[reef-pi - 1.0 release] Temperature and water level monitoring

[Ranjib]

Hello reefers,
I am excited to announce the first public release of reef-pi 1.0, an opensource , open hardware DIY reef tank controller based on Raspberry Pi. The 1.0 release helps to automate day to day reef keeping chores such as:

• Equipment controls and timers
• LED lighting automation (dawn to dusk light cycle)
• Automatic Top off
• Temperature monitoring and control

In addition, reef-pi 1.0 support alerting and dashboard based on the above mentioned features. Here is a sample dashboard

Over the past one year reef-pi was developed with a lot of feedback from reef2reef community members and more than 20 builds. In past few weeks, we have composed comprehensive documentation around build and operations of reef-pi, which can be found at: http://reef-pi.com.

For the next major realease, we plan to work on pH sensor, programmable interfaces and support for multiple temperature and ATO probes, and various other improvements.

I want an extend my sincere gratitude to the early adopters and r2r communities.
ongoing development discussion of reef-pi is available here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r...spberry-pi-based-reef-tank-controller.289256/
Happy holidays,
ranjib

 

[DLHDesign]

Congrats on the release - always fun to get 1.0 shipped!

 

[Mandelstam]

This is really awesome! What a great year to start reefing!

And tons and tons of cred and respect to you Ranjib for all the countless hours you've put into this.

[emoji322][emoji512][emoji110][emoji111]️[emoji868][emoji123]

 

[njtiger aquariums]

congrats on your release man. I had folks ask me to provide mine to the public but I am no where near to anything as polish as yours. Good work man

 

[Ranjib]

This is a DIY build log for a reef-pi 1.0 based kessil controller. I'll be documenting my reef-pi 1.0 based builds as part of the 1.0 release post (this one), these logs will have details of individual builds (instead of a generic build) and can be used as an concrete example of the official guide (which documents generic steps for a type of build).

Context:
I have three different tanks, each of them requires a different type of lighting profiles. One of the pico tanks is a zoa garden, I am hoping to keep relatively low-intensity lighting for the longer time period. The other pico has mostly gsp, candy cane, nuclear green paly on the bottom, and a chalice and some monti on top. I plan to setup mostly medium-light with a small period of high-intensity lighting for this one. Lastly, I am growing SPS (acros and millis) on the top part of my third tank, a Biocube 29G, and need relatively high lighting, with mostly blue on this. Currently, all of them are controlled by reef-pi, but with a single output, which is daisy chained. This new controller will let me control each light (two A80s and one A360) independently.

The bill of materials has some components in bulk (such as resistors & transistors) and can be used for any other electronics projects. Although I am building the controller only for three lights it can support upto 8 lights, or 16 channel independently.

This log provides specifics of only this controller build, a generic lighting controller guide is present in the reef-pi documentation here . The generic documentation does not cover housing (since individual build might have different electronics).

Bill of materials:

• Project box
• Perf board
• Pi zero
• PCA9685 board
• Six 10K resistors, six 1K resistors
• Six 2N3904 transistors
• A 12Volt 1A DC power supply
• Two lm2965 voltage regulator breakout boards
• Jumper wires
• Header/pins
• Three panel mount female audio jack
• One barrel jack
• Standoffs and screws

Tools:

• Soldering kit
• Screwdriver set
• Multimeter
• Dremel or drill bits to make holes in housing

Steps:

• Install and configure Raspberry Pi with reef-pi 1.0 release. Detailed guide is here
• Prepare 5 volt to 10 volt converter circuit , headers. Circuit diagram can be found in the official reef-pi lighting controller build guide . In short, we have to boost individual 5 volt pwm output of pca9685 board to 10 volt using an NPN transistor and two resistors. This board does this for 6 channels, two for each light.

• Prepare connectors (3 panel mount female audio jacks and barrel jack)
• Drill holes for panel mount jacks
• Laying down different parts and mounting them on plywood with standoffs

• Solder jumper wires to female audio jacks
• Solder male pins to voltage regulators
• Hook up the voltage regulators, and adjust one of them to give 5 volt output and the other to give 10 volt output, by tightening the potentiometer screw on the board (takes 10-15 rounds to see the effect), test using a multimeter. Both regulators will be connected to the barrel jack for power source. Barrel jack is hooked up with the 10V 1A power adapter.
• Wiring up Raspberry Pi, PCA9685 and perf board

• Complete housing

• Left side barrel jack connection will be used to provide power (12V DC adapter input), while the three audio sockets on the right hand, each will be hooked up to one kessil light.

• Configure the lights using reef-pi web ui. Declare three jacks first, each representing one audio socket

• Declare all the lights, and associate them with individual jacks. Check "reverse", since we are using NPN transistor. And keep them in manual mode to test with multimeter. A value of 10 in reef-pi for a channel should give 1 volt in multimeter (from the audio cable connected to the corresponding audio jack), similarly a value of 50 in reef-pi UI should give 5 volt in multimeter. Check all channels.

Thats it , my controller is ready for going in service

 

[Ranjib]

This is a DIY build log for a reef-pi 1.0 based temperature and water level monitor. This is the second build log of my reef-pi 1.0 based builds as part of the 1.0 release post (this one), these logs will have details of a specific build (instead of a generic build guide) and can be used as a concrete example of the official guide.

Context: This controller will monitor one of my tank's temperature and water level. After I am happy with the stability of this controller, and if needed I'll eventually turn on the temperature control and auto top off mode. This controller is for Healdsburg, one of my pico tank with predominantly zoa / paly in it.

Bill of materials:

• Raspberry Pi zero W
• photoelectric water level sensor
• a ds18b20 temperature probe
• m3 nylon screws and standoff
• uxcell project box
• 22 AWG solid core wire for jumpers, male headers, female-female jumper wires
• protoboard
• 4.7K resistor
• Female panel mount barrel jack and audio connectors
• LM2596 voltage regulators
• 12V DC power adapter

Tools:

• Screw drivers
• Drill set
• Soldering kit

Steps:

• Prepare perf board with required cicuit for ATO, temperature (I have added kessil controller circuit as well, for possible future use). Note: The photo here was taken before the installation of this unit, during which I realized a missing GND wiring, I had to do it later.
  
• Laydown your components before wiring them. I have an additional pca9685 board in the image, since I intend to convert this into a full all in one controller.
• 
  
  
• Once you know where to install standoffs, use a thin and firm surface to fix all the boards. I use a birchwood sheet or plexiglass.
  
• Prepare the connector by soldering jumper wires on them.
• Tune the lm2596 for 5 v output.
• Then connect the board with jumper wires. Conncet ato and temperature probes.
• Power up. Install reef-pi in it. Enable temperature and ato sub system. Run a small set of tests. You can touch the temperature probe and see temperature chart spiking up. Similarly the ato sub system should automatically turn on /off a fake ato pump (just declared for testing)
• 
  
  
• Drill holes to mount jacks in housing.
• Install solid core jumper wires wherever possible to make permanent wiring, they reduce the wiring clutter
• 
  
• 
• Install the electronics in the housing. Plug in connectors.
• 
• I use few strips of velcro to fix my light weight builds to the wall.
• 
  For this build log, I am only using the ato and temperature sensor , hence wires are only connected to thos.
• The new controller along with my tanks, healdsburg is in the center.
• 
• You can see the previous kessil controller is down below (I know i have to clean up the wiring :-( ), controlling all three of my kessil lights
• 

Meanwhile , the new controller dashboard, its been running for couple of days now. I'll be using this to fine tune the ATO charts next

And of course, healdsburg is doing great, I am surprised that my heater is pretty good at keeping the pico's temperature at 78.