Dewd's Big Cube Reef-Pi build

Bigtrout

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RTC installed
01df326b8d11728a9aea512b94108fee65b10eaa51.jpg
Nice is the RTC working like its supposed to
 

Bigtrout

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Seems to be. I followed the Adafruit guide you posted in your build thread and had no issues. All the checks seemed to preduce the required answers.

Is it better than before? I have no idea yet.
That answer will come the first time power blinks on and off and on again and your raspian still boots and the files dont corrupt from bad time stamps/and your reef pi keeps its scheduling without internet, which is why I added the RTC to my install.

Ssh into the pi and use the command

timedatectl

If the rtc time listed matches the other clocks its working
 
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Des Westcott

Des Westcott

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Thais mess of buckets, drums, wires and pipes is very significant. I just did my first Auto Water Change. Yes, I had to carry the drums and buckets, but it was just a test to see if the systems worked as predicted. Going forward, the old water will go straight into a drain and the replacement water will come from a large drum outside. I have to say it worked brilliantly. Just pressed one "button" on my phone and it pumped roughly 10l out and then replaced it with the same volume. I'm going to be running this macro manually for now so I can keep an eye on how it works, but once I'm happy with it's reliability, I will schedule it in Reef-Pi so that it does it at set times. Once a day? That will be about 70l a week - less that 10% Maybe more. I'll see.
010940cd13e843c3187393cc7c9e46894ef6abf4f1.jpg


Here are the float switches

016caa03a209162247e4319e37e940200befefe4e2.jpg


And here's the Macro that does the magic
2019-11-25.png


I've got very small piping on the pumps at the moment (+- 3mm ID) because it's what I had lying around - I'm hopefully getting the right size pipe tomorrow (8mm ID). Should speed the pumping up considerably. I'll then adjust the Wait times accordingly.

To say that I'm EXTREMELY happy with the result is an understatement.
 

Ranjib

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Thais mess of buckets, drums, wires and pipes is very significant. I just did my first Auto Water Change. Yes, I had to carry the drums and buckets, but it was just a test to see if the systems worked as predicted. Going forward, the old water will go straight into a drain and the replacement water will come from a large drum outside. I have to say it worked brilliantly. Just pressed one "button" on my phone and it pumped roughly 10l out and then replaced it with the same volume. I'm going to be running this macro manually for now so I can keep an eye on how it works, but once I'm happy with it's reliability, I will schedule it in Reef-Pi so that it does it at set times. Once a day? That will be about 70l a week - less that 10% Maybe more. I'll see.
010940cd13e843c3187393cc7c9e46894ef6abf4f1.jpg


Here are the float switches

016caa03a209162247e4319e37e940200befefe4e2.jpg


And here's the Macro that does the magic
2019-11-25.png


I've got very small piping on the pumps at the moment (+- 3mm ID) because it's what I had lying around - I'm hopefully getting the right size pipe tomorrow (8mm ID). Should speed the pumping up considerably. I'll then adjust the Wait times accordingly.

To say that I'm EXTREMELY happy with the result is an understatement.
Whoa :0) , this is super cool.

Im going to attempt and extend this. To include the salt mixing process . I want reef-pi to auto-start the water change after new salt water mix has reached the specific temperature, and I plan to use the current monitoring capability of the hs110 plug thats powering the heater. This should save time and energy (like literally electricity)

Thank you so much for sharing this, and inspiring us, you made my day :)
 
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Des Westcott

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Thanks for the kind words Ranjib. As you can see I'm a bit better with "hardware stuff" than software :D and Reef-Pi just ticks all the boxes for me. I have thoroughly enjoyed the journey getting to this point. My next steps are refining / neatening this setup and then I will move onto PH monitoring and dosing pumps. Planning to use the Michael Lane PH board.

I only use Natural Sea Water that I either collect from the beach or our local aquarium uShaka Marine World so I never even consider salt mixing and the associated automation.
 
