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

[Ranjib]

Hello everyone,

The multilingual of reef-pi is finally available in the current state of the project. Not in a release at the moment. Here are the languages to be included with people wanting to contribute on it:

• English
• French
• Italian
• German
• Hindi
• Persian
• Spanish

If you want to contribute to this part of the project i've written a guide:
https://github.com/reef-pi/reef-pi/blob/master/internationalization_contributing.md

If it's not clear enough please let me know or open an issue and i'll do my best to improve it.

Thank you so much @Zekth for leading this effort. This will be the first internationalization effort and I am stoked about it :0)

 

[Ranjib]

On this note, I have also made a website page on additional resources on reef-pi, outside the guides and website. https://reef-pi.github.io/additional-documentation/resources/ . This page has links for reef-pi build threads, api usage, press releases etc.

Check it out and let me know if you would like to see any other categories, and if there are some other popular/helpful link that I have missed/I should be adding.

 

[bishoptf]

Here is something I have meant to bring up but keep forgetting. I have not opened an issue yet but first wanted to see what others think and maybe there is another way to do what I like to do.

With a planted fw tank if you are dosing fertilizers ala the ei method, to reset the tank you should do 50% water changes weekly. I have 3 small tanks and while I am dosing on the low side, I do 50%. When I go to do each tank I turn off the filter and the heater since the water level can go below my heaters. I normally unplug them but with reef-pi I usually just do it from my phone. I would go the the equipment page and turn the outlet off. What I forgot about is since I using the heater as a failsafe safe with the temp probes they would turn back on. I would first have to go to the temp page and remove the heater control and then turn the outlet off, then they would stay off or I could just unplug them.

This had me thinking of an easy override ability when doing tank maintenance and I'd like to turn stuff off that is integrated with other functions.

Going to think about this some more and see if I can think of something that makes sense and would be easy to implement. If anyone has any suggestions or thinks that this would be nice to have please post.

:)

 

[bishoptf]

On this note, I have also made a website page on additional resources on reef-pi, outside the guides and website. https://reef-pi.github.io/additional-documentation/resources/ . This page has links for reef-pi build threads, api usage, press releases etc.

Check it out and let me know if you would like to see any other categories, and if there are some other popular/helpful link that I have missed/I should be adding.

Awesome, I will for sure take a look and help reviewing the documents, will do this while watching/listening to wrc results in Sweden.

:)

 

[Ranjib]

Here is something I have meant to bring up but keep forgetting. I have not opened an issue yet but first wanted to see what others think and maybe there is another way to do what I like to do.

With a planted fw tank if you are dosing fertilizers ala the ei method, to reset the tank you should do 50% water changes weekly. I have 3 small tanks and while I am dosing on the low side, I do 50%. When I go to do each tank I turn off the filter and the heater since the water level can go below my heaters. I normally unplug them but with reef-pi I usually just do it from my phone. I would go the the equipment page and turn the outlet off. What I forgot about is since I using the heater as a failsafe safe with the temp probes they would turn back on. I would first have to go to the temp page and remove the heater control and then turn the outlet off, then they would stay off or I could just unplug them.

This had me thinking of an easy override ability when doing tank maintenance and I'd like to turn stuff off that is integrated with other functions.

Going to think about this some more and see if I can think of something that makes sense and would be easy to implement. If anyone has any suggestions or thinks that this would be nice to have please post.

:)

You can create macro to turn off equipemt, disable timers , ato, temeperature controller etc. I use one macro each to before and after the water change

 

[bishoptf]

You can create macro to turn off equipemt, disable timers , ato, temeperature controller etc. I use one macro each to before and after the water change

Ha, well that would do it, haven't used the macro functions so something new to fiddle with...woot!

:)

 

[16Reefer170]

On this note, I have also made a website page on additional resources on reef-pi, outside the guides and website. https://reef-pi.github.io/additional-documentation/resources/ . This page has links for reef-pi build threads, api usage, press releases etc.

Check it out and let me know if you would like to see any other categories, and if there are some other popular/helpful link that I have missed/I should be adding.

Wow, this is perfect. What a wonderful resource!

 

[bishoptf]

Its not a reef-pi build but something else I am working on, an old pi2 in a sandwich meat container. It actually works pretty well, the sides are kind of flimsy without the lid but thought this might give some folks some ideas when looking for a small container, I think its a keeper. :)

 

[That Crusso Kid]

Its not a reef-pi build but something else I am working on, an old pi2 in a sandwich meat container. It actually works pretty well, the sides are kind of flimsy without the lid but thought this might give some folks some ideas when looking for a small container, I think its a keeper. :)

Where's the beef?

 

[bishoptf]

Where's the beef?

lol, I was up late last night looking for something to mount a Pi in and I couldn't find any of the micro usb power supplies and since I had ordered some of the buck converters I started looking for something else to mount it in. Saw a stack of these and it was like Eureka, they actully work pretty well and the lids snap on them, if it was a pi zero it would have a bunch of space.

:)

 

[Bigtrout]

Ha, well that would do it, haven't used the macro functions so something new to fiddle with...woot!

:)

Yes the macros are powerful, I use one to shut off all my canister filters for 5 minutes at feeding time to avoid sucking food into the filters, then it turns them back on so I dont have to remember.

 

[Ranjib]

Its not a reef-pi build but something else I am working on, an old pi2 in a sandwich meat container. It actually works pretty well, the sides are kind of flimsy without the lid but thought this might give some folks some ideas when looking for a small container, I think its a keeper. :)

Oh yeah :-). Tupper wires are actually one of my favorites. I mount these arcade buttons on them as well, and my son loves them. Cheap, easy to cut holes. A dremel is all you need :-)

 

[buddy.]

