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

[dmsc2fs]

I don't know but any chance you're using one of my pH circuits? That error looks like it could be from mine. If so you need to add the following line to the /boot/config.txt file on the Pi. This will slow down the I2C bus so it can handle I2C stretching.

dtparam=i2c_arm_baudrate=10000

Thank you. That fixed the issue.

 

[dmsc2fs]

Is the wiring to your pH probe, let's say "temporary" ? That' error or similar ones is what i get with bad connections and/or interference from power lines.

As for the first question, at the bottom of the dashboard, there's a configure button. Add a line for each sensor and select Temperature (recent) or Temperature(historical) and then select one of the sensors in the submenu, hit update after that

Thank you. I couldn't figure out how to add a line. No add button, or + like in other menus. simply incrementing the number for rows or columns did it.

 

[Ranjib]

Trying out these new screw terminals. They are more robust than header pins and have low vertical profile.

Thinking if I should use these for the official guides .. thoughts ?

 

[Sral]

It’s a nice idea, might use those myself, now that you showed it !
They are however, less flexible with pin placement and the laterally exiting cables might obscure other parts of the circuit. I’ll get a few and see if I like the look of the circuit :)

 

[bishoptf]

Lets talk Dosers...:)

Just thought I would post what I am using and think they are well made and a lot better than most of the stuff out there but thats just my opinion. I have nano tanks and I had the PWM feature to drive dosers but have had some issues when I lost power and just decided that I did not like that option since I felt like I couldnt make it as fail safe as I wanted so I went with some BRS AC dosers and control them with reef-pi with timers, in that way I can control and make sure I have off timers in case of power outages etc. The BRS dosers work fine but are noisy at least to me I can hear them every time they kick off and just an annoyance so I started looking into alternatives. BRS also carries something called a drews doser and started researching that, not a lot out there but came across some old threads that stated the dosers were made by APT Instruments. I do not know this for a fact but it does appear to be one in the same, they even state that they can make OEM dosers to your spec etc. Here is the website - APT Instruments seem to make things for industrial applications which bodes well for a reef tank. I will say that they are not the cheapest dosers out there you can get some really cheap like on alixexpress etc but these appear to be made really well and at least the AC versions are rated for continuous duty.

These are the ones I went with - SP100FO Fixed-Flow OEM Peristaltic Pumps it all depends on how much ml per min you are after, the SP200 version has much higher flow rates so it would depend on your tank size etc. What I really like about these is you can see from the information page is that you can mix and match RPM and tubing size to target the flow rate that you need here is a screenshot:

so for the 36rpm motor (they haven't updated the chart for the new motors) with 3mm tubing you can go 5.6ml per min, 1.6mm is 1.5ml/min etc. By lowering the rpm it lowers it accordingly based on the chart. When I tested for the 3mm tubing I was getting 7ml/min and again if you need or want higher flow rates you can look at the SP200 versions.

I ended up going with 2 dosers and ordered a 36rpm and an 18rpm and have mine setup with 3mm tubing on the 36rpm one and .8mm tubing on the 18rpm one, giving me about 7ml/min on one and .4ml/min on the other one. For my frag tank I use the 7ml/min for ATO and the .4 will be for dosing all for reef which are very small doses due to the tank size. I really like the AC dosers and think with timers they are more bulletproof vs a lot of the stuff out there but again that is just my opinion, thought I would pass this along. Here are mine assembled with my 3d printed enclosures, if anyone needs the stl files just let me know.

