check marks and be pretty cool. I hope it takes off for you!

What will the cost of a Leviathan board?

Hey, thanks! I actually missed your comment, but saw Ranjib quote it. Thread has been moving super fast today!

I'm still a few days away from officially selling them, so price isn't totally concrete yet. But I've got the prices I'm pretty settled on listed on the site. There are different "tiers" depending on which features you plan on using. No reason to buy the full board with the added cost of the integrated circuits like the L293D & PCA9685 if you don't plan on using them!

Bare board-$14, for people who want the cheapest build possible & don't mind soldering. It's about half the price of the proto-boards & you don't have to solder any of the tons of board connections! Only will have to solder the components you want to it.

Board w/ Pi & relay headers, float switch ATO, & temperature-$23, simple setup, perfect for freshwater or a fowlr tank.

Board w/ all of the above + optical sensor ATO & dosing-$30, what I'd typically recommend. This covers all the features most people will need or use.

All the features including pH & lighting control-$42, this is for the completionist that wants to use every feature Reef-Pi offers. If I wind up getting better at soldering the PCA9685pw chips, I may be able to justify going down in price a bit, but hand-soldering 28 0.65mm pitch pins is a pretty big chore, plus all the extra resistors that go along with it.

Any of these boards can be "upgraded" at any point, just solder on the components for the new feature you want to add.

 

[lmm1967]

I am assuming this is working like message bus, so handling of the messages would have to happen at Adaruit.io.

This is why I am waiting for MQTT support on Reef-Pi and then use Node Red to handle the filters, additional graphs external control interface etc. There is a video on architecture of the reef-pi on youtube but I am not sure how this was done in the demo with out MQTT support. It would be nice if someone could give some clarity on how this was done. I am not sure if person who created that video is part of this forum. If you have not looked at Node Red have a look, its like magic without huge need of coding for displaying graphs, dashboards logic, etc.

One of the primary reasons I'm not investing anything additional in "the big controller boys" is my data and what options I have with it.

I will say building a dashboard with charts (and enabling alerts based on the specifics from those charts) took me roughly 15 minutes with Adafruit.IO. I actually plan on doing this with an internal grafana server - or something similar.

This is sitting at my desk - not monitoring a tank yet - I would never run my tank at 83.41F. At least not on purpose.

 

[marekd1]

One of the primary reasons I'm not investing anything additional in "the big controller boys" is my data and what options I have with it.

I will say building a dashboard with charts (and enabling alerts based on the specifics from those charts) took me roughly 15 minutes with Adafruit.IO. I actually plan on doing this with an internal grafana server - or something similar.

This is sitting at my desk - not monitoring a tank yet - I would never run my tank at 83.41F. At least not on purpose.

NICE!!!! You and I are one the same wavelength!!!! Never been a big fun of single task boxes. This is why I love micro-controllers.

The old days of building single purpose devices is long gone for me. Almost all of my stuff is custom built around micros.

For me its not just Reef-Pi, I have close to 80 + devices running under Homeseer including a lot of wireless MQTT based sensors. MQTT is the IoT protocol that almost everyone is using now. Having everything converged under Node Red is the final goal nad will be a wonderfull thing . I am also not a big fan of pushing my data to the cloud so having Node Red internal eliminates a lot of that. This is why I did not explore the Adafruit.IO

 

[Ranjib]

I am assuming this is working like message bus, so handling of the messages would have to happen at Adaruit.io.

This is why I am waiting for MQTT support on Reef-Pi and then use Node Red to handle the filters, additional graphs external control interface etc. There is a video on architecture of the reef-pi on youtube but I am not sure how this was done in the demo with out MQTT support. It would be nice if someone could give some clarity on how this was done. I am not sure if person who created that video is part of this forum. If you have not looked at Node Red have a look, its like magic without huge need of coding for displaying graphs, dashboards logic, etc.

I’m yet to think about Mqtt support. I want reef-pi to be not a blocker on general iot ecosystem , which is why mqtt support is important but I have to figure out the specifics on what to support and what features are exposed by this. We have Prometheus support already and I’m pretty sure Prometheus /grafana combo will have the biggest ecosystem out there , far greater than mqtt when it comes to raw metrics /graphing / alerting capabilities .

 

[Ranjib]

NICE!!!! You and I are one the same wavelength!!!! Never been a big fun of single task boxes. This is why I love micro-controllers.

