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

Matt Carden

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Adafruit is getting pi4's almost weekly, here is where I get updates from - https://rpilocator.com/?country=UK,US and I have been able to snag a few. Zero's w2 are still hard to come buy but they do pop up now and then, most I have purchased from the UK, shipping is a little higher but not to bad. Couple ways of doing it I use the RSS feeds and get notified.
I didn't find one on that website but I tried Adafruit and they had a pi 3 so I got one thanks!
 

reyokonova

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is the robot tank system still the best option to use reef pi? if you don't want to do a lot of soldering and breadboards? where are the only salinity and or probes? and one final thing I can't seem to find one of the pi units that is recommended anyone tried one that is not on the list of pi's to use with Robotank?
 

InactiveAcct

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@Schreiber wondering if Leviathan 1.1 ORP can be used as Ph. I have your original leviathan, it looks like the main difference is we don’t need to BYOBuckconverters?
 

Sral

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is the robot tank system still the best option to use reef pi? if you don't want to do a lot of soldering and breadboards? where are the only salinity and or probes? and one final thing I can't seem to find one of the pi units that is recommended anyone tried one that is not on the list of pi's to use with Robotank?
Personally, I'm making a DIY ReefPi Build since I do get off on doing these things. Saying that however, if I ever set up another system I would go for RoboTank. Simply costs too much money and time to DIY it. Up until now I easily spent well above 1000$ and 100h on equipment, planning and soldering. If you are not prepared to do that, I can absolutely recommend checking out Robo-Tank. There is also the Leviathan board, but there have been issues with support there. It's cheaper and smaller scale though.

Similar threads about sourcing some PIs and Alternatives:
They also contain some links where you can get PIs for MSRP if you wait a bit.
 

elysics

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Personally, I'm making a DIY ReefPi Build since I do get off on doing these things. Saying that however, if I ever set up another system I would go for RoboTank. Simply costs too much money and time to DIY it. Up until now I easily spent well above 1000$ and 100h on equipment, planning and soldering. If you are not prepared to do that, I can absolutely recommend checking out Robo-Tank. There is also the Leviathan board, but there have been issues with support there. It's cheaper and smaller scale though.

Similar threads about sourcing some PIs and Alternatives:
They also contain some links where you can get PIs for MSRP if you wait a bit.
I've spent my fair share on tools for this as well, i love buying tools, but what did you buy to break $1000 ? A high end oscilloscope?

I wouldn't say $1000 is what the average person needs to spend to do this diy, more like 300-400 or something
 

Sral

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I've spent my fair share on tools for this as well, i love buying tools, but what did you buy to break $1000 ? A high end oscilloscope?

I wouldn't say $1000 is what the average person needs to spend to do this diy, more like 300-400 or something
As far as I know low end lab oscilloscopes start at something like 1000$ ^^

I can share a list at my Build thread if you like :grinning-face-with-sweat:
Ordered almost everything on digikey, maybe that was the mistake. Possibly should have looked around, but then again, doing so costs time and time is money ...
 

robsworld78

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is the robot tank system still the best option to use reef pi? if you don't want to do a lot of soldering and breadboards? where are the only salinity and or probes? and one final thing I can't seem to find one of the pi units that is recommended anyone tried one that is not on the list of pi's to use with Robotank?
Any Pi with a 40 pin header will be ok with the controller and should be ok with reef-pi as well. I do have some Pi Zero 2 W's however only with the full kits as I had to overpay for them and only way to absorb it was in the full kit.
 

Matt Carden

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Can a raspberry pi Pico be used. Those seem to be always available on Adafruit or whatever site you choose?
 
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Ranjib

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Can a raspberry pi Pico be used. Those seem to be always available on Adafruit or whatever site you choose?
Unfortunately no. Not for running the main reef-pi software.
however I am working on some changes that will allow reef-pi to be run x86 systems (intel mini pc , desktop etc ) and also be able to use Esp32 (and may be pi pico ) to augment some of the functionality (like probe integration )
 

Wolfw28

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152D47EF-94B2-41B1-B20F-87CCEC2EC027.png 7CFEC55D-3271-4A90-BE9A-2945747AB733.png
Hive mind
I am pleased to announce the immediate availability of 5.3 . This release ships with a decent size of the changelog. Primary focus of this release was to address several UI/UX bugs around calibration , charts, control setting that was annoying. We addressed bulk of those reported issues. As usual, there was community contributions as well. Many hugs goes to the contributors. Following are the highlights:



New features and enhancements:
  • Users can now specify a transform expression to be applied on raw analog sensor reading (e.g. to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit). The transform function takes the shape of an arithmatic expression with a variable "v" interpreted as the raw analog sensor value. This feature is implemented using govaluate library that allows numerical values, arithmetic operators, parenthesis and more. Check the library manual for details. Just remember that reef-pi will inject the value of "v" as raw reading in the transform expression provided.
  • Doser subsystem will now emit metrics and doser charts will reflect the same
  • Error summary in the footer section now links to error section in configuration tab . Users can now just click and check the details of errors conveniently. contributed by @richievos
  • Footer section will now show if the controller is running in dev mode, in red as warning. We hope this makes it easy to detect cases where users inadvertently enabled dev mode.
  • Footer section will now include "year" information to represent current time. My personal requirement. Now after running reef-pi for 5+ years i miss the years in older screenshots. I felt given reef tanks last years.. it makes sense to have the year info in footer. Any screenshot that way will be amortized
  • Driver loading error will be logged under errors section for users to review and assess. No more silent driver failures. Kasa powerstrip load failure like cases were harder to detect due to this. We hope this will make it easier for users to detect driver issues (since it also has timestamp, other than the exact error details).
  • Connectors addition/update operation will now prompt only relevant driver choices (e.g. analog connectors will show only drivers with analog input pins in the driver options). Before this all drivers were being listed. This is a small user experience enhancements, suggested by another community member.