:)

 

[elysics]

Lets talk Dosers...:)

Just thought I would post what I am using and think they are well made and a lot better than most of the stuff out there but thats just my opinion. I have nano tanks and I had the PWM feature to drive dosers but have had some issues when I lost power and just decided that I did not like that option since I felt like I couldnt make it as fail safe as I wanted so I went with some BRS AC dosers and control them with reef-pi with timers, in that way I can control and make sure I have off timers in case of power outages etc. The BRS dosers work fine but are noisy at least to me I can hear them every time they kick off and just an annoyance so I started looking into alternatives. BRS also carries something called a drews doser and started researching that, not a lot out there but came across some old threads that stated the dosers were made by APT Instruments. I do not know this for a fact but it does appear to be one in the same, they even state that they can make OEM dosers to your spec etc. Here is the website - APT Instruments seem to make things for industrial applications which bodes well for a reef tank. I will say that they are not the cheapest dosers out there you can get some really cheap like on alixexpress etc but these appear to be made really well and at least the AC versions are rated for continuous duty.

These are the ones I went with - SP100FO Fixed-Flow OEM Peristaltic Pumps it all depends on how much ml per min you are after, the SP200 version has much higher flow rates so it would depend on your tank size etc. What I really like about these is you can see from the information page is that you can mix and match RPM and tubing size to target the flow rate that you need here is a screenshot:

so for the 36rpm motor (they haven't updated the chart for the new motors) with 3mm tubing you can go 5.6ml per min, 1.6mm is 1.5ml/min etc. By lowering the rpm it lowers it accordingly based on the chart. When I tested for the 3mm tubing I was getting 7ml/min and again if you need or want higher flow rates you can look at the SP200 versions.

I ended up going with 2 dosers and ordered a 36rpm and an 18rpm and have mine setup with 3mm tubing on the 36rpm one and .8mm tubing on the 18rpm one, giving me about 7ml/min on one and .4ml/min on the other one. For my frag tank I use the 7ml/min for ATO and the .4 will be for dosing all for reef which are very small doses due to the tank size. I really like the AC dosers and think with timers they are more bulletproof vs a lot of the stuff out there but again that is just my opinion, thought I would pass this along. Here are mine assembled with my 3d printed enclosures, if anyone needs the stl files just let me know.

:)

Now that's some proper heavy duty stuff

 

[Ranjib]

Lets talk Dosers...:)

Just thought I would post what I am using and think they are well made and a lot better than most of the stuff out there but thats just my opinion. I have nano tanks and I had the PWM feature to drive dosers but have had some issues when I lost power and just decided that I did not like that option since I felt like I couldnt make it as fail safe as I wanted so I went with some BRS AC dosers and control them with reef-pi with timers, in that way I can control and make sure I have off timers in case of power outages etc. The BRS dosers work fine but are noisy at least to me I can hear them every time they kick off and just an annoyance so I started looking into alternatives. BRS also carries something called a drews doser and started researching that, not a lot out there but came across some old threads that stated the dosers were made by APT Instruments. I do not know this for a fact but it does appear to be one in the same, they even state that they can make OEM dosers to your spec etc. Here is the website - APT Instruments seem to make things for industrial applications which bodes well for a reef tank. I will say that they are not the cheapest dosers out there you can get some really cheap like on alixexpress etc but these appear to be made really well and at least the AC versions are rated for continuous duty.

These are the ones I went with - SP100FO Fixed-Flow OEM Peristaltic Pumps it all depends on how much ml per min you are after, the SP200 version has much higher flow rates so it would depend on your tank size etc. What I really like about these is you can see from the information page is that you can mix and match RPM and tubing size to target the flow rate that you need here is a screenshot:

so for the 36rpm motor (they haven't updated the chart for the new motors) with 3mm tubing you can go 5.6ml per min, 1.6mm is 1.5ml/min etc. By lowering the rpm it lowers it accordingly based on the chart. When I tested for the 3mm tubing I was getting 7ml/min and again if you need or want higher flow rates you can look at the SP200 versions.

