Mine don't care much about running the tank but do like going to the coral and fish store to help pick out new additions! It's a different time now! Being 42, you didn't have a cell phone in your pocket at 8 years old just to walk home from school! It's hard to get them interested when they know nothing about patience, it's about instant gratification. I'm certainly not saying I walked to school 10 miles, uphill both ways, in the snow, barefooted but I'm different from my parents generation too. Heck, at 12, we had to rely on <eek> books, books that may have been 20 years old with outdated info to raise our fish. Now we have great forums like R2R (shameless suck up to the mods!)
Just when I think I am almost done I change my mind. After much debate I decided to add light control to my build as well. So I ordered some more parts today. I will be controlling two ocean revive t247 lights. Since the built in drivers do not allow dimming below 10% I will need to turn them on and off with relays. But it will be nice to have them synced and times in reef-pi. The built in PWM outputs are taken already for the dosers so I ordered a PCA9685, some relays, and some other assorted connectors. I have already turned on the light control in reef-pi and have been playing with the schedule.
I have been putting it off and this power module box has been my least favorite part of the build so far. I don’t know why but these stiff romex wires are a pain. I’m using braided wire from the relays to the plugs so it’s easier to take the lid on and off as needed. I’m just waiting for my power connector to get here and I can finish the power module.
The white power wire is tying all the silver connectors on the outlets together. The bare wire ties all the green connectors together. And the black hot wires are braided and will go to the either the normally closed or normally open space on the relays.
Looking good! There is nothing wrong with Romex, but yes, it's a pain to use in tight quarters. I used stranded wire stripped out of computer power cords, made a much more flexible harness.Just when I think I am almost done I change my mind. After much debate I decided to add light control to my build as well. So I ordered some more parts today. I will be controlling two ocean revive t247 lights. Since the built in drivers do not allow dimming below 10% I will need to turn them on and off with relays. But it will be nice to have them synced and times in reef-pi. The built in PWM outputs are taken already for the dosers so I ordered a PCA9685, some relays, and some other assorted connectors. I have already turned on the light control in reef-pi and have been playing with the schedule.
I have been putting it off and this power module box has been my least favorite part of the build so far. I don’t know why but these stiff romex wires are a pain. I’m using braided wire from the relays to the plugs so it’s easier to take the lid on and off as needed. I’m just waiting for my power connector to get here and I can finish the power module.
The white power wire is tying all the silver connectors on the outlets together. The bare wire ties all the green connectors together. And the black hot wires are braided and will go to the either the normally closed or normally open space on the relays.
Looking good.
I have been messing around with my lights today to make sure that everything is going to work as I want it to.
I bought 12v relays for switching them on/off but I had some issues with them. They suck a lot of power and caused some weird issues with the pwm signals from the pi. They seemed to cause the pwm signal to flicker.
I swapped them out for 5v and the flickering stopped. Not 100% sure if the flickering was cause by the increased voltage draw of the 12 v relays drawn straight from the pi hat 12v rail, but it may be something to consider when you pick relays for light control.
Since your going to set things up with the PCA 9685 you may not have the same issue. I'm running my relays straight from the pis GPIO pins.
Here's the lighting schedule I'm testing my lights with right now.
I have the timers for the blue channel set at 8AM to turn the relay on, then it ramps to a peak of 61% at 12PM then they ramp down to 8PM and the timer turns the channel off at 8PM.
The white channel relay turns on at 10AM and then ramps up to 45% at 2PM then ramps down till 8PM but the relay is set to shut off at 7:30PM.
This is just for testing the lights and may change once I see how the tank reacts.
