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

[Ranjib]

@Ranjib what would you think of having a reef-pi Facebook group? It makes for a nice walk to have little conversations tracking in parallel. I'd be happy to help set it up and moderate

Go for it. Keep it respectful and inclusive. I am not too engaged but I’ll definitely drop by occasionally.

 

[Ranjib]

The Slack link in github throws:

This invite link is no longer active.

Oops. I’ll update it tonight.

 

[burningbaal]

Go for it. Keep it respectful and inclusive. I am not too engaged but I’ll definitely drop by occasionally.

OK, it barely exists, I'll bulk it up later. but for all who want, please join!

Facebook

www.facebook.com

I'll add @Ranjib as a moderator as soon as you join and any others that make sense

 

[jhoop]

Having trouble with the ATO setting.
I am using a CQR Robot sensor. It has a 3.3 volt and 5 volt switch on it. It does trigger when wet or dry. Works fine for a while. Then it will just turn on the pump fill until it is completely submerged. And the equipment light is green. When I pull it out of the water and go back in looks like it is working OK.
It is intermittent.

I am using Pi Version 3.0. Any ideas ? I use a small ATO source so I have not had a big disaster yet.

 

[Phildago]

So today I thought I was finally going to get my reef pi running my doser, but when it was hooked up I couldn't get a pwm signal.

I followed the directions to the best of my understanding, and am using Michael lanes goby HAT. Everything else is working, but I just get absolutely nothing when I set my pwm pins. Nothing on my multimeter and nothing at the motor.

Does anyone have any ideas for where I can start on this for troubleshooting?

I'm at a loss. Im using the default values for the PCA9685 driver

 

[kdx7214]

I've been reading through this monster thread and am excited by the idea! I've ordered my first raspberry pi (a 4B) and a few things. I don't currently have a tank as we're in the market for buying a house, but have a few questions for planning purposes.

1. Will this work with non kasa-brand smart outlets? Something similar to
2. If I use a Kasa brand strip that has power monitoring, can I set conditions for this? For instance, if the heater is supposed to be on but no power is being used, send an alert. That would be a huge help for equipment failure.

Current plans for tank include a 300-500 gallon tank (depending on available floor space in whatever house we get). It will be plumbed through to the basement where there will be something like 500-700 gallons of refugium, filtration, frag tanks, and the like.

From what I've read reef-pi will do exactly what I need, and I'm an inveterate tinkerer so it's right up my alley, although to be fair I've not done much with electronics since high school (when I was more active in ham radio). The main needs I see for my setup will be:

• Temperature sensing with heater control based on results
• pH sensing with control of either a reactor or dosing mechanism (haven't decided yet).
• Auto top off of tank
• Lighting control in all it's various and confusing forms
• Power head control (possibly with wave maker functionality)
• Feeding mode to shut off pumps for 30 mins and skimmer for another hour beyond that
• API support so I can kludge together a UI for quick reading and touch screen control
• Dosing of additives using dosing pumps
• Ability to use an emergency shutoff switch to stop all pumps (i.e. toggle switch or the like to override everything else)

Cheers!

 

[thoeffe]

After having had updated the reef pi I am now receiving issues getting to the connections tab or the log tab. Any idea whats up?

 

[Phildago]

After having had updated the reef pi I am now receiving issues getting to the connections tab or the log tab. Any idea whats up?

That was happening to me earlier today. I just cleared the history and rebooted reef pi. It seems to be an issue where you have connections stored, but they're not able to be retrieved.


sudo systemctl stop reef-pi.service
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/reef-pi/reef-pi.db
sudo systemctl start reef-pi.servic

 

[thoeffe]

That was happening to me earlier today. I just cleared the history and rebooted reef pi. It seems to be an issue where you have connections stored, but they're not able to be retrieved.


sudo systemctl stop reef-pi.service
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/reef-pi/reef-pi.db
sudo systemctl start reef-pi.servic

do you know if there is a way to access to settings so I can change the port from port 80 I have another server running on 80 and just reset now I cant get to the reef pi web ui. I would rather not have to turn the other server off.

 

[marekd1]

do you know if there is a way to access to settings so I can change the port from port 80 I have another server running on 80 and just reset now I cant get to the reef pi web ui. I would rather not have to turn the other server off.

at the settings page change the 80 to whatever you want. You will need to reboot the reef-pi. Do not change the 0.0.0.0 see the posts few pages back for more info.

BTW you can have more than web server running on port 80 as long as it is not on the same ip.

 

[Schreiber]

Having trouble with the ATO setting.
I am using a CQR Robot sensor. It has a 3.3 volt and 5 volt switch on it. It does trigger when wet or dry. Works fine for a while. Then it will just turn on the pump fill until it is completely submerged. And the equipment light is green. When I pull it out of the water and go back in looks like it is working OK.
It is intermittent.

I am using Pi Version 3.0. Any ideas ? I use a small ATO source so I have not had a big disaster yet.

Personally, I've never really liked the optical sensors. They're very finicky & I've had builds do the exact same. I've never truly been able to pin down what causes it, but one of my theories is that the level of light it receives & detects as a trigger depends on the light available when it receives power.

Try turning your setup on with the sensor in the lighting condition it will be installed in. There may be an issue with it getting "room light", then being placed in a dark area under the sump, something with trigger levels being set upon initialization possibly.

 

[Schreiber]

So today I thought I was finally going to get my reef pi running my doser, but when it was hooked up I couldn't get a pwm signal.

I followed the directions to the best of my understanding, and am using Michael lanes goby HAT. Everything else is working, but I just get absolutely nothing when I set my pwm pins. Nothing on my multimeter and nothing at the motor.