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Des Westcott

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Pretty much finished my auto water change setup by moving the important bits outside. The white drum is a food-grade storage drum (120 litre). The pipes are at appropriate heights and have flex feeding rigid pvc at appropriate heights to prevent any siphon accidents. Drain feeds into an existing drain from the aircon unit.

Just needs some tidying up.

01cd571c35adb3df610e75d383effea9ec959c34a3.jpg
 
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Des Westcott

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By using the "AWC Out" and "AWC In" ATO usage graphs in Reef-Pi, I've been able to tweak the Macro and get the wait times for "Out" and "In" to not have huge delays.

The last 4 "Out" times have been 220, 212, 212, 212 seconds and the "In" times have been 242, 244, 244, 246. So I have the "Out" part of the Macro running for 250 seconds and the "In" for 300 seconds at the moment. Way better than the 500 and 500 I had as a guess the first time I ran it.

2019-12-01.png
 

Ranjib

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By using the "AWC Out" and "AWC In" ATO usage graphs in Reef-Pi, I've been able to tweak the Macro and get the wait times for "Out" and "In" to not have huge delays.

The last 4 "Out" times have been 220, 212, 212, 212 seconds and the "In" times have been 242, 244, 244, 246. So I have the "Out" part of the Macro running for 250 seconds and the "In" for 300 seconds at the moment. Way better than the 500 and 500 I had as a guess the first time I ran it.

2019-12-01.png
This is epic :).
 
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Des Westcott

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BTW @Ranjib I was surprised and honored at the mention in the 3.0 release post. Thank you. Sometimes it feels like all I do is ask how to fix what I've broken or don't know how to use properly :D
 

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BTW @Ranjib I was surprised and honored at the mention in the 3.0 release post. Thank you. Sometimes it feels like all I do is ask how to fix what I've broken or don't know how to use properly :D
The community is what reef-pi is about...in no time at all you will be helping the next people with their builds because you built a reef pi and had successes and setbacks but the important thing is you learn from both!
 

Ranjib

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The community is what reef-pi is about...in no time at all you will be helping the next people with their builds because you built a reef pi and had successes and setbacks but the important thing is you learn from both!
+100.
 
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Des Westcott

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That answer will come the first time power blinks on and off and on again and your raspian still boots and the files dont corrupt from bad time stamps/and your reef pi keeps its scheduling without internet, which is why I added the RTC to my install.

Ssh into the pi and use the command

timedatectl

If the rtc time listed matches the other clocks its working

I have just run the timedatectl command as you suggested and noticed that the RTC time is on UTC which is 2 hours behind my local time. Is this a problem? Does the Pi know this and make all adjustments based on this? Or should I figure out how to set the RTC to my local time?
 

Bigtrout

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I have just run the timedatectl command as you suggested and noticed that the RTC time is on UTC which is 2 hours behind my local time. Is this a problem? Does the Pi know this and make all adjustments based on this? Or should I figure out how to set the RTC to my local time?
No that is normal. Mine is the same. As lomg as its synched to UTC you are good to go.
 
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Des Westcott

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I've been wondering how I get the Reef-Pi to send me a notification if the power goes off.

My thinking goes along these lines
  • Reef-Pi MUST be on a UPS of sorts - can be a very small one
  • I think I could use a normally closed relay held in the open position by a power supply that isn't on the UPS. This would probably have to be declared as an inlet
  • When the power goes off, the relay loses power and the contacts close and Reef-Pi senses that and sends an alert.
Now, how would I accomplish that? My first thoughts were by setting it up as an ATO with alerts set to 5 seconds or something like that.

Any ideas?

The next phase would be to have Reef-Pi detect that power has gone down and turn non-essential outlets off until the power has come back. I guess I could accomplish the same thing with a UPS running the Pi and only certain outlets. That way when power goes, only the equipment on the UPS keeps running.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

Des
 

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