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

[Ranjib]

I like the option of changing the port at the source. This gives few more options from firewalling perspective. So is it safe to say changing the port number function works, with 0.0.0.0 for the IP?

Yes, totally.

 

[That Crusso Kid]

Hey, thanks! I actually missed your comment, but saw Ranjib quote it. Thread has been moving super fast today!

I'm still a few days away from officially selling them, so price isn't totally concrete yet. But I've got the prices I'm pretty settled on listed on the site. There are different "tiers" depending on which features you plan on using. No reason to buy the full board with the added cost of the integrated circuits like the L293D & PCA9685 if you don't plan on using them!

Bare board-$14, for people who want the cheapest build possible & don't mind soldering. It's about half the price of the proto-boards & you don't have to solder any of the tons of board connections! Only will have to solder the components you want to it.

Board w/ Pi & relay headers, float switch ATO, & temperature-$23, simple setup, perfect for freshwater or a fowlr tank.

Board w/ all of the above + optical sensor ATO & dosing-$30, what I'd typically recommend. This covers all the features most people will need or use.

All the features including pH & lighting control-$42, this is for the completionist that wants to use every feature Reef-Pi offers. If I wind up getting better at soldering the PCA9685pw chips, I may be able to justify going down in price a bit, but hand-soldering 28 0.65mm pitch pins is a pretty big chore, plus all the extra resistors that go along with it.

Any of these boards can be "upgraded" at any point, just solder on the components for the new feature you want to add.

Definitely some exciting things you have going on and offering different level boards is a smart move. I would think as things move forward you'll definitely get a good understanding of what people want and what they want to accomplish.

 

[marekd1]

As far as charting /alerting and metrics retention is concerned all of it can be done (and probably in better fashion ) with Prometheus /grafana . Node red definitely has a greater ecosystem and we should definitely do the needful to make sure reef-pi works with it. I’m curious , the current api is not sufficient for this integration?

Do you have any examples on how to use the API?

 

[marekd1]

Not sure if this is a bug but the lights charting does not seem to be working for me. I have setup two separate lights configs each light has its own configuration. Each is similar level may be different, 6 channels on one and 4 on the other.

When I configure the Dashboard to display the channels level its like this for all

Any ideas ?

 

[Ranjib]

Not sure if this is a bug but the lights charting does not seem to be working for me. I have setup two separate lights configs each light has its own configuration. Each is similar level may be different, 6 channels on one and 4 on the other.

When I configure the Dashboard to display the channels level its like this for all

Any ideas ?

Its not a bug, its a missing feature. During the 3.0 development we introduced arbitrary pwm profile which allows us a wide variety of pwm profile generation (e.g. lunar cycle, user defined intervals etc), but we were not able to have the UI in place to visualize the resulting graph. You can see the graph only via telemtry (adafruit or grafana/prometheus). This and device specific settings UI are two pending UI components (that i can recall) we still have to finish in future 3.x releases.

 

[Ranjib]

By the way, i went through the mqtt stuff. I think it will be pretty straight forward to have metric publishing capability based on mqtt. I have updated the original ticket with my comments, https://github.com/reef-pi/reef-pi/issues/999 , please share your thoughts there (and if any of you want to do the development work). Otherwise, I'll pick up the work in one of the 3.x minor releases.

 

[marekd1]

Its not a bug, its a missing feature. During the 3.0 development we introduced arbitrary pwm profile which allows us a wide variety of pwm profile generation (e.g. lunar cycle, user defined intervals etc), but we were not able to have the UI in place to visualize the resulting graph. You can see the graph only via telemtry (adafruit or grafana/prometheus). This and device specific settings UI are two pending UI components (that i can recall) we still have to finish in future 3.x releases.

Thanks for the info. Just playing with features, not significant by any means...

 

[Phildago]

Hmm, did not consider that. Well I have one that I've used for over 2 years and did not have to replace any tubing. I would say I had bigger wear on the nylon rollers as the motor spindle started to slip than I would have noticed on the silicon tubing. Since then I've used heads that are driven by keyed motor spindle. Not sure if would look at it this way. For me is dose accuracy is key, Silicon tubing is cheap cheap cheap.

I agree 100% the tubing is cheap and accuracy is the most important factor. I keep my tubes as short as possible in case of any failure. Let's say a tube has a hole worn into it and the tubes drains into my tank.. It's a short tube and can't be anymore than 10 ml which is about 1 days dose, so not much of an issue.

I should have all my parts in by Sunday, so I'll be able to get things working then and will give everyone an update... Im also thinking about adding an extra pump onto my jebao because I had a spare motor lying around and the jebao came with an extra head. I'm not sure what I'll use it for and am definitely open to suggestions tho

 

[Bigtrout]

Yes the crossover is the issue as pins will create a short. You only use as many connection points as you want. I have something similar with 8 pins that I use for my lights. Hermetic seal connection makes sure that pins will not corrode over time. Salt does nasty things to wires.

I put rj45 ethernet conenctors on my temp probes and ethernet jacks in my controller box...easy quick and they work great. No soldering required.

 

[lmm1967]

I put rj45 ethernet conenctors on my temp probes and ethernet jacks in my controller box...easy quick and they work great. No soldering required.

Being in IT - and more specifically heavy on the network side of IT - this has been one of my options as well. Plus I have plenty of cable, rj45s, crimper etc and I could do this with no additional money spent.

