ESPHome Dosing (Automated inside ESPHome)

[jazzy123]

Hey all,

Im not a reef guy but you chaps certainly love your DIY dosing! I use Deep Water Culture and in need a of some help with some code for automating the pumps but not using Home Assistant to trigger as if Wifi or HA crashes (which is does sometimes) I want everything to run off the ESP and not having HA trigger dosing times etc, only using HA to alter them.

I am 3D printing a 4 + 4 12v dosing pump housing using the G928 pumps (none affiliate link Amazon product ASIN B085NMHFYW). Each box holds 4 of them and then a separate box holds the water temp, pH and EC values along with a few other sensors (not reef related but the rest is).

The pumps are powered by two tb6612fng in each box and also a PCA9685 inside. The PCA9685s then connect to the main box through one another via i2c to the ESP32 in the 3rd box. The PCA9685s is a 16 channel pwm driver which can act like a switch 0% or 100% and the tb6612fng's need to many pins to operate of just one ESP and I didnt want to use multiple ESPs. If you check out this breakout board from Adafruit I got the component idea from them: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-stepper-dc-motor-featherwing:

Im fine with everything but the ESPHome automation side. Any ESPHome gurus able to point me in the right direction?

Many thanks and love looking at your chaps Reefs!

 

[Dread Pirate Dave]

Welcome to R2R :)

I'm not familiar with ESPHome but someone else here may be. :)

 

[theatrus]

Im fine with everything but the ESPHome automation side. Any ESPHome gurus able to point me in the right direction?

Sure - what part do you have automated and do you want to handle the automation on the Home Assistant side or all in the ESPHome side?

I'd start by simply making output objects for all of the I/O you have connected to the PCA9685s:

https://esphome.io/components/output/pca9685

 

[jazzy123]

Sure - what part do you have automated and do you want to handle the automation on the Home Assistant side or all in the ESPHome side?

I'd start by simply making output objects for all of the I/O you have connected to the PCA9685s:

https://esphome.io/components/output/pca9685

Sorry I didn't realise you had replied.

I am using the PCA9685 PWM for 0% meaning off and and 100% on for motor control. Im still struggling with code for calibration, dosing etc.