PH probe issues

[Sral]

Ok, so an update to this for anyone else that might be having this issue or for those who are yet to come lol. Well it kept giving me problems with dropping out and reboots and even the 3/300 was hit or miss. I'm am 100% ignorant on how the i2c bus works and talks, but there is some kind of a timing issue that causes the problem, guessing bus side. So I could look through the API "readings" and the drops were at specific intervals. At one point I changed it to 5m interval and looking through the log, it would drop every hour at the 9th minute, i.e 4:09, 5:09, 6:09. I tried to put the PH on i2c4, but could not get reef-pi to see it. Tried totally removing it from reef-pi and starting over. Now I need to recalibrate it lol. Guessing Reef-pi only searches on the primary bus, but @Ranjib could confirm that if that is the case. So I ended up putting it back on the primary bus, and disconnected my RTC. Verified the only thing on the bus was the PH and let it go. I added 2 statistic charts for testing purposes, one to show min, and other max. It is reporting as of 10:50pm last night (since it was alone on bus) the lowest report was 7.92 and highest 8.09. Today I will add the RTC to the second bus and get it set back up and hopefully everything will continue to be stable.

Ignore the temp dropouts, those were from the setup, testing, and troubleshooting (PH) of the entire build on my workbench.

Interesting. Reminds me of two other cases:
-First where @bishoptf had kind of regular low-voltage warnings by the hour.
- Second where @bishoptf had kind of regular reboot messages in the log without a reboot.

Writing it like that I can now see a strange connection there ....

 

[Sral]

Ok, so an update to this for anyone else that might be having this issue or for those who are yet to come lol. Well it kept giving me problems with dropping out and reboots and even the 3/300 was hit or miss. I'm am 100% ignorant on how the i2c bus works and talks, but there is some kind of a timing issue that causes the problem, guessing bus side. So I could look through the API "readings" and the drops were at specific intervals. At one point I changed it to 5m interval and looking through the log, it would drop every hour at the 9th minute, i.e 4:09, 5:09, 6:09. I tried to put the PH on i2c4, but could not get reef-pi to see it. Tried totally removing it from reef-pi and starting over. Now I need to recalibrate it lol. Guessing Reef-pi only searches on the primary bus, but @Ranjib could confirm that if that is the case. So I ended up putting it back on the primary bus, and disconnected my RTC. Verified the only thing on the bus was the PH and let it go. I added 2 statistic charts for testing purposes, one to show min, and other max. It is reporting as of 10:50pm last night (since it was alone on bus) the lowest report was 7.92 and highest 8.09. Today I will add the RTC to the second bus and get it set back up and hopefully everything will continue to be stable.

Ignore the temp dropouts, those were from the setup, testing, and troubleshooting (PH) of the entire build on my workbench.

Oh, I got another possible solution to your problem:

I could write you a service, like @robsworld78's flowmeter script here or like my SCD30 script on github that querries the pH regularly and writes the value to a file, that you can read with ReefPi.

I would write that program so that it only updates the value in the file when it gets an actual value. You can choose the update period as desired, sometimes the value might just be one period old, if the last querry failed.

 

[Inamo]

I did find those posts and it did seem similar.

Let me see how this goes and I might take you up on that service. I'm hoping this will clear it up. Started doing it again after I recalibrate the probe, but up until then one just like 2 drops all day, which I'm guessing is normal for i2c.

 

[Inamo]

I ended up using the Atlas IoT as it had MQTT built into it and also exports data to a SQlite DB file. From what I can see in Home assistant there have been zero drops, looked through the DB and don't see any either, but that is only one entry per minute. The Atlas Dashboard looks like it is updating every second. The plotting seems very smooth. I might try adding my RTC back to the same bus and see if it continues to work this way.

 

[Inamo]

Just an update for anyone else who might stumble upon this. Since utilizing the Atlas IoT and removing the PH probe from Reef-Pi I have had ZERO issues. So I'm not sure what the issue was. Not blaming reef-pi as I'm sure there are many others using it without issues, so I'll chalk it up to one of life's mysteries.

 

[Sral]

Just an update for anyone else who might stumble upon this. Since utilizing the Atlas IoT and removing the PH probe from Reef-Pi I have had ZERO issues. So I'm not sure what the issue was. Not blaming reef-pi as I'm sure there are many others using it without issues, so I'll chalk it up to one of life's mysteries.

Well, I can imagine that the Atlas IoT software has more advanced communication error handling than ReefPi.
@Ranjib I imagine that the ReefPi driver simply reports zeros on encountering an error, instead of old data or querrying the sensor again ?

 

[Inamo]

I would imagine the same. When loading up in the IoT gui it updates like every second, in HA it updates via MQTT every 3 sec.

 

[theatrus]

Well, I can imagine that the Atlas IoT software has more advanced communication error handling than ReefPi.
@Ranjib I imagine that the ReefPi driver simply reports zeros on encountering an error, instead of old data or querrying the sensor again ?

Correct

drivers/ezo/driver.go at main · reef-pi/drivers

Various sensors, controller and IC drivers for reef-pi - reef-pi/drivers

github.com

 

[Sral]

Correct

drivers/ezo/driver.go at main · reef-pi/drivers

Various sensors, controller and IC drivers for reef-pi - reef-pi/drivers

github.com

Cool, didn't know you could actually link specific lines, thanks !

 

[theatrus]

Cool, didn't know you could actually link specific lines, thanks !

In theory the polling loop in reef pi should be at least logging the error - unclear if it is.

 

[iamdan]

I been having the same issue with 2 separate reef-pi installs using Robo tank boards I’ve just had to learn to ignore it until a fix is released

 

[Inamo]

I been having the same issue with 2 separate reef-pi installs using Robo tank boards I’ve just had to learn to ignore it until a fix is released

If you are using an external dashboard other than reef-pi, then setting up the Atlas IoT works well pushing the data via MQTT

 

[Sral]

I been having the same issue with 2 separate reef-pi installs using Robo tank boards I’ve just had to learn to ignore it until a fix is released

Since we don't know when that will be I'll try to find the time programming the external quick-fix.

 

[iamdan]

Since we don't know when that will be I'll try to find the time programming the external quick-fix.

That would be awesome! Would shout you a carton of beer if we were in the same city hehe

@Inamo I would if I could but I’m using Robo tanks reef-pi circuitry

 

[Sral]

Alright, I got the code patched together from previous works of mine and @robsworld78.
I'll try to give it a spin some time this week.

 

[iamdan]

Woohoo that’s great news @Sral thanks for letting us know

 

[iamdan]

Any luck mate?

 

[Sral]

Any luck mate?

Found some time ... fixing some bugs right now. Wish me luck ^^

 

[iamdan]

Found some time ... fixing some bugs right now. Wish me luck ^^

Wishing you all the luck crossing all fingers and toes

 

[Sral]

Wishing you all the luck crossing all fingers and toes

Well, I got the code up and running, but my pH circuit seems to have died. I can't get it to show up on an I2C scan ...

I'll try to make a dummy in the code to test this digitally as far as I can, but I'm afraid somebody else would need to test the real thing