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

[robsworld78]

Confirmed.. Connected directly to the JST connector plugged in here with 3.3v from the pi, ground and PWM0 on the pca9685 and setup the driver and jack as normal.. Am able to control the brightness of this light via PWM from reef-pi.

Also, as seen in the photo, I connected directly to the board with the pot on it, it worked controlling that way as well, however, the pot had to be turned all the way down to get control of the light. Max the pot out and it went full bright. That might not be a bad thing...

Next step will be to drill a hole in the case and mount an aviation connector for my control wire. With a 4 conductor cable, I should have no trouble controlling both the white and blue channels on this light.

Next up I need to build a mount..

I love to see lights that are easy to hack, thanks for sharing.

 

[GaryE]

I love to see lights that are easy to hack, thanks for sharing.

I was waffling for days between this light and a Viparspecta. I have seen others hack that one and it seemed to be a bit more involved. I'm very happy this one didn't really require much. I think the hardest part will be making the cable to connect from the aviation connectors to the JST connectors.

I don't see this being more than a 1/2 hour job to complete. And that's for 2 lights. It'll probably take longer and be more a pain in the butt to build the mounts for these lights.

 

[robsworld78]

I was waffling for days between this light and a Viparspecta. I have seen others hack that one and it seemed to be a bit more involved. I'm very happy this one didn't really require much. I think the hardest part will be making the cable to connect from the aviation connectors to the JST connectors.

I don't see this being more than a 1/2 hour job to complete. And that's for 2 lights. It'll probably take longer and be more a pain in the butt to build the mounts for these lights.

Yeah this is almost too good to be true, the driver even tells the color code and they give a spare JST for each channel, wow. I also like the fact you can over ride with knob, great for maintenance if you want to turn up the lights. Hope you don't mind but I'm downloading your excellent pics.

 

[GaryE]

Yeah this is almost too good to be true, the driver even tells the color code and they give a spare JST for each channel, wow. I also like the fact you can over ride with knob, great for maintenance if you want to turn up the lights. Hope you don't mind but I'm downloading your excellent pics.

I don't mind at all.. If you want more pics, I'd be happy to provide you with whatever you want.. They used a lot of screws, but this light is pretty easy to tear down.

 

[robsworld78]

I don't mind at all.. If you want more pics, I'd be happy to provide you with whatever you want.. They used a lot of screws, but this light is pretty easy to tear down.

Thanks, I've been meaning to put something together listing compatible lights and how to connect to PWM output. If you have more pics of it finished or anything special to remove to access those JST's but these are more than enough to get the job done.

 

[bishoptf]

Looking for input regarding ATO and check frequency, I have nano tanks and using floats I am trying to minimize salinity swings and think that my longer check frequency leads to a greater swing. I'm a newb for sure and learning more and more and one thing that I am wanting to accomplish is to get my ATO better dialed in. It works fine, multiple floats but Ive noticed depending on where the water level is on the float and evaporation before it kicks on the salinity will go up so I'd like to minimize the swing. Here is what I am planning on doing which is probably obvious but set the water level just above where it will turn on the ATO.

The second part is the check frequency for reefpi, I would assume I would want a low check frequency to that it keeps the water level as close to the same as possible, thereby minimizing swings. I am thinking of going with a 5s check frequency but was looking for any suggestions.

Thanks

 

[bishoptf]

Here is what I have been playing with concerning grafana, I have notes and will post all of my information when I am closer to getting things laid out but here is a screen shot of what I have been playing with concerning equipment on and off times for Dosing and UV.

Close up of my Kalk Dosing graph:

Any questions let me know.

 

[Martin Lowry]

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9090/x/metrics

Thanks, I managed to get it running. I have a basic Dashboard with temps and PH so far.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Confirmed.. Connected directly to the JST connector plugged in here with 3.3v from the pi, ground and PWM0 on the pca9685 and setup the driver and jack as normal.. Am able to control the brightness of this light via PWM from reef-pi.

Also, as seen in the photo, I connected directly to the board with the pot on it, it worked controlling that way as well, however, the pot had to be turned all the way down to get control of the light. Max the pot out and it went full bright. That might not be a bad thing...

Next step will be to drill a hole in the case and mount an aviation connector for my control wire. With a 4 conductor cable, I should have no trouble controlling both the white and blue channels on this light.

Next up I need to build a mount..

Does this dim to 0 via PWM without flickering?

 

[GaryE]

Does this dim to 0 via PWM without flickering?

Yes it does.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Yes it does.

Nice. Might be a good alternative if you don't have ML viparspectra boards; and especially so if you're changing up the layout.

IMO, the spectrum of the Wills is a little lacking, compared to Viparspectras (too much red, no violet, no blue, too heavy on warm white (3000K). But, should be easy enough to swap them out assuming they didn't go thr way of Mars Aqua and use the 3030 package LEDs instead of thr ol' egg type "epistar" diodes.

 

[GaryE]

Nice. Might be a good alternative if you don't have ML viparspectra boards; and especially so if you're changing up the layout.