I ended up going with 2 dosers and ordered a 36rpm and an 18rpm and have mine setup with 3mm tubing on the 36rpm one and .8mm tubing on the 18rpm one, giving me about 7ml/min on one and .4ml/min on the other one. For my frag tank I use the 7ml/min for ATO and the .4 will be for dosing all for reef which are very small doses due to the tank size. I really like the AC dosers and think with timers they are more bulletproof vs a lot of the stuff out there but again that is just my opinion, thought I would pass this along. Here are mine assembled with my 3d printed enclosures, if anyone needs the stl files just let me know.

:)

They look solid . Thank you for sharing. Let us know how it’s working in few months

 

[bishoptf]

Hey @Ranjib would it be possible to add a delay timer to the equipment configuration something similar that you did with the option on reboot or power outage to not turn on? I would like the ability on a power reboot to delay certain equipment from turning back on for a period of time, like ATO, skimmer, wave pumps etc. I want them to turn on but id like to be able to specify a timer to run when things come back on and then turn them on when the timer expires.

I might have mentioned this in the past but right now we have the ability leave things off and I am looking for something in between. Use case, for my nano tanks with a sump it drains down with power outage and takes a few minutes to fill back up and the drain to flush the air etc, it can cause ATO to kick on not to mention having wave pumps kick back on before things are full etc. Wasn't sure if anyone else had requested something similar and thought I would throw it out.
:)

 

[Ranjib]

Hey @Ranjib would it be possible to add a delay timer to the equipment configuration something similar that you did with the option on reboot or power outage to not turn on? I would like the ability on a power reboot to delay certain equipment from turning back on for a period of time, like ATO, skimmer, wave pumps etc. I want them to turn on but id like to be able to specify a timer to run when things come back on and then turn them on when the timer expires.

I might have mentioned this in the past but right now we have the ability leave things off and I am looking for something in between. Use case, for my nano tanks with a sump it drains down with power outage and takes a few minutes to fill back up and the drain to flush the air etc, it can cause ATO to kick on not to mention having wave pumps kick back on before things are full etc. Wasn't sure if anyone else had requested something similar and thought I would throw it out.
:)

We can , but it will require some work. It’s bit complicated , not impossible as we have to do this asynchronously . Currently reef-pi sequentially starts /stop equipment as part of the start up . If delay is involved we have to do that process in dedicated thread (asynchronously ) , otherwise one equipment will block the starting of rest of things. While doing this, we have to also make sure we don’t shoot too many threads leading to some sort of cpu congestion.
This is doable , can you please submit a feature request ?

 

[bishoptf]

We can , but it will require some work. It’s bit complicated , not impossible as we have to do this asynchronously . Currently reef-pi sequentially starts /stop equipment as part of the start up . If delay is involved we have to do that process in dedicated thread (asynchronously ) , otherwise one equipment will block the starting of rest of things. While doing this, we have to also make sure we don’t shoot too many threads leading to some sort of cpu congestion.
This is doable , can you please submit a feature request ?

Yeah I wasn't sure how complicated it would be, if I had a way to start things back up after a reboot I could just change the setting to off and start them later. I thought about creating timers and checking every x minutes to ensure they are on but then I have to to remember to turn the timers off if I turn the equipment off etc. I know you have a lot of things that you are working on and I wouldn't want to do this unless others want it etc. Maybe we have something like this but sometimes I think it may be nice to have a feature request listing that users can vote on, that way you can see which feature requests are most wanted etc. Lets see if others chime in regards to if others may find it useful.

:)

 

[elysics]

Wouldn't a more general approach be the ability to run a macro on startup? That way you can leave everything that's not supposed to immediately reactivate on powerup off and the macro then turns stuff on after a time and/or does additional powerloos specific stuff. Sounds easier to implement too

Edit: i guess that's less powerful in the sense that it doesn't remember the previous state, but if there's some complex sequence going on and interrupted by powerloss, it seems to me to be better to reset that than having the controller try to carry on where it remembers it left off, where who knows what could have changed during the period of no power

 

[bishoptf]

