HOWTO: Seneye V2 SUD + Raspberry Pi 4 / 400 - Full Seneye.me Support!

[NomadRVLife]

Hello Everyone!

So after a long time debugging, pulling out my hair, monster energy drink and slightly frustrated and hungry fish I can finally say I cracked the code! I was able to get the Seneye V2 SUD working on Raspberry Pi 4 like a charm. These kits made by Canakit are available from your local Best Buy for less than $100! This method is confirmed to work and works great!

You will need the following:​

• Seneye V2 SUD (may work with V1, someone please confirm with this hardware)
• Raspberry Pi 4 / 400 (I am using the 4b, already has built in Wi-Fi & Ethernet)
• VirtualHere Linux Server (To go on Raspberry Pi)
• VirtualHere Client (To go on any client system supported by Seneye, currently only Windows & Mac)
• Seneye Connect V2 Software Installed on Client

Note: Both the Raspberry Pi and the Client System (PC/Mac) must be running for this to work and Seneye.me to update. Update your power settings so that the display turns off but not the computer. You can also enable Kiosk mode in Seneye Connect, if available.

Here's the steps, these may vary slightly for you:​

1. Make sure you have your Raspberry Pi running the latest version of Raspbian OS (default settings work fine).
2. Install VirtualHere Linux Server on Raspberry Pi, instructions can be found here: https://github.com/virtualhere/script
3. Edit/Create VirtualHere config file: /usr/local/etc/virtualhere/config.ini (Use your preferred editor such as nano or vim and you may need to put sudo before it for permissions)
4. Add the following on 2 new lines at the bottom: ClaimPorts=1 onReset.9463.8708= (These codes are SUPER important, the first is the vendor code and the second is the product code, without this in the config the SUD will not be recognized!)
5. Edit/Create the following file: /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules and put this inside. (Not sure if this is necessary for everyone, but it worked for me. Just incase it's deleted: SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idProduct}=="8708", ATTRS{idVendor}=="9463", MODE="666", GROUP="plugdev")
6. Restart Raspberry Pi
7. Install VirtualHere Client on your Client PC/Mac
8. Your VirtualHere Client should show a list of USB devices connected to your Raspberry Pi and that should now include the Seneye SUD! Yay!

Frequently Asked Questions:​

• Why aren't any devices showing up? Make sure that both the server and the client are on the same network, either Wi-Fi or Ethernet. The first step is getting them on the same network, they should EasyConnect after that!

Thanks so much! If this was helpful and you feel all giddy, reach out and let me know or leave your comment below!

 

[NomadRVLife]

Just a heads up, I had a fellow reefer try this setup and we discovered that you need to use a USB 2 port on your Raspberry Pi or a USB 2 Extender such as this one from Best Buy for under $20.

The reason? Seneye blocked their SUD intelligently when using USB 3, but USB 2 does not support such "intelligence" that Seneye has to turn the checks off to allow it to connect.

Anyways, that's just my theory. So if you run into an issue, this is the solution that worked for us. Either way I am in contact with Seneye to try to create a headless Linux client that will directly upload to Seneye.me. If we are able to do this, we can avoid a client PC/Mac entirely.

 

[RobReef2]

NomadRVLife - thank you for your effort!

I think you miss the point or you didn't look too deep - Belkin or the whole family from same manufacturer (which is not belkin) have a bug on their firmware not handle correctly HID USB devices. They stop to support them - 10 years ago!?
For sure there was just a draft of USB3 when belkin was born!

Seneye works like a smoke alarm that why i trust their equipment - will you save on your alarm system?

 

[KStatefan]

I have been running like this on a Pi 3 B+ for about 3 months and has been very stable. I think it will run on a Pi zero also and you can get a pi zero wireless kit for $40.

 

[NomadRVLife]

NomadRVLife - thank you for your effort!

I think you miss the point or you didn't look too deep - Belkin or the whole family from same manufacturer (which is not belkin) have a bug on their firmware not handle correctly HID USB devices. They stop to support them - 10 years ago!?
For sure there was just a draft of USB3 when belkin was born!

Seneye works like a smoke alarm that why i trust their equipment - will you save on your alarm system?

Thanks Rob! I can see you clearly work for Seneye and you’ve been replying to my support ticket with Seneye. I never mentioned the Belkin home base here only on my private email with Seneye. Now your embarrassing yourself in my opinion for posting this in a public form. You clearly don’t like the fact I was able to bypass your HID protections. Good luck don’t try to patch it or I’ll reverse engineer your SUD entirely and release it on GitHub.