IMO, the spectrum of the Wills is a little lacking, compared to Viparspectras (too much red, no violet, no blue, too heavy on warm white (3000K). But, should be easy enough to swap them out assuming they didn't go thr way of Mars Aqua and use the 3030 package LEDs instead of thr ol' egg type "epistar" diodes.

Yeah, they'll be very simple to swap out. I'll be swapping out some of the reds for sure. Need to add some 410s and I have some 365s that I may toss in for fun...

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Yeah, they'll be very simple to swap out. I'll be swapping out some of the reds for sure. Need to add some 410s and I have some 365s that I may toss in for fun...

I'm down for tinkering, but I've never seen 365nm over a reef tank, just reptile/grow tanks. 410 is solid.

 

[Ranjib]

Has anyone else experienced a blank screen when trying to access their reef pi with certain devices? All my apple devices work fine but I'm getting a blank screen on a Nook color HD and an ARM based Microsoft surface running windows RT. I'm getting a DNS error when using the .local address on the surface and nook and then I get a blank screen when I use the ip address.

If possible file a ticket. I know there are cases where JavaScript /browser incompatibility can cause this. We should know where are those spots and at least call out the tested platforms (chrome , Firefox versions etc)

 

[Ranjib]

Here is what I have been playing with concerning grafana, I have notes and will post all of my information when I am closer to getting things laid out but here is a screen shot of what I have been playing with concerning equipment on and off times for Dosing and UV.

Close up of my Kalk Dosing graph:

Any questions let me know.

Looking good. I’ll share my dashboards for reference.
once we settle on a convention for the metrics, I think we will be able to ready made grafana dashboards (hosted in grafana.com) that users can just import straight from grafana ui, that way they don’t have to learn promql etc., or at least have some reference /example to look at

 

[Ranjib]

Looking for input regarding ATO and check frequency, I have nano tanks and using floats I am trying to minimize salinity swings and think that my longer check frequency leads to a greater swing. I'm a newb for sure and learning more and more and one thing that I am wanting to accomplish is to get my ATO better dialed in. It works fine, multiple floats but Ive noticed depending on where the water level is on the float and evaporation before it kicks on the salinity will go up so I'd like to minimize the swing. Here is what I am planning on doing which is probably obvious but set the water level just above where it will turn on the ATO.

The second part is the check frequency for reefpi, I would assume I would want a low check frequency to that it keeps the water level as close to the same as possible, thereby minimizing swings. I am thinking of going with a 5s check frequency but was looking for any suggestions.

Thanks

What ato pump you are using ? I recommend a 12v peristaltic pump and 10s check frequency

 

[Des Westcott]

Looking for input regarding ATO and check frequency, I have nano tanks and using floats I am trying to minimize salinity swings and think that my longer check frequency leads to a greater swing. I'm a newb for sure and learning more and more and one thing that I am wanting to accomplish is to get my ATO better dialed in. It works fine, multiple floats but Ive noticed depending on where the water level is on the float and evaporation before it kicks on the salinity will go up so I'd like to minimize the swing. Here is what I am planning on doing which is probably obvious but set the water level just above where it will turn on the ATO.

The second part is the check frequency for reefpi, I would assume I would want a low check frequency to that it keeps the water level as close to the same as possible, thereby minimizing swings. I am thinking of going with a 5s check frequency but was looking for any suggestions.

Thanks

One thing I have done which I think works well, is as an ATO pump, I use a peristaltic pump which does two things :

1. It acts as a non-return valve ensuring no kalk back-siphons from my kalk stirrer into the RODI storage bucket.
2. It is a 12V pump that I run off 5V, so it adds very slowly. My belief is that this slow addition helps raise salinity (and pH in my case) slower than a higher volume pump dumping the top-up in quickly.

My check period is 10 seconds because of the slow addition rate.

 

[stefanm]

Can one of the electronics guru's advice please?

The attached image is the adafruit servo bonnet (PCA9685) for the Pi zero, I want to redraw the PCB as only four channels and remove the other 12 channels. The area on the right that is labelled "I2C ADDRESS" A5-A0 doesn't appear necessary for my intented use, which is a 4 channel reef-pi light controller. So can I just remove the pads and tracks?

 

[robsworld78]

Can one of the electronics guru's advice please?

The attached image is the adafruit servo bonnet (PCA9685) for the Pi zero, I want to redraw the PCB as only four channels and remove the other 12 channels. The area on the right that is labelled "I2C ADDRESS" A5-A0 doesn't appear necessary for my intented use, which is a 4 channel reef-pi light controller. So can I just remove the pads and tracks?

I can help with this one but no guru. You can remove the solder pads but not the resistors. The resistors are always connected directly to pins on pca9685 via the pads. The solder pads let 5v through and pull up the line changing the address. So the bottom traces going to solder pads from pca9685 would need to be re-routed to the resistors and then add 5v to whatever lines you want to change the address, the many combinations is why it has so many addresses.

Here's the schematic, you can see how it's wired.

https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/assets/000/036/269/original/adafruit_products_schem.png?1475858980

 

[robsworld78]

double post...