The reason I didn't is I just didn't feel like using an 8 wire option for 3 wires. I could put 2 sensors (more actually I think) per RJ45 - but then cable lengths and keeping straight which is which and then my head starts spinning and I know a year from now I won't remember what the heck I did.

 

[dmolavi]

Thanks, my friend, and hugs back! As you know, I was away for a while and, by "away", I don't mean prison! :p

I'm not exactly sure how many pages I missed over the last several months but am aware the upgrades to reef-pi have been exceptional. And so many different premade boards to select from now. That Leviathan from @Schreiber is looking very impressive!

I cannot believe @dmolavi is still tinkering with the DLI powerstrip. I figured he would be on release 2.1 by now. Sheesh! Lol (I'm fairly sure he'll be cursing my return!)

Haha. I never really started it to begin with way back when. But I had time off from work over the holidays and gave it a go. I have a feeling I'm really close, but since I don't know too much about the internals of how reef-pi works, haven't gotten it yet. Something tells me it's probably something really simple that's keeping it from working. You can check my git repo at https://github.com/dmolavi/drivers if you want to see what's what.

 

[marekd1]

I put rj45 ethernet conenctors on my temp probes and ethernet jacks in my controller box...easy quick and they work great. No soldering required.

Last time I tried the RJ45 I had massive buildup of copper oxide in about a year then bunch of problems started. Its the same way as keeping tools in the same room as tank or sump, all will rust even though there is no contact with water. Salt water vapour gets everywhere. Since I've switched to sealed connectors my intermitent connection issues went away.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

I've officially got my Reef-Pi board finalized- meet Leviathan!!

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here! I've had a couple of people testing them, including myself, & they've worked great. I got tired of dealing with re-wiring my setup every time I wanted to add a new feature & when asked to build a Reef-Pi setup for a friend, I knew there was no way I was doing it all from scratch again.

I wasn't totally satisfied with any of the pre-existing Reef-Pi boards out there to buy, none I found had the ability to do both dosing & light control. Plus, I didn't need to use the ULN2803, as I wasn't going to be using the ADJ strip.

I'll be selling them soon- if you're interested in signing up for one, or finding out more about Leviathan, check out this link.

Awesome! It's great to see continued evolution of ever expanding options for reef pi!

 

[thoeffe]

Here is one of my latest build, involving a pi zero, a temperature sensor and a float switch. It’s powered by 5v 2.4A micro USB adapter directly. Tiny and feature rich when combined with smart plugs , I am using it to benchmark various power banks for backup /emergency use cases.
3D models: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4077533

Here is how it looks in real life

Internals

I just noticed that reef-pi version 3 is out. I was running 2.5 and just upgraded. How would you configure a smart plug with reef pi? This is pretty neat.

 

[Zippyfear]

I just noticed that reef-pi version 3 is out. I was running 2.5 and just upgraded. How would you configure a smart plug with reef pi? This is pretty neat.

When you get to where it asks for address, use

IP:9999

The IP of the smart plug can be found from your DHCP leases in your router - It's pretty simple and works great!

 

[Zippyfear]

Hey, thanks! I actually missed your comment, but saw Ranjib quote it. Thread has been moving super fast today!

I'm still a few days away from officially selling them, so price isn't totally concrete yet. But I've got the prices I'm pretty settled on listed on the site. There are different "tiers" depending on which features you plan on using. No reason to buy the full board with the added cost of the integrated circuits like the L293D & PCA9685 if you don't plan on using them!

Bare board-$14, for people who want the cheapest build possible & don't mind soldering. It's about half the price of the proto-boards & you don't have to solder any of the tons of board connections! Only will have to solder the components you want to it.

Board w/ Pi & relay headers, float switch ATO, & temperature-$23, simple setup, perfect for freshwater or a fowlr tank.

Board w/ all of the above + optical sensor ATO & dosing-$30, what I'd typically recommend. This covers all the features most people will need or use.

All the features including pH & lighting control-$42, this is for the completionist that wants to use every feature Reef-Pi offers. If I wind up getting better at soldering the PCA9685pw chips, I may be able to justify going down in price a bit, but hand-soldering 28 0.65mm pitch pins is a pretty big chore, plus all the extra resistors that go along with it.

Any of these boards can be "upgraded" at any point, just solder on the components for the new feature you want to add.

This is awesome, and I'll be interested in a full set when they launch officially! Do you have that 3d printed case available for download anywhere? I'd love to print one off!

Thanks!

 

[Ranjib]

When you get to where it asks for address, use

IP:9999

The IP of the smart plug can be found from your DHCP leases in your router - It's pretty simple and works great!

Thats pretty much it. Go to drivers section and choose your kasa smart plug type, add IP:9999 as address and then proceed to create outlet (and analog input if current monitoring is available) with the driver.

 

[Schreiber]

This is awesome, and I'll be interested in a full set when they launch officially! Do you have that 3d printed case available for download anywhere? I'd love to print one off!

Thanks!

I don't have anything publicly available yet for the cases. Still tweaking the design, as I'm making 4 different configurations. Been working on the 8 outlet design today.

 

[MangroveCorals]

Wanted to check if these female pins 2.1mm will work just the same for the power controller build.
uxcell DC-015 5.5mmx2.1mm DC Power Jack Socket 3 Pin Female Panel Mount Connector 10pcs

 

[Ranjib]

Wanted to check if these female pins 2.1mm will work just the same for the power controller build.
uxcell DC-015 5.5mmx2.1mm DC Power Jack Socket 3 Pin Female Panel Mount Connector 10pcs

It should , but I have not tested this personally, and you only need two pins .