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

[stefanm]

I have an issue with my relay board. Two channels got stuck in "ON" after like 20 seconds of running. Not much current or anything. I assume it's due to micro welding inside the relay or something. And I guess that's what you get when using cheap boards from China...
I'll be switching over to smart plugs instead.
I guess I just wanted to give people a heads up. I'm happy it happened while I was setting the equipment up, otherwise the pump could have been stuck on for hours instead of seconds...

Tap the relay with a screwdriver handle, sometimes the relays stick, I'm going to design a PCB with solid state relays, hopefully, I've had two Chinese boards fail within either a few months or just over a year, right now I have a board made here in India, works well but is so flimsy, holes for standoffs are pin holes, too much crap made for a budget, right now mine is working at least 7 out of 8 channels. Not touching it until I make my own working PCB.

 

[dmolavi]

The only thing I am on the edge of my seat for is fixes to how the dashboard is displaying graphs. if we could get a 3.x that resolve that I would be content.

what fix? my 3.5 dashboard shows graphs just fine (for temp at least)

 

[stefanm]

what fix? my 3.5 dashboard shows graphs just fine (for temp at least)

Mine are fine too, what I would like to see is the lighting on a single graph with the designated colours to give a better picture of the setup.

 

[Zippyfear]

Thanksgiving is approaching, and i am thinking about 4.0 release. It has been very hectic and i have not been able to push a lot of code as expected, lately. I am thinking whether to do a 4.0 release or skip it. Technically we dont have to have a major version release, since there no breaking changes. But historically it has been a tradition to do yearly reef-pi release during thanksgiving, hence the dilemma.

I am thinking of wrapping up some minor bugs and polish documentation and cut a release (4.0 ?) , if we want stick to the tradition. We did have quiet a few changes across the board (new features, drivers, bug fixes etc) encompassing 3->4 development, but most of those have been already incrementally shipped.

Let me know what you all think

I say if you get the graph scaling fixed.. let's call it 4.0!

 

[Mandelstam]

Tap the relay with a screwdriver handle, sometimes the relays stick, I'm going to design a PCB with solid state relays, hopefully, I've had two Chinese boards fail within either a few months or just over a year, right now I have a board made here in India, works well but is so flimsy, holes for standoffs are pin holes, too much crap made for a budget, right now mine is working at least 7 out of 8 channels. Not touching it until I make my own working PCB.

Yes I know I could probably tap them and get them working again but I don't trust them anymore haha! If it was controlling something like a light I could live with the risk but not this...

 

[Mandelstam]

I have a timer issue with a HS-100 smart plug (Kasa).

It works fine manually switching it on and off. But when I set up a timer (turn on for 15 seconds every 4th hour) it does what it's supposed to for the 15 seconds but then gets stuck switching the plug on for like a 1/10 seconds every second.

I'm not sure if it's a Reef-Pi thing or not but it feels like it. Anyone had similar issues?

Here's the timer I set up (currently disabled)

 

[Freccialata]

Thanksgiving is approaching, and i am thinking about 4.0 release. It has been very hectic and i have not been able to push a lot of code as expected, lately. I am thinking whether to do a 4.0 release or skip it. Technically we dont have to have a major version release, since there no breaking changes. But historically it has been a tradition to do yearly reef-pi release during thanksgiving, hence the dilemma.

I am thinking of wrapping up some minor bugs and polish documentation and cut a release (4.0 ?) , if we want stick to the tradition. We did have quiet a few changes across the board (new features, drivers, bug fixes etc) encompassing 3->4 development, but most of those have been already incrementally shipped.

Let me know what you all think

You are the boss... and the boss decides what he wants!!! ;-)

Are you going to integrate tasmota drivers in the next release?

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

@Ranjib as far as the release goes, I guess that's the perk of being the developer and working for free; there's not a person on earth (other than your other half) that can tell you what to do or make any kind of demands.

If we're being honest, I'm a big proponent of "it's ready when it's ready." But I'm also sailing along on 3.4...

 

[dmolavi]

Hmm my Adafruit telemetry isn't working. I enter the key, reload, the feeds appear, but no data in them. I have loads of these errors though...

 

[ChrisNH]

what fix? my 3.5 dashboard shows graphs just fine (for temp at least)

It shows up but there is no scaling. In the past the scale would be between the lowest and highest value. You could really see trends. It used to work with temp, it never worked (to my knowledge) with pH. it would be great to have it working for both.

I am running 3.5

 

[Orbela]

Has anybody extended their temperature probe and Ph probe?
I want to remotely mount my Reef pi and it looks like it might be too short.
Is their any issues or lack of accuracy? I amlooking of adding 5’. Thanks. I searched the thread but didn’t find anything

 

[stefanm]

Has anybody extended their temperature probe and Ph probe?
I want to remotely mount my Reef pi and it looks like it might be too short.
Is their any issues or lack of accuracy? I amlooking of adding 5’. Thanks. I searched the thread but didn’t find anything

You can at least on the temperature sensors, should be fine on the pH also maybe someone else could confirm this?

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

So I'm interested in Reef-Pi, specifically the PWM 10V to be able to control my 2 Icecap Gyre pumps independently without having to buy an Apex or some other expensive equipment.

Reading through the documentation it seems like because I only need 2 channels, i can use the PWM pins on the RPI and dont need to use the PCA9685 board?