Wouldn't a more general approach be the ability to run a macro on startup? That way you can leave everything that's not supposed to immediately reactivate on powerup off and the macro then turns stuff on after a time and/or does additional powerloos specific stuff. Sounds easier to implement too

Yeah I have thought about a macro but I'm pretty leary of automated macros. I use them all the time for water changes etc where I manually execute them, but not comfortable with having them automated but that may just be me. At one time I was trying to think of a way to do a cron job to enable the equipment based on uptime but just haven't gotten back to seeing how I could implement it. It's not as easy to say if uptime is greater than x since I only want to have it fire off once after a power on/reboot etc. I may be one of the few that think this is needed and do not want to spend time on it if it is a very narrow use case etc. I'd rather have him spend the time of things that are most requested etc.

But your right a macro would serve the purpose for putting in the order and having things turn as you would like, its how to have that executed on a power event etc.

 

[elysics]

Yeah I have thought about a macro but I'm pretty leary of automated macros. I use them all the time for water changes etc where I manually execute them, but not comfortable with having them automated but that may just be me. At one time I was trying to think of a way to do a cron job to enable the equipment based on uptime but just haven't gotten back to seeing how I could implement it. It's not as easy to say if uptime is greater than x since I only want to have it fire off once after a power on/reboot etc. I may be one of the few that think this is needed and do not want to spend time on it if it is a very narrow use case etc. I'd rather have him spend the time of things that are most requested etc.

But your right a macro would serve the purpose for putting in the order and having things turn as you would like, its how to have that executed on a power event etc.

you can do @reboot instead of a time in cron and have that run a script with a timer, if you want to do it in linux

like "@reboot sleep 300 && yourscript_here.sh"

Or a whole pile of other entry points that fire on startup

Be careful to keep a printed/written piece of paper around (and a file on a computer somewhere for copy/paste) with all the modifications you did to linux, if your pi/sd-card ever dies and you need to resetup reefpi. Had to spent a couple hours reresearching what i did a couple times because i didn't do this

 

[bishoptf]

you can do @reboot instead of a time in cron and have that run a script with a timer, if you want to do it in linux

like "@reboot sleep 300 && yourscript_here.sh"

Or a whole pile of other entry points that fire on startup

Be careful to keep a printed/written piece of paper around (and a file on a computer somewhere for copy/paste) with all the modifications you did to linux, if your pi/sd-card ever dies and you need to resetup reefpi. Had to spent a couple hours reresearching what i did a couple times because i didn't do this

Understand, I'm actually a linux person, all I pretty much run except when someone is paying me to use winblows etc. I agree though when setting another instance up its another thing to have to remember to do etc. Still mulling things over and why I haven't done anything up to now there really wasn't an easy button, lol. :)

 

[bishoptf]

I have a brand new 3a+ that I was able to score, if anyone is interested and needs one for a reef-pi project PM me. Only wanting someone that is looking to set up a reef-pi unit...not as cheap as a rpi zero w 2 but its not to bad, anyway throwing that out there. I am trying to pick some up to pass along at my cost plus shipping when I am able to score them, pretty slim pickens but just FYI...

 

[DWKDiver]

I had a diy controller that delayed items on restart. But I now use reef pi.

To emulate that on reef pi, I use a float for high sump level. If the power goes out the sump level rises. On power restored the sump float is high and that keeps my Skimmer and such from coming on until sump level is normal and it doesn't over flow.

Hope this may work for you.

 

[PlantedAquaChicago]

Hi. I purchased a Leviathan Reef Pi 1.1 board recently. I've tried for a week now to get the image that they have on their website working, but even after 6 different Raspberry Pi devices, 5 different SD cards and 4 different power supplies (all known working) I can't get it to load. I have gotten through a manual OS and vanilla Reef-Pi installation, however I'm curious about how to configure the Leviathan hardware in Reef-Pi. I've read through their documentation top to bottom, and it doesn't provide any sort of instructions, save for using their pre-built image that doesn't work.