So I am having a couple of problems that hopefully I can sort out.

Firstly, my temperature sensors drop out randomly. Today they randomly dropped out while I was not home and the heater got stuck on and my tank got to 102F.
It also failed to send an alert (alerts had been working previously)
I use a titanium heater that usually runs from its own controller but I decided to try reef-pi t control it.
If I power off my reef-pi and turn it back on, all the sensors are working again.

The other problem is that my metal halide does not turn off when I shut the relay off in the equipment tab. I tried other equipment on that outlet and it works perfectly, just seems the MH gets stuck on.

Just an update on this, I removed all temperature probes except for two and it has been stable. Ill try to add a probe every few days to see if I can find the culprit.

For some reason my google app password for alerts stopped working, so I generated a new password and this seems to be working again. I also created an adafruit.io account and set up alerts for extra safety.

I still need some help on how I can get my relay board to turn off my metal halide light.

 

[theatrus]

Just an update on this, I removed all temperature probes except for two and it has been stable. Ill try to add a probe every few days to see if I can find the culprit.

For some reason my google app password for alerts stopped working, so I generated a new password and this seems to be working again. I also created an adafruit.io account and set up alerts for extra safety.

I still need some help on how I can get my relay board to turn off my metal halide light.

Just to check - have you tried another relay on the board? Do they all do this?

One option is to still cascade relays. What I mean by this is use the existing relay to switch a larger relay, and in turn that larger relay switches your load. You would use a relay with a 240V coil voltage in this application, for example:

https://www.digikey.com/product-det...mc-div/G7L-2A-T-CB-AC200-240/Z5243-ND/1816486

This is an oversized relay in terms of amps, but you should be able to find something similar locally (240V contact, 240V coil, single pole).

 

[buddy.]

Just to check - have you tried another relay on the board? Do they all do this?

One option is to still cascade relays. What I mean by this is use the existing relay to switch a larger relay, and in turn that larger relay switches your load. You would use a relay with a 240V coil voltage in this application, for example:

https://www.digikey.com/product-det...mc-div/G7L-2A-T-CB-AC200-240/Z5243-ND/1816486

This is an oversized relay in terms of amps, but you should be able to find something similar locally (240V contact, 240V coil, single pole).

Yup I tried a relay on the other board and its the same. I can get it to turn off eventually by toggling the switch several times.
Thanks for that link, I will have a look at getting that set up.

On to a different topic, I just got a bunch of errors related to the adafruit.io account. It seems that everything is working on my adafruit account and the error is vague so I am not sure if it means anything.

 

[Zekth]

We may have to add the context of the error in this report. Nothing else on the console?

@Ranjib you think it's revelant to add more informations in this part? BTW i really have to clean this UI

 

[That Crusso Kid]

On this note, I have also made a website page on additional resources on reef-pi, outside the guides and website. https://reef-pi.github.io/additional-documentation/resources/ . This page has links for reef-pi build threads, api usage, press releases etc.

Check it out and let me know if you would like to see any other categories, and if there are some other popular/helpful link that I have missed/I should be adding.

Perhaps an additional resource for those wanting to employ reef-pi to FW tanks like @Bigtrout build and if @Tom Bishop documents a build for his FW system.

Here is Bigtrout's build...
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-reef-pi-build-freshwater-style.531338/

 

[Ranjib]

Perhaps an additional resource for those wanting to employ reef-pi to FW tanks like @Bigtrout build and if @Tom Bishop documents a build for his FW system.

Here is Bigtrout's build...
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-reef-pi-build-freshwater-style.531338/

I have added bigtrout ‘s thread already , it’s just not published yet.

 

[Ranjib]

We may have to add the context of the error in this report. Nothing else on the console?

@Ranjib you think it's revelant to add more informations in this part? BTW i really have to clean this UI

There are two common issues when the adafruit.io integration , 1) having space in names, which causes encoding issues , 2) reaching the free account limit (10 feeds among others ) . Alternatively if we can document /streamline the diagnosis of these two issues, it will be helpful as well

 

[sector9]

I added another Sparkfun temperature probe to my build but I am having issues with some of the readings. As you can see from the temperature graph, I will randomly get erroneous temperature readings of -1000 to -3000 from this new probe.

I know people have reported problems with extending the cable for their sensors but both cables for my temperature sensors are exactly the same length. I am running the latest release of reef-pi 2.0
I occasionally get errors like "temperature sub-system. Failed to read sensor Display. Error:First line of device file does not ends with YES" but not at the times associated with these erroneous readings.

Any ideas on what could be causing the issue?

Another problem has been email alert notifications. I receive the "test" email without problems but I realized that I am not receiving other notification emails. For example, I set this probe to send alerts if temp is below 77 and nothing was sent. There is an error message "535 5.7.8 Username and Password not accepted. Learn more at 5.7.8 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=BadCredentials k18sm21237749ioa.39 - gsmtp" but if there's a problem with the username or password, how come the test email comes through without difficulty?

I thought I would follow up on my post. I made a change so that both probes weren’t being read at the same time (I.e. one probe checks the temperature every 600 seconds and the other probe checks every 601 seconds) and I haven’t had any further issues over the past 2 months with the erroneous temp readings.

For the record, I also bought a battery powered Fisher Scientific temp probe that has an alarm function for $10 off eBay. This gives me a backup alarm if my temp is way out of line.