reef-pi :: An opensource reef tank controller based on Raspberry Pi.

[njtiger aquariums]

I am working on implementing notification in reef-pi. The idea is to use it for anything wrong, including system error or equipment failures etc.
I hope to get basic email notification done before 1.0, and wondering what are the most important things we would like to get alert for?
My current list is:
- Temperature outside a range
- Equipment failures (not every single of them, but a consolidated list of failures in a period, if present)
- ATO pump running too long
Anything else ?

If I may make a suggestion. I would suggest some of these "important" alerts you also look at text/sms/mms alerts. Email can take some time to come in. I have my system send me an email and a push notification (via pushbullet - https://www.pushbullet.com/) I normally get the push notification sooner than I do emails.

Here an old pic of my alerts and how it shows on my lock screen of my phone (yea both came in at the same time but that isn't always the case)

 

[Somnifac]

I think configurability of notifications is pretty key. What is important for me, may not be important for you and vice versa. If we could pick what's important, that could go a long way in reducing the number of notifications sent to a manageable number of important things. I'd probably want to know if a leak was detected, or the temperature reached a specific threshold. Other items, not as much.

Other items that are good to know (pump statuses, temp pH (when/if added), ORP (again when/if), etc.) might make for a good daily summary email, if desired.

 

[Ranjib]

If I may make a suggestion. I would suggest some of these "important" alerts you also look at text/sms/mms alerts. Email can take some time to come in. I have my system send me an email and a push notification (via pushbullet - https://www.pushbullet.com/) I normally get the push notification sooner than I do emails.

Here an old pic of my alerts and how it shows on my lock screen of my phone (yea both came in at the same time but that isn't always the case)

Thanks for sharing. I'll look into this.
In USA we can send sms as email directly, so I was hoping if users prefer text message over emails, they can just configure their phone number (for example tmobile uses <phone number>@tmomail.net), with same UI

 

[Biokabe]

A question for all the reef pi experts in this thread... I think I'm going to take the plunge and use a reef pi to control my new 50g tank. I had a question regarding the lighting control option.

I don't imagine that anyone has done this yet, but would it be feasible to configure the reef pi so that it could put out both PWM and 0-10v signals? Basically, due to a couple of circumstances I didn't anticipate, I'm going to end up with a DIY array with LDD drivers on half of the tank, and possibly a Kessil A160 on the other half. Obviously there's the Kessil spectral controller, but I'd definitely prefer to just be able to control everything through the pi. Am I crazy to try to do this, or would this be within the pi's capabilities?

 

[Ranjib]

A question for all the reef pi experts in this thread... I think I'm going to take the plunge and use a reef pi to control my new 50g tank. I had a question regarding the lighting control option.

I don't imagine that anyone has done this yet, but would it be feasible to configure the reef pi so that it could put out both PWM and 0-10v signals? Basically, due to a couple of circumstances I didn't anticipate, I'm going to end up with a DIY array with LDD drivers on half of the tank, and possibly a Kessil A160 on the other half. Obviously there's the Kessil spectral controller, but I'd definitely prefer to just be able to control everything through the pi. Am I crazy to try to do this, or would this be within the pi's capabilities?

Should be alrite . The software is not really aware of any of this, you have to have different electronics for those two type of lights. I can confirm that kessil will work just fine, I have not personally test the 0-10v ldd driver based lights, but couple of folks have tried that route and it worked. Reef-pi can generate up to sixteen, 5v pwm which can be converted to any arbitrary dimming circuits (like 10v pwms or 0-10v analog)

 

[marspeed]

Where in NJ are you from? I am near LBI. Also are you a member of NJReefers?

Williamstown about an hour away and no not a member been meaning to join but never get around to it

 

[njtiger aquariums]

Williamstown about an hour away and no not a member been meaning to join but never get around to it

nice. You should join its a great group of locals. We aim to have meetings once a month all across the state. If free to create an account and come to the meetings. There is a paid membership which provides more access but I will not bog this thread down with that.

 

[Somnifac]

Question on the "Up Since" line item on the System tab. Is it calculated since the last time the "Reload" button is pressed? I ask because I powered my Pi on and it said "Up Since 1 Day Ago". I hit the "Reload" button and it showed the proper time. It seems it should show since the last reboot, or the last time "Reload" was hit.

Not a big deal, just reporting on behavior.

 

[Ranjib]

Question on the "Up Since" line item on the System tab. Is it calculated since the last time the "Reload" button is pressed? I ask because I powered my Pi on and it said "Up Since 1 Day Ago". I hit the "Reload" button and it showed the proper time. It seems it should show since the last reboot, or the last time "Reload" was hit.

Not a big deal, just reporting on behavior.

This is a known bug. I 'll fix it before 1.0 release. It was just not impacting any feature, hence I didn't fix it. Thanks for bringing this up.

 

[Ranjib]

Couple of things I am working on for the next minor release (0.8) are:
- Changing "system" tab to "Configuration", this will make it more intuitive
- Health telemetry will emit "used memory" instead "free memory", since the later can be confusing due to linux using free memory for caching purpose
- Email notification integration.

 

[Ranjib]

New configuration tab (till 0.7 release, this used to be called as system tab).

The configuration tab is going to get more extensive as it will next have notification settings (email address, password etc).. I am thinking making individual section hide/show based on clicks, otherwise making everything visible all the time will make the configuration tab pretty long.
Time/IP etc details will be moved to a separate 'Dashboard' tab

 

[Somnifac]

This is well beyond actual software capabilities, but have you considered setting up a repository for reef-pi (once it reaches the 1.0 release) so that we can keep up to date with incremental updates between major releases (if we so choose)? Would be easy to add a repository to our sources.list if we want to be able to update using apt.