 

[NomadRVLife]

I have been running like this on a Pi 3 B+ for about 3 months and has been very stable. I think it will run on a Pi zero also and you can get a pi zero wireless kit for $40.

Yes I believe your correct there’s no reason you even need to run a GUI only the USB interface and Virtualhere or another USB over IP software.

Seneye has made it obvious they don’t like that I’m posting this information since they patched the SUD to break the Belkin Home base.

I just want Seneye to know that I’m a hardware and software engineer with 20 years of experience and worked for major fortune 50 companies. Their little HID protection is no match!

PS: Seneye support emailed me no less that 10 minutes after my above reply to Rob. Their development team has declined to work with me in releasing a Linux driver so it seems I’ll just write one myself and release the source code for FREE!! Yaya!

 

[KStatefan]

I was confused about the Belkin comment.

 

[NomadRVLife]

I was confused about the Belkin comment.

I know right, I took screenshots of this just in case Seneye tries to remove it.. That is hilarious they would go to the forum post I linked them too and comment such a thing.. Their Belkin comment literally makes NO sense on this thread!

I am really trying to help Seneye here.. There is no reason for them to act in this behavior. They are mad that more people aren't going to spend $300 for a basic web server and wi-fi, when they can do it for $50 or less with a Pi Zero with Wi-Fi and a computer running Seneye Connect. They just absolutely HATE that we found a work around. Why? You would think they want to help the reef community. If their equipment was sold at more LFS and online for a more fair price, this would be a non-issue.

 

[Goaway]

I am seriously interested in putting this together. If it goes to linux, my husband would take over the project. That's his favorite OS.

I am amazed at your work with this!

 

[NomadRVLife]

I am seriously interested in putting this together. If it goes to linux, my husband would take over the project. That's his favorite OS.

I am amazed at your work with this!

Thank you! Let me know what his thoughts are. It's definitely Linux based, but at least its Debian/ubuntu so fairly easy.

 

[Goaway]

Thank you! Let me know what his thoughts are. It's definitely Linux based, but at least its Debian/ubuntu so fairly easy.

I am hoping this gets him a little more involved in the aquarium keeping. He loves the gadgets. Me, not so much. I will definitely try to get his input about this.
I'll have to get the pi, already looking over all of this. Very helpful!

 

[Indoor Reef]

I'm possibly not understanding the problem you are solving here but if you haven't seen the repo below then worth checking out in case it does what you're after already. It's not mine but I used it to interface my seneye to my raspberry pi. I run node red to write the seneye data to Google sheets for charting.

GitHub - berarma/sudmon: Command line monitor and library for Seneye USB devices

Command line monitor and library for Seneye USB devices - berarma/sudmon

github.com

 

[SHARK_2]

I just want Seneye to know that I’m a hardware and software engineer with 20 years of experience and worked for major fortune 50 companies. Their little HID protection is no match!

Hi @NomadRVLife is your solution still working Or maybe you managed to create a Linux driver version? I’m asking because I’m going to buy this device and I would like it, to be connected to the RPi like all other staff.

Regards
Borys

 

[KStatefan]

Hi @NomadRVLife is your solution still working Or maybe you managed to create a Linux driver version? I’m asking because I’m going to buy this device and I would like it, to be connected to the RPi like all other staff.

Regards
Borys

I am still running mine on a Pi3

 

[NomadRVLife]

It is still working flawlessly to this day, although Seneye does not like it.

 

[Latte]

Just a heads up, I had a fellow reefer try this setup and we discovered that you need to use a USB 2 port on your Raspberry Pi or a USB 2 Extender such as this one from Best Buy for under $20.

The reason? Seneye blocked their SUD intelligently when using USB 3, but USB 2 does not support such "intelligence" that Seneye has to turn the checks off to allow it to connect.

Anyways, that's just my theory. So if you run into an issue, this is the solution that worked for us. Either way I am in contact with Seneye to try to create a headless Linux client that will directly upload to Seneye.me. If we are able to do this, we can avoid a client PC/Mac entirely.

Sorry for the necro, but this thread was super relevant to me when I found it just then. I actually ran into a similar problem just before while installing my seneye today - it wasn't registering anything on my computer in my USB 3.0, when I used USB 2.0 it worked fine - weird I thought, now I understand more.

I was wondering if you ended up coming up with a linux client? I'm keen to set this up but would rather not have to run it through an additional windows PC on top of the rasperry pi as it already plugs directly into my desktop and that wouldn't really make it any easier/better for me.