Does anyone have any ideas for where I can start on this for troubleshooting?

I'm at a loss. Im using the default values for the PCA9685 driver

What do you see when you run the command "sudo i2cdetect -y 1" in terminal?

 

[Schreiber]

I've been reading through this monster thread and am excited by the idea! I've ordered my first raspberry pi (a 4B) and a few things. I don't currently have a tank as we're in the market for buying a house, but have a few questions for planning purposes.

1. Will this work with non kasa-brand smart outlets? Something similar to
2. If I use a Kasa brand strip that has power monitoring, can I set conditions for this? For instance, if the heater is supposed to be on but no power is being used, send an alert. That would be a huge help for equipment failure.

Current plans for tank include a 300-500 gallon tank (depending on available floor space in whatever house we get). It will be plumbed through to the basement where there will be something like 500-700 gallons of refugium, filtration, frag tanks, and the like.

From what I've read reef-pi will do exactly what I need, and I'm an inveterate tinkerer so it's right up my alley, although to be fair I've not done much with electronics since high school (when I was more active in ham radio). The main needs I see for my setup will be:

• Temperature sensing with heater control based on results
• pH sensing with control of either a reactor or dosing mechanism (haven't decided yet).
• Auto top off of tank
• Lighting control in all it's various and confusing forms
• Power head control (possibly with wave maker functionality)
• Feeding mode to shut off pumps for 30 mins and skimmer for another hour beyond that
• API support so I can kludge together a UI for quick reading and touch screen control
• Dosing of additives using dosing pumps
• Ability to use an emergency shutoff switch to stop all pumps (i.e. toggle switch or the like to override everything else)

Cheers!

Sounds like you're thinking ahead!!

I can't help with the smart outlets, as I typically just build my own outlets powered by relays. But as far as all the features you listed:

• Temperature sensing with heater control based on results
  • Super easy & covered in the temperature controller guide on adafruit
• pH sensing with control of either a reactor or dosing mechanism (haven't decided yet).
  • Super easy & covered in the pH monitoring guide on adafruit
• Auto top off of tank
  • "" water level controller guide
• Lighting control in all it's various and confusing forms
  • "" light controller guide
• Power head control (possibly with wave maker functionality)
  • Power head control is theoretically possible, but it's not really baked into Reef-Pi natively. If you're wanting a simple on/off, you can just set it on a schedule in the equipment control. If you're wanting to ramp up & down based on voltage, I'd say the easiest way to do that would to be set it up in Reef-Pi as a "dosing pump". Though these may not be the best work-arounds, as you'd probably have to schedule each ramp-up & down... @Ranjib , any ideas?
• Feeding mode to shut off pumps for 30 mins and skimmer for another hour beyond that
  • Super easy, there's a macro tab that allows you to select groups of equipment to turn off/on for a specified amount of time that you can trigger with a single button.
• API support so I can kludge together a UI for quick reading and touch screen control
  • I haven't messed around much with the API, but from what I've seen, there's great documentation on the API.
• Dosing of additives using dosing pumps
  • "' dosing controller guide.
• Ability to use an emergency shutoff switch to stop all pumps (i.e. toggle switch or the like to override everything else)
  • If you're wanting a software emergency switch, just set up a macro to turn off all pumps & such.
  • If you're wanting a hardware switch, it'd be pretty easy to install a power switch on your setup, like I've got below. Or, just pull the plug!

Glad you found the thread & hope it helps with what sounds like an awesome future setup!

 

[thoeffe]

at the settings page change the 80 to whatever you want. You will need to reboot the reef-pi. Do not change the 0.0.0.0 see the posts few pages back for more info.

BTW you can have more than web server running on port 80 as long as it is not on the same ip.

Ya I understand how to switch it and had done so in the past but when I updated the v3 both my webserver running on lighttpd and reef-pi we're on the same port 80 again so I couldn't access reef pi UI to change it back. So I was wondering if there was a way that I could access a config file for reef pi to configure outside of the web UI.

 

[b4tn]

Does reef-pi have the ability to use a third party SSL certificate? If I go through the process of creating certificate and installing on the raspberry will reefpi automatically use it?

 

[MangroveCorals]

Oops. I’ll update it tonight.

I keep missing the invite link lol Mind linking it again and I’ll get into the discussion thread as well as follow up with GitHub and direct me to the priority coding / documentation , etc.

 

[Ranjib]

Does reef-pi have the ability to use a third party SSL certificate? If I go through the process of creating certificate and installing on the raspberry will reefpi automatically use it?

Yes.. generally the way it works is you enable the https option under settings section (and update the address to 0.0.0.0:443) and then reload reef-pi, and reef-pi creates a self signed certificate. After that you can just replace the certificate with the certs you have and reload reef-pi and that should be it. Let me know if you get into any issues.. happy to help

 

[Ranjib]

Ya I understand how to switch it and had done so in the past but when I updated the v3 both my webserver running on lighttpd and reef-pi we're on the same port 80 again so I couldn't access reef pi UI to change it back. So I was wondering if there was a way that I could access a config file for reef pi to configure outside of the web UI.

you can update the address to specify any port you want, for example this configuration makes reef-pi to run on port 8080, this is how we do it in development

 

[Ranjib]

do you know if there is a way to access to settings so I can change the port from port 80 I have another server running on 80 and just reset now I cant get to the reef pi web ui. I would rather not have to turn the other server off.

let us know if you need any further help with this. This is possible as we have explained in other posts.

 

[Ranjib]

@Ranjib what would you think of having a reef-pi Facebook group? It makes for a nice walk to have little conversations tracking in parallel. I'd be happy to help set it up and moderate

I just sent a request to join the group.