Anyone have any ideas how I can get started here? I've purchased all the sensors listed from RPO to pH, temp, optical level, etc.

*Edit*
To be more specific, I need the list of connectors. There are no schematics I can see, and even if I had one I'd rather not dig through that trying to figure out what goes where. Hopefully someone else has used this setup and can give me a screenshot or basic guide on how their hardware and connectors are setup, inlets/outlets etc.

And yes, I did email leviathan through the website.

 

[bishoptf]

Hi. I purchased a Leviathan Reef Pi 1.1 board recently. I've tried for a week now to get the image that they have on their website working, but even after 6 different Raspberry Pi devices, 5 different SD cards and 4 different power supplies (all known working) I can't get it to load. I have gotten through a manual OS and vanilla Reef-Pi installation, however I'm curious about how to configure the Leviathan hardware in Reef-Pi. I've read through their documentation top to bottom, and it doesn't provide any sort of instructions, save for using their pre-built image that doesn't work.

Anyone have any ideas how I can get started here? I've purchased all the sensors listed from RPO to pH, temp, optical level, etc.

*Edit*
To be more specific, I need the list of connectors. There are no schematics I can see, and even if I had one I'd rather not dig through that trying to figure out what goes where. Hopefully someone else has used this setup and can give me a screenshot or basic guide on how their hardware and connectors are setup, inlets/outlets etc.

And yes, I did email leviathan through the website.

Welcome! Not sure if @Schreiber has any board specific documentation but at least for getting the software loaded and configured I would follow this guide - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t9majBpGlqKacDjkyEZ1HQNWsTRo3woZ/edit and towards the end there is a script that you can load and run that will guide you through initial setup and make sure everything is ready to go (the script will configure non robo-tank boards, highly recommended). Once you have done that I would then look at this manual - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tjz9fLcwKz_VgTcj1oM2Nvs4kynVYJLV/edit#heading=h.30j0zll and the adafruit user guides - https://learn.adafruit.com/reef-pi-installation-and-configuration

That should at least get you started and answer most questions. :)

 

[PlantedAquaChicago]

Welcome! Not sure if @Schreiber has any board specific documentation but at least for getting the software loaded and configured I would follow this guide - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t9majBpGlqKacDjkyEZ1HQNWsTRo3woZ/edit and towards the end there is a script that you can load and run that will guide you through initial setup and make sure everything is ready to go (the script will configure non robo-tank boards, highly recommended). Once you have done that I would then look at this manual - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tjz9fLcwKz_VgTcj1oM2Nvs4kynVYJLV/edit#heading=h.30j0zll and the adafruit user guides - https://learn.adafruit.com/reef-pi-installation-and-configuration

That should at least get you started and answer most questions. :)

Thank you! I have been through all the documentation provided by Leviathan and the Adafruit guides, but withouth a hardware list and schematic for this board, I was stuck at inlets and outlets. Hopefully this can auto-detect what I have and configure the board.

I'll try that right now and let you know how that goes. I have messaged the Leviathan board creator and it doesn't look like he's logged in for a few months so I'm guessing that's not a very common board. Hopefully someone has used it and can send me a screenshot of their connectors page so I can try to replicate it.

Thanks!

 

[bishoptf]

Thank you! I have been through all the documentation provided by Leviathan and the Adafruit guides, but withouth a hardware list and schematic for this board, I was stuck at inlets and outlets. Hopefully this can auto-detect what I have and configure the board.

I'll try that right now and let you know how that goes. I have messaged the Leviathan board creator and it doesn't look like he's logged in for a few months so I'm guessing that's not a very common board. Hopefully someone has used it and can send me a screenshot of their connectors page so I can try to replicate it.

Thanks!

I assume you have seen this documentation on his website? - https://www.leviathanautomation.com/manual

This manual looks like was updated in Feb and looks like it covers everything, he even has software image -