The old days of building single purpose devices is long gone for me. Almost all of my stuff is custom built around micros.

For me its not just Reef-Pi, I have close to 80 + devices running under Homeseer including a lot of wireless MQTT based sensors. MQTT is the IoT protocol that almost everyone is using now. Having everything converged under Node Red is the final goal nad will be a wonderfull thing . I am also not a big fan of pushing my data to the cloud so having Node Red internal eliminates a lot of that. This is why I did not explore the Adafruit.IO

As far as charting /alerting and metrics retention is concerned all of it can be done (and probably in better fashion ) with Prometheus /grafana . Node red definitely has a greater ecosystem and we should definitely do the needful to make sure reef-pi works with it. I’m curious , the current api is not sufficient for this integration?

 

[marekd1]

I’m yet to think about Mqtt support. I want reef-pi to be not a blocker on general iot ecosystem , which is why mqtt support is important but I have to figure out the specifics on what to support and what features are exposed by this. We have Prometheus support already and I’m pretty sure Prometheus /grafana combo will have the biggest ecosystem out there , far greater than mqtt when it comes to raw metrics /graphing / alerting capabilities .

I have not heard of Prometheus and will have to explore this, but also there has to be a way for Prometheus to point to a MQTT broker. Thanks for the info. All I need is just for messages to be pointed to a broker. MQTT is a protocol so its got to be somehow supported with in the Prometheus.

 

[marekd1]

I have not heard of Prometheus and will have to explore this, but also there has to be a way for Prometheus to point to a MQTT broker. Thanks for the info. All I need is just for messages to be pointed to a broker. MQTT is a protocol so its got to be somehow supported with in the Prometheus.

Ranjib,

I am not sure if I am referencing someone else but there is a video youtube "reefberry PI Feb 2019 Pt1 Architecture Overview" is this your design and same as reef-pi? If yes RabbitMQ should be MQTT compliant and able to serve messages to the broker. Can you let me know if this is your architecture?

 

[Phildago]

One more note 50% will not work with DC motors especially under load when they have to rotate the rollers.
70% would be minimum. Play with time interval instead. I am able to dose with as low as 0.2 sec interval at 80%

Okay, will do. My concern was about wear and tear with the force of full speed rotation. I figured going slower would preserve the tubes a bit better.

 

[marekd1]

Okay, will do. My concern was about wear and tear with the force of full speed rotation. I figured going slower would preserve the tubes a bit better.

Hmm, did not consider that. Well I have one that I've used for over 2 years and did not have to replace any tubing. I would say I had bigger wear on the nylon rollers as the motor spindle started to slip than I would have noticed on the silicon tubing. Since then I've used heads that are driven by keyed motor spindle. Not sure if would look at it this way. For me is dose accuracy is key, Silicon tubing is cheap cheap cheap.

 

[burningbaal]

...HS300...

Funny, I was looking earlier today for a good option with multiple smart plugs in one bar and couldn't find any with more than 4, then you posted this...weird.

Fully Agree with Ranjib, went there too many times with no so good results. At the end of the day you do not have enough space to put in relays, you other option then would be to go with solid state. These are typically too low current i.e. 2A. Given that you could be switching heaters I typically do not go any thing less than 10A contact rating just to make sure I do not burn the house. I typically look for something that has enough space to add stuff but these are very rare to find. Another pointer make sure your power bar is fused so you do not exceed the overall rating.

Ya, the amperage is an issue. I also want a set that's normally-on. the ADJ is normally-off, which is smart for a lot of things, but I'd like for a few pieces to default to on when the pi is dead. Things like my return pump and at least one (high-up) powerhead, and since it's in my basement in the PNW, I want the heaters to default to on. I'd probably put my refugium light to normally-on, if I had a skimmer, it would be as well.
The smart plugs aren't exactly normally-on as I understand it, they're more like 'normally-whateverItWasBefore

I also thought about replacing the relays in a new ADJ strip so they're normally-on, but I might just get a ste of relays and build a box with normal outlets, maybe something like these so I also have a manual switch
I also want a manual switch for a few things. like "OH CRAP THE HOB SKIMMER IS POURING SKIMMATE DOWN THE STAND!". I don't have to pull out my phone (or laptop since my s9+ won't load the page), I can just flip a switch