Im struggling a bit to understand what the circuit will look like to get 2 channel's of 0-10V i can put a connector on and plug into my Icecap controller. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[stefanm]

I also get that temperature sensor error, though I believe it maybe the sdcard maybe corrupted, I'm not sure if you can fix errors like you can in Windows, the problem exists in android and also windows for me. My error seems to have occurred during a power cut a couple of weeks ago when my battery backup ran out of juice.

I checked again on the laptop, works perfectly without errors, on the android I've checked using Google, chrome and Firefox browsers and the error appears on all 3. I'm going to set up a single feed macro and test it via the laptop with two pumps and a temperature sensor disabled which doesn't work via the phone. Will update later on.

 

[stefanm]

I didn't use the heater at all last winter, got caught out last night, normally the cool nights happen only from mid December to mid January, this winter La Niña is going to make it a cold one, at least my chiller can take a rest...

 

[Ranjib]

So I'm interested in Reef-Pi, specifically the PWM 10V to be able to control my 2 Icecap Gyre pumps independently without having to buy an Apex or some other expensive equipment.

Reading through the documentation it seems like because I only need 2 channels, i can use the PWM pins on the RPI and dont need to use the PCA9685 board?

Im struggling a bit to understand what the circuit will look like to get 2 channel's of 0-10V i can put a connector on and plug into my Icecap controller. Any help would be appreciated.

Does the adafruit lighting controller guide help? it walks through 10v pwm circuit. I have no experience with icecap gyre. Didnt know they support external control

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

Does the adafruit lighting controller guide help? it walks through 10v pwm circuit. I have no experience with icecap gyre. Didnt know they support external control

A bit, but the first sentence is a bit wrong unless im missing something on the parts page.

For one part of the build, we'll extend our previous reef-pi build to control Kessil lights (A360, A80 or A160), Kessil allows controlling the spectrum and intensity of the light using 10V pulse width modulation (PWM). We'll use Raspberry Pi's hardware timers as a 3.3V PWM source which will be then converted to a 10v PWM using an NPN transistor. We'll use a couple of LM2596 modules to generate 5V (for Raspberry Pi) and 10V (for NPN transistor source) power source from a single 12V power source.

Nowhere does it talk about this that im seeing, the schematic is only for using the PCA9685? I dont know much about PWM, but it seems like the Pi Zero W has two independent PWM channels? GPIO 12/18 on Channel 0 and 13/19 for Channel 1? Does Reefpi let you use those or only the SDA/SCL? Since i only need 2 can i just cut the PCA9685 out of the circuit and wire the PWM pins directly into the NPN where the PWM signal came in from the PCA9685?

 

[Mandelstam]

A bit, but the first sentence is a bit wrong unless im missing something on the parts page.


Nowhere does it talk about this that im seeing, the schematic is only for using the PCA9685? I dont know much about PWM, but it seems like the Pi Zero W has two independent PWM channels? GPIO 12/18 on Channel 0 and 13/19 for Channel 1? Does Reefpi let you use those or only the SDA/SCL? Since i only need 2 can i just cut the PCA9685 out of the circuit and wire the PWM pins directly into the NPN where the PWM signal came in from the PCA9685?

Yes you can use those for your PWM signals. I'm doing it for my lights where I had trouble getting them to work properly with the lower frequency PWM from the PCA9685.

 

[b4tn]

So I'm interested in Reef-Pi, specifically the PWM 10V to be able to control my 2 Icecap Gyre pumps independently without having to buy an Apex or some other expensive equipment.

Reading through the documentation it seems like because I only need 2 channels, i can use the PWM pins on the RPI and dont need to use the PCA9685 board?

Im struggling a bit to understand what the circuit will look like to get 2 channel's of 0-10V i can put a connector on and plug into my Icecap controller. Any help would be appreciated.

I used the hardware PWM also. With no issue. I believe it’s pins 18 and 19 if I recall. When you create the jacks in reefpi software you just select reefpi as the driver.

I have a pair of gyres also and always wanted to control them with reefpi but didn’t want to buy the interface module at $124 each x 2. The only issue you may run into is that the modules input is 0-10 volt which is different than 10 volt PWM. I don’t know enough about the modules to know if they need a true 0-10 volt signal or if a PWM signal works. Many have converted the reefpi PWM into 0-10 volts though for lighting control so it is possible.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

I used the hardware PWM also. With no issue. I believe it’s pins 18 and 19 if I recall. When you create the jacks in reefpi software you just select reefpi as the driver.

I have a pair of gyres also and always wanted to control them with reefpi but didn’t want to buy the interface module at $124 each x 2. The only issue you may run into is that the modules input is 0-10 volt which is different than 10 volt PWM. I don’t know enough about the modules to know if they need a true 0-10 volt signal or if a PWM signal works. Many have converted the reefpi PWM into 0-10 volts though for lighting control so it is possible.

Ah, very good point i hadnt thought about that. If anyone that has done a 0-10V steady output with a reefpi i'd be interested. I've found DAC boards like this https://aptinex.com/product/aptinex-dac-module-da1c010bi-digital-to-analog-0-10v-mcp4725-i2c/ but they appear to use I2C SDA/SCL, of which RPI's only have 1 as far as i know so i couldnt control two devices.