Chores
  • Equipment entries will show outlet name (restoring older behavior)
  • Get rid of spurious log section in the UI. It was there to capture UI errors and causes confusion with Configuration -> Errors tab.
Bug fixes

  • Fixed doser calibration bug. Support volume based stepper motor calibration. Make calibration UI reflective of doser type (speed, duration for dcpumps and volume for steppers)
  • Sort chart data with timestamp across all entities (ph, temperatures, ato etc). Unsorted data was causing bogus charts where new data would not line up on the time axis.
  • Fix cpu usage notify target setting type.
  • Make temperature target thresholds optional when control is not being used - contributed by @richievos
  • Cron job validation through backend instead of ui - fix spurious cron schedule validation errors in the ui. Acceptable cron syntax like "*/3" was being rejected by UI validation. Given cron expression is rich and we have backend based validation, we decided to not do the cron syntax validation in ui and just use the backend. This is more sustainable and does not reduce the awesome cron capabilities
Release builds are available at usual location:


reef-pi 4.0 or above users should be able to upgrade their installs directly through the UI. If you can please test and let us know if you have any feedback.

@Ranjib
I just upgraded full new install of 5.3 on a new SD card. All seems well except for ph reading will randomly drop either blow the correct valve or to 0 and then start working again. The real odd part about it is I have Reef-Kivy installed and running on a 7in display and it never drops out like the Reef-pi UI Does. From my understanding they are both reading from the same source. I put my old SD card with 5.1 reboot ph reads fine.
 
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Matt Carden

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Seems like my Raspberry-Pi Zero W got fried somehow. The LEDs don't light up on the raspberry.

I managed to get a Raspberry-Pi 3 B from Adafruit by luck and it seems it is DOA! It powers up the desktop appears but the keyboard and mouse don't function. Also the Raspberry-Pi didn't log into my wifi so I can't SSH into the desktop.
 

Sral

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I was looking up usage of the Pi Pico for another project and lo and behold: you can turn the Pi Pico into an oscilloscope. The example shown uses a USB cable, but I'm pretty sure somebody will make it work over WiFi. Bonus points for having 2 channels and showing data on your Cellphone, which gives you immediate data extraction if desired.

Extra points: the Pi Pico is actually available ^^

Depending on the application you'll have to build an appropriate input circuit with Operational amplifiers like here, I guess, but hey, nice idea for tinkering ^^
 
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DWKDiver

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Maybe it’s misleading. I remember a similar „enable“ setting for macros, but I think that only disables the Macro itself, not the equipment it’s connected to.
I guess it might be similar with lights, in that it only enables/disables the automatic intensity profiles, but not the light itself ?
It doesn't even stay set to disable. Reverts back to enabled. The more I click on items the more I find doesn't work.
 

MadOTC

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Hey everyone, I've been working on my Reef-Pi project for a few weeks, and I really like the software. It started for me when my LED controller died, and instead of spending $100 on a new one, I was able to use a Pi 2 I had sitting in a drawer. This week I decided I wanted to do a little multitasking with my Pi, and installed Pi Hole for my network. Unfortunately when I installed it, it took over port 80 for it's interface, so I can't get to my Reef-Pi page anymore. Is there a config file I can edit to change the port that the Reef-Pi interface uses? Thanks, this thread has been an awesome source of information.
 

bishoptf

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Hey everyone, I've been working on my Reef-Pi project for a few weeks, and I really like the software. It started for me when my LED controller died, and instead of spending $100 on a new one, I was able to use a Pi 2 I had sitting in a drawer. This week I decided I wanted to do a little multitasking with my Pi, and installed Pi Hole for my network. Unfortunately when I installed it, it took over port 80 for it's interface, so I can't get to my Reef-Pi page anymore. Is there a config file I can edit to change the port that the Reef-Pi interface uses? Thanks, this thread has been an awesome source of information.
You can change either reef-pi via the ui to use 443 or any other port like 8080 etc, and you should be able to do the same for pi-hole. I will say though that while you can combine stuff I would not recommend it, rpi's are cheap and I tend to keep reef-pi by itself but thats a personal decision they can coexist as long as memory and cpu are not an issue.
 

buddy.

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Great to hear ! What features are you using ?
Ive used most of them over the years, but with my current set up its fairly simple. Temperature, dosing, all equipment controlled by reef-pi, a bunch of timers, auto top off, a bunch of float switches protecting different things, email alerts which have definitely saved my tank at least one time!
I would love a salinity monitor / alert if its ever an option.
 

Sral

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Ive used most of them over the years, but with my current set up its fairly simple. Temperature, dosing, all equipment controlled by reef-pi, a bunch of timers, auto top off, a bunch of float switches protecting different things, email alerts which have definitely saved my tank at least one time!
I would love a salinity monitor / alert if its ever an option.
I’ll try to build one myself for my freshwater aquarium. If that works we could try adapting it to saltwater :)
 

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