After watching your videos where you showed the seneye getting almost the exact same readings as the more expensive meters I bought one and have been using that to get par readings in my tank. I've noticed that in the newer videos you never mention it. Did you guys discover some reason to stay away from it as a par meter that I missed?
Seneye as par meter...
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Not at all, they are still viable and cost effective options for reading PAR. To use every one we offer on testing would just be pretty cumbersome, so Ryan is personally partial to the Apogee sensors and that's what we decided to test with here.
Hmm, I guess I haven't seen the same correlation in these videos, but no you cannot directly connect the Seneye to a smart phone. You will need a direct connection to a computer USB, or for a wireless connection use the WiFi Webserver pack.
Billldg
My Gem Tang Is Watching You
It looked like a smart phone, I may be wrong, but good to know I can't and therefore won't buy the seneye, if I buy one it will have to be the apogeeHmm, I guess I haven't seen the same correlation in these videos, but no you cannot directly connect the Seneye to a smart phone. You will need a direct connection to a computer USB, or for a wireless connection use the WiFi Webserver pack.
Thanks
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Cyricdark
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I have mine connected to like a five-year-old Netbook that I bought for 20 bucks off of Craigslist, works great plus I can dial in on Skype every so often and actually get a look at my tank if I need to when I'm out of town
dopey
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It is not for everyone, but you can get it working with Linux as well. You will not be able to use any of their dashboards, but you can get the readings from the device and do what you want with them afterwards.
Z3speed4me
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I like my seneye, just wish they made a nice PAR reading mount/stick like apogee does; using an algea scraper with zip ties just feels so ghetto rigged.
Anyone have 3d printing skills to make a mold for the unit?!
Anyone have 3d printing skills to make a mold for the unit?!
pdiehm
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I made a series of poles out of 3/4" PVC. I have a shorter pole for the upper part of the tank, and a longer pole when I go to the bottom. I ziptie the seneye to a piece of PVC to an elbow (think it's a 45). works really well.
Z3speed4me
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That's my point though, I just hate the way it looks... everything else with my tank is clean, neat, wire managed, etc... then my PAR meter looks like something slapped together in 5 mins and it bothers the small semi-OCD side of me
Cyricdark
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They're supposed to be releasing some different versions of the Seneye sometime soon a planted tank one that measure CO2 one that measures alkalinity and then another one that is all about the par meter supposed to have a way better sensor and stuff like that be nice if that one would actually come with some kind of wand or whatever for taking measurements
Hey @randyBRS any idea when those other versions are getting released?
Hey @randyBRS any idea when those other versions are getting released?
We asked for samples quite some time ago for the Seneye Spectra and Seneye Coral, but it doesn't look like we got a response. Outside of that, they don't really share more details with us as to where they are with these or expected release dates.
Cyricdark
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Wow you'd think they'd communicate better with someone that's advertised the original seneye like you guys did. I would never have even heard of it much less Bought one if it wasn't for BRS TV.
I can't speak directly to the communication channels, which they may have responded back to the request (not my department).
I guess what I meant was, we had put in a request for samples but haven't received them. It's quite possible that they just aren't ready yet. Fingers crossed though!
Cyricdark
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I keep hoping they come out with a more advanced web server that has a couple of BNC connectors on it with the seneye Coral one for the alkalinity output and one for the pH that would be so awesome. Then you can plug it into whatever controller you wanted I would gladly buy those slides every 3 months to know that they're accurate and don't need calibratedI can't speak directly to the communication channels, which they may have responded back to the request (not my department).
I guess what I meant was, we had put in a request for samples but haven't received them. It's quite possible that they just aren't ready yet. Fingers crossed though!
dopey
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Sure. Seneye does publish a public SUD driver for the device, with a couple sample programs. I started with the C program, which once compiled gives you a 'menu based' type interaction. You can basically hit a key and get a refresh of the data. If that's all you want to do, then you can just compile and use that. Seneye's repo is here: https://github.com/seneye/SUDDriver
Additionally I had found a single blog post before I purchased Seneye claiming to have some working python code. That code is here: https://github.com/dhallgb/Seneye-MQTT
Unfortunately for me the python code already made did *not* work. I chased a bit trying to understand if it was my hardware(rpi), or what. Unfortunately the menu based example code in C didn't fit my needs -- I wanted to extract the values then pass them onward to a webserver of my own. The example C didn't produce an output or let it be run 'unattended' to capture values from it.
Initially I hacked away at the C code to try and make something print to stdout, during that journey I understood the issues with the original python code. In the end I ended up writing my own python code, largely borrowing blocks from the Seneye-MQTT. The end result was something I could cron, which would generate the values and pass them on to the webserver.
You can find what I came up with here: https://github.com/jpyth/seneye-python it is not going to 'just work', as I removed the hardcoded stuff to send to my webserver. If you have python experience though, it should be fairly straight forward to modify what the script does with the value it retrieves.
At the moment it only retrieves the PH, ammonia, temp, and slide status. I did not try to capture the PAR value. As the reality is the device is tucked in the back of the tank 99% of the time, so storing a PAR value of that area is pointless.
If I need to use it as a PAR meter i'd either use the Linux C program, or use a windows PC as others would.
My setup is a raspberry pi, connected via USB to the Seneye. Each our it collects PH, Ammonia, Temp, Slide status and send its to my webserver which stores/visualizes the data for me. I have other IOT setup to let me record other parameters via voice(nitrate, nitrite, alk, salinity, etc) which is also then sent to the webserver. I end up with a customized set of graphs/param metrics in one place. I'm pretty happy with it.
Should also note I still use a windows PC when swapping slides. I tried to get dev access but unfortunately the email thread to acquire that failed, if I understood right on their site it is possible to get access to change slides via your own code, but they have to grant you access. I never got that.
