Getting Started Guide?

[TCoach]

Is there a getting started guide w/o having to read +800 pages in the main thread?

I’m very interested in automating my 92 corner reef that I.m getting today. I’d love to start by just automation the monitoring of it as I seek to stabilize it after the move. Then I'd like to head into auto controlling it.

Thanks,

TCoach

 

[Red_Beard]

reef-pi Guide 1: Setup and Demonstration

reef-pi is an opensource reef tank controller capable of automating day to day reef keeping chored including equipment control, temperature control, water level control, dawn to dusk light cycle. This is the first tutorial within the reef-pi tutorial series covering installation and...

learn.adafruit.com

 

[Jeffcb]

 

[TCoach]

Is there a recommended kit to buy to get started? I looked at the docs, but the kit info seems to bbeo from ~2018. I looked on Amazon, and there is a bazillion choices. Thanks!

 

[attiland]

Buy a PI with Wi-Fi (I use PI 4 but older boards work just fine too) with power supply and memory card maybe a brake-out board and a basic case. Latter not a must but help while you are testing.
Don't save money on your power supply and power cable as I had several problems with some of the power supplies in the past
You may need HDMI cable depending on your choice of board.
On e-bay you may can get a used board if you want to save money, personally I think not much you can save there. You can get probes on Ali express but watch out for compatibility.

 

[Red_Beard]

yep, just a r-pi with wifi. i am using a pi zero-w. light weight and cheap. if you get a kit from adafruit or somthing you should be g2g. then you just need whatever sensors or breakout boards you see in the tutorials. it is kind of a 'materials list' kind of project. in that you need to get an idea beforehand of which pieces of it you want and pick up the required materials. There really isn't a premade kit for reef-pi, just the raspberry pi which will have all you need to get it powered up and interface with it. The guide linked above has materials lists for all the projects, some of the amazon links may be dead, but if you google the part they are easy to find.