 

[Ranjib]

This is well beyond actual software capabilities, but have you considered setting up a repository for reef-pi (once it reaches the 1.0 release) so that we can keep up to date with incremental updates between major releases (if we so choose)? Would be easy to add a repository to our sources.list if we want to be able to update using apt.

I have done it in past for some other projects. While this is certainly doable, I am thinking whether I should take the old debian repo approach or write some feature in reef-pi itself that will allow users to upgrade reef-pi from the UI.

 

[Cary]

I would love to update from the UI. Email notifications are going to be great. I am really excited about the plan going forward.

 

[Somnifac]

My PCA9685 board arrived yesterday. I got it connected it to the Pi and everything seems to be working fine. I can play with the level in the UI and read the change in voltage on the defined pins of the PCA9685 board. I'm still waiting for my transistors to arrive so I can wire up the 10V circuit.

I'm also thinking of grabbing one of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FE9EQ88 to make things easier. I'd prefer to not rely on single solderless connections to the GPIO headers, and this would give easy solder or screw terminals. Plus with just the relay and the PCA9685 board connected, I've used up both 5V pins on the Pi. The Pi-EzConnect (the thing in the link) would expand that and give me a place to power the Pi via the pins rather than the micro USB port (also a personal preference).

@Ranjib

Either the UI based upgrade or an apt repository would work fine in my eyes. They both accomplish the same thing. I periodically run an update and upgrade as part of regular housekeeping, so I'd get it in either case.

And some other UI things I've noticed. Maybe you can tell me if I'm doing something wrong:

When I enable a new function on the System tab (in this case when I went in and enabled Lighting), I then click the Update button, and then the Reload button. I can refresh till the cows come up, including forced refreshes, and it doesn't appear. I can even open an Incognito tab and it still doesn't show. As you probably know, the Incognito tab doesn't rely on previously cached pages and fetches everything new.

At this point, I figure that maybe a reboot is in order, so I click the "Reboot" button in the UI. Nothing seems to happen when I do. I have to issue a reboot command via the terminal to get it to do so. Once it comes back up, everything seems to work fine. I can open and refresh the UI and any newly enabled tabs come up just fine.

 

[Ranjib]

My PCA9685 board arrived yesterday. I got it connected it to the Pi and everything seems to be working fine. I can play with the level in the UI and read the change in voltage on the defined pins of the PCA9685 board. I'm still waiting for my transistors to arrive so I can wire up the 10V circuit.

I'm also thinking of grabbing one of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FE9EQ88 to make things easier. I'd prefer to not rely on single solderless connections to the GPIO headers, and this would give easy solder or screw terminals. Plus with just the relay and the PCA9685 board connected, I've used up both 5V pins on the Pi. The Pi-EzConnect (the thing in the link) would expand that and give me a place to power the Pi via the pins rather than the micro USB port (also a personal preference).

@Ranjib

Either the UI based upgrade or an apt repository would work fine in my eyes. They both accomplish the same thing. I periodically run an update and upgrade as part of regular housekeeping, so I'd get it in either case.

And some other UI things I've noticed. Maybe you can tell me if I'm doing something wrong:

When I enable a new function on the System tab (in this case when I went in and enabled Lighting), I then click the Update button, and then the Reload button. I can refresh till the cows come up, including forced refreshes, and it doesn't appear. I can even open an Incognito tab and it still doesn't show. As you probably know, the Incognito tab doesn't rely on previously cached pages and fetches everything new.

At this point, I figure that maybe a reboot is in order, so I click the "Reboot" button in the UI. Nothing seems to happen when I do. I have to issue a reboot command via the terminal to get it to do so. Once it comes back up, everything seems to work fine. I can open and refresh the UI and any newly enabled tabs come up just fine.

If this is happening, then its a bug.
This should work:

1. Check/Uncheck a capability from system tab (lighting in your case)
2. Click update button
3. Click reload button to restart reef-pi (not reboot , which restart the whole raspberry pi)
4. Refresh browser, after a few seconds (2-5s)

If thats not the case, its a bug,,, something is definitely wrong. I'll try to reproduce it.
If this is a persistent issue, then can you share the log, while you execute each of these steps.
Sorry for the trouble, and I greatly appreciate your feedback,

 

[Somnifac]

I don't think the current limitation will be an issue. I will likely split the 5v out of the power supply and run it to each item requiring 5v power, so there would be no additional draw on the Pi itself.

I'm also pretty sure there are points in the Pi that you can solder to by the micro USB port as well.

Sound reasonable?

 

[Ranjib]

I don't think the current limitation will be an issue. I will likely split the 5v out of the power supply and run it to each item requiring 5v power, so there would be no additional draw on the Pi itself.

I'm also pretty sure there are points in the Pi that you can solder to by the micro USB port as well.

Sound reasonable?

If you are powering the relay, pca9685 from dedicated 5v supply, then its definitely reasonable.

 

[Somnifac]

For those interested in powering their Pi in a way other than the micro USB port, please see this video:



And so far, so good:

 

[Somnifac]

Something else I thought of:

Since part of the capabilities of this project is timers, time is very important. The lack of a real time clock that keeps time in the event of a power outage. Theoretically, it should sync time at boot, but it will only be able to do so if it can see the internet. If it boots before your router is done starting up, it won't be able to.

We have the option of adding a hardware RTC, like this one: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3013

Would we be able to daisy chain this of the PCA9685 board so that we don't have to worry about the time?

Yes, this is what I sit around thinking about.