Raketemensch's reef-pi build

raketemensch

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I am putting together my pi, with a couple of boards from @Michael Lane -- I've got the goby hat and a couple of the Mars Aqua boards, and will be ordering a pH board once they're back in stock. Eventually I'll probably get to the doser, but I'm not there yet.

As of today I've got 3 temp sensors and a float switch hooked up. It's overkill to have 3 sensors, really, but I had a bunch left over from older brewing projects, and the hat has 3 ports, so what the heck -- one main tank sensor, one for the overflow box, and one for the sump. If they go out of whack, they'll tell a story -- if one of them goes out of whack by itself, it'll mean something is up with one part of the full picture. Or a bad sensor.

IMG_2427.jpeg


I also wired up that simple 2-wire float switch today, which couldn't have been simpler. There's a 4-wire connector on the hat, but you can just connect two of them to the float switch (the two on the right, skip the 2 grounds, those are for other sensors, probably optical). The reef-pi UI doesn't show it triggering, I guess the dashboard would show the triggering if it was actually hooked up to an outlet, which it isn't yet. I only have one relay for the ATO right now, and it's in use on the main tank, so I can't pull it. I have ordered another one, though. I also have some RF-controlled Etekcity outlets here that I've controlled with the pi for other projects before, so I might just use those, I'm not sure yet.

So that just leaves the lights and the ph sensor. I'd love to do salinity as well, but the probe situation on that seems to not be ready for prime-time yet, AFAICT.

I have some XLR plugs here for wiring up and daisy-chaining the lights, but I don't have the right wire here for setting them up yet. I think this is right, hopefully 26AWG is enough?

 

Michael Lane

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Nice. I'm glad reef-pi seems like it will be a good solution for your needs.

26 AWG is perfectly fine for lighting signals. Control signals are usually very low current signals, so super thin wire is usually fine.

I like XLR connectors; mini-xlr are currently my favorite, but they are kind of a pain to solder to the tiny little cups.

Good luck on your build and your tank!
 
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raketemensch

raketemensch

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I found some time tonight to set up the 8-channel relay, as well as work on the 2-wire ATO float switch. I haven't had much luck, though.

The relay is wired up with gnd to gnd, and 5v to vcc. I would assume at this point that, in reef-pi, I should go to Configuration -> Connectors and add an outlet on any of the GPIO pins between ground and 5v.

Then I think I should go to Equipment -> Add and select the outlet I just created (ATO1 in this case).

When doing so, turning the outlet on/off does nothing on the relay board. For some reason it looks like on boot one of the outlets on the relay is triggering, but I have no idea why.

The connection from goby -> relay seems so straightforward that even I can't mess it up, as it's just gnd -> gnd on one end and 5v -> vcc on the other, but maybe that's not correct? It's definitely connected that way right now, none of the wires are twisted, everything looks correct:

IMG_2483.jpeg


The jumper on the relay is set to JD-VCC, which was the default. Am I just missing something?
 
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raketemensch

raketemensch

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The float switch behavior is just bizarre. I was using the top socket, with is IO27.

I wired up the float switch, but was getting random 1/0 values back. In troubleshooting I took everything apart right back to having nothing plugged into the socket, but it's still returning random 1 or 0 values. I don't get it.

I tried rebooting for both of these issues with no luck.

Jan 18 22:45:04 reefpi reef-pi[294]: 2020/01/18 22:45:04 ato sub-system: sensor Sump value: 1
Jan 18 22:45:07 reefpi reef-pi[294]: 2020/01/18 22:45:07 ato sub-system: sensor Sump value: 0
Jan 18 22:45:10 reefpi reef-pi[294]: 2020/01/18 22:45:10 ato sub-system: sensor Sump value: 0
Jan 18 22:45:13 reefpi reef-pi[294]: 2020/01/18 22:45:13 ato sub-system: sensor Sump value: 1
Jan 18 22:45:16 reefpi reef-pi[294]: 2020/01/18 22:45:16 ato sub-system: sensor Sump value: 0
Jan 18 22:45:19 reefpi reef-pi[294]: 2020/01/18 22:45:19 ato sub-system: sensor Sump value: 1

This is with nothing even plugged into ATO1.
 

Michael Lane

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All of that behavior sounds very strange.

Which version of rpi are you using?
Which OS and version are you running?
Do you have anything other than reef-pi installed and running?
 
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