Cheers for everything you've done so far!!

 

[Indoor Reef]

Sorry for the necro, but this thread was super relevant to me when I found it just then. I actually ran into a similar problem just before while installing my seneye today - it wasn't registering anything on my computer in my USB 3.0, when I used USB 2.0 it worked fine - weird I thought, now I understand more.

I was wondering if you ended up coming up with a linux client? I'm keen to set this up but would rather not have to run it through an additional windows PC on top of the rasperry pi as it already plugs directly into my desktop and that wouldn't really make it any easier/better for me.

Cheers for everything you've done so far!!

I'm a bit confused what you want to achieve with the Pi that isn't already available. Can you explain please? Where do you want to send the data?

 

[Latte]

I'm a bit confused what you want to achieve with the Pi that isn't already available. Can you explain please? Where do you want to send the data?

Sorry it's entirely possible I don't quite understand how the current system works. Right now I have a USB from my seneye directly into my desktop PC, however that means I need to leave a pretty intensive PC running all day every day which is a drain on power and a safety concern when I travel. I was hoping I could instead just plug it into a small raspberry pi and have that on 24/7 broadcasting the data to the seneye app.

From what I read above, it seems that you need the seneye and a windows PC on 24/7 to run what OP suggested, but this doesn't actually fix my issue of being able to receive seneye results without the PC being on. OP discussed creating something that would run the seneye program on Linux and prevent the need to run a second PC, but I'm not sure if he's made any progress on that since.

 

[Indoor Reef]

Sorry it's entirely possible I don't quite understand how the current system works. Right now I have a USB from my seneye directly into my desktop PC, however that means I need to leave a pretty intensive PC running all day every day which is a drain on power and a safety concern when I travel. I was hoping I could instead just plug it into a small raspberry pi and have that on 24/7 broadcasting the data to the seneye app.

From what I read above, it seems that you need the seneye and a windows PC on 24/7 to run what OP suggested, but this doesn't actually fix my issue of being able to receive seneye results without the PC being on. OP discussed creating something that would run the seneye program on Linux and prevent the need to run a second PC, but I'm not sure if he's made any progress on that since.

Thanks for clarifying. You should be able to do most of what you're after using the approach I describe below but not logging the data into the seneye app, you would need to use a different logging method.

The tool I shared in one of the previous replies let's you use a raspberry pi to read the data from the seneye. You can't activate slides though. For that you need to use the seneye app but I don't find that too bad. What I did was use node red to read the seneye every 15mins, process the data and write it to a Google sheets so it charts it etc. This is a nice solution because you get remote access with only outbound connections from your home network meaning you can benefit from Google's cloud security as long as you configure the access control appropriately on the Google sheets. You can of course send it to a dashboard using mqtt or whatever else suits you instead of sheets. I'm also going to setup notifications etc in node red for out of range parameters and powerloss on the pi. The later will need a monitoring service but there are free tiers available relying on outbound http requests or using a light weight agent. At some point I may look at making parts of it into a script or a mini app but for now I'm enjoying the ability to experiment quickly with node red.

I think if you really want to use the seneye charting etc then maybe the way you're doing it now or the Web server is the way to go. Anyway, do what works for you.

 

[Latte]

Thanks for clarifying. You should be able to do most of what you're after using the approach I describe below but not logging the data into the seneye app, you would need to use a different logging method.

The tool I shared in one of the previous replies let's you use a raspberry pi to read the data from the seneye. You can't activate slides though. For that you need to use the seneye app but I don't find that too bad. What I did was use node red to read the seneye every 15mins, process the data and write it to a Google sheets so it charts it etc. This is a nice solution because you get remote access with only outbound connections from your home network meaning you can benefit from Google's cloud security as long as you configure the access control appropriately on the Google sheets. You can of course send it to a dashboard using mqtt or whatever else suits you instead of sheets. I'm also going to setup notifications etc in node red for out of range parameters and powerloss on the pi. The later will need a monitoring service but there are free tiers available relying on outbound http requests or using a light weight agent. At some point I may look at making parts of it into a script or a mini app but for now I'm enjoying the ability to experiment quickly with node red.

I think if you really want to use the seneye charting etc then maybe the way you're doing it now or the Web server is the way to go. Anyway, do what works for you.

That sounds really good and definitely preferable! Though you said you can't activate the slides with it? Does that mean you can't do ammonia and pH measurements?