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

[elysics]

Hi. Using the latest reef pi with robo tank controller. I'd like to create a visual indicator e.g. flashing cabinet light when there is an issue e.g. raised temperature. I thought of using the temp controller to run a macro (master) which calls another macro (sub) that turns the light on waits 1 sec, turns the light off and then calls the macro master.
This does achieve the loop I want - but doesnt give me any escape route! Any alternative suggestions on achieving this.
Thank you

I think it's best to do this outside of the macro system. Like either use the filedriver and more complex logic outside of reefpi, or a simple signal line that goes to a microcontroller or low tech electronics that do the blinking effect, maybe mess with the esp integration

Easiest and simplest would probably be to buy a commercial 12v blinking light of some kind and solder in a transistor or mosfet somewhere. Maybe you'll find one with a control line already installed.

 

[MikeSpike]

I think it's best to do this outside of the macro system. Like either use the filedriver and more complex logic outside of reefpi, or a simple signal line that goes to a microcontroller or low tech electronics that do the blinking effect, maybe mess with the esp integration

Easiest and simplest would probably be to buy a commercial 12v blinking light of some kind and solder in a transistor or mosfet somewhere. Maybe you'll find one with a control line already installed.

Thank you. Don't know how to use the file driver - but will look into a micro controller. Perhaps a feature request for Macros going forward.

 

[dmsc2fs]

Hi. Using the latest reef pi with robo tank controller. I'd like to create a visual indicator e.g. flashing cabinet light when there is an issue e.g. raised temperature. I thought of using the temp controller to run a macro (master) which calls another macro (sub) that turns the light on waits 1 sec, turns the light off and then calls the macro master.
This does achieve the loop I want - but doesnt give me any escape route! Any alternative suggestions on achieving this.
Thank you

I don’t think you need it to flash. I have a red LED that turns on when my ATO needs filled. It is impossible to miss it.

 

[elysics]

Moving/varying brightness lights are way easier to notice than static lights, especially when you are not actually looking in their direction.

If you have an industrial design style to your aquarium room, you might even be able to fit in one of those 12v rotating emergency beacons. Now THAT will grab your attention

 

[Sral]

Thank you. Don't know how to use the file driver - but will look into a micro controller. Perhaps a feature request for Macros going forward.

Yeah, if macros worked as intended you could definitely do that. Personally I‘d probably try a macro that activates two timers, the first of which turns on an equipment-pin every 10 seconds (seconds 0, 10, 20, 30, etc) and the other one turning it off every 10 seconds, but on seconds 5, 15, 25, etc.

If that equipment pin is connected to the light, directly or indirectly, it would create that effect. Although if you do it with a relay it would strain the relays lifetime every time the light flashes.

[Amendment] currently I believe, activating a timer from a macro actually triggers the connected equipment, not the timer itself.

 

[Fish Fan]

Hi all! I'm sure this has been asked, so I apologize, but could someone please tell me how many tanks a single ReefPi controller can control? I'm considering a project that would be two IM Nuvo 15 gallons side-by-side, one would be a nano reef, but the other a freshwater planted. Could one ReefPi controller handle both systems, or do I need a separate ReefPi for each tank? I wouldn't need much for the freshwater tank, basically just the light, pump, heater and water top off.

Thank you for the help!

-Fish Fan

 

[Sral]

Hi all! I'm sure this has been asked, so I apologize, but could someone please tell me how many tanks a single ReefPi controller can control? I'm considering a project that would be two IM Nuvo 15 gallons side-by-side, one would be a nano reef, but the other a freshwater planted. Could one ReefPi controller handle both systems, or do I need a separate ReefPi for each tank? I wouldn't need much for the freshwater tank, basically just the light, pump, heater and water top off.

Thank you for the help!

-Fish Fan

I believe the only limit is typically how much equipment one ReefPi controller can effectively control, since there are only a limited number of pins available and extending those comes with its own problems.

Apart from that ReefPi doesn’t care how you spread out your sensors and equipment between two or even more tanks, as far as I’m aware.

The only problems might be sensor bus system limitations, like wanting several sensors with the same I2C address or wanting to use 6 DS18B20 sensors on one line. Somebody tried the latter and reported a lot of fails after a few months. There are workarounds for al of that though :)

 

[Fish Fan]

I believe the only limit is typically how much equipment one ReefPi controller can effectively control, since there are only a limited number of pins available and extending those comes with its own problems.

Apart from that ReefPi doesn’t care how you spread out your sensors and equipment between two or even more tanks, as far as I’m aware.

The only problems might be sensor bus system limitations, like wanting several sensors with the same I2C address or wanting to use 6 DS18B20 sensors on one line. Somebody tried the latter and reported a lot of fails after a few months. There are workarounds for al of that though :)

Thank you for your reply! I understand the Pi has some limitations. Do you think my project is doable, or would I be best with either two ReefPi builds, or simply manually maintaining the freshwater tank?

Thanks again!

-Fish Fan

 

[Sral]

Thank you for your reply! I understand the Pi has some limitations. Do you think my project is doable, or would I be best with either two ReefPi builds, or simply manually maintaining the freshwater tank?

Thanks again!

-Fish Fan

Sry if that hasn't been clear from my previous post: yes, I think that is absolutely doable.

Depending on the capabilities that you want you can do it easily, or have to put in more work by designing a PCB for example to make sure all components work nicely and reliable. Example might be Robo-Tank using very localized and short I2C bus lines on a PCB to connect 1 or 2 PCA9685 ICs. Natively those are made to put out PWM signals, but you can easily use them as simple Digital Outlets with 0 or 1 signals to, for example, control AC sockets or other equipment. Another way might be to use Kasa power strips controlled via WiFi, but you might not like the dependency on WiFi for certain critical operations.

Personally, I have just about squeezed all my desired capabilities out of the Pins of my Pi using the kind of suboptimal breadboard HAT used in the Adafruit guides.

Here is a short overview of what I did with the pins exposed on the Adafruit Perma- proto HAT:

So I still have 5 unused pins, 8 in total if you count those that are not well exposed. On a "custom" PCB you would have those as well.

Another note: the 2 Temp I have noted are 2 Temperature pins, where you should be safely able to connect 3 DS18B20 sensors each, so 6 temperature sensors in total.

 

[Fish Fan]

Sry if that hasn't been clear from my previous post: yes, I think that is absolutely doable.

Depending on the capabilities that you want you can do it easily, or have to put in more work by designing a PCB for example to make sure all components work nicely and reliable. Example might be Robo-Tank using very localized and short I2C bus lines on a PCB to connect 1 or 2 PCA9685 ICs. Natively those are made to put out PWM signals, but you can easily use them as simple Digital Outlets with 0 or 1 signals to, for example, control AC sockets or other equipment. Another way might be to use Kasa power strips controlled via WiFi, but you might not like the dependency on WiFi for certain critical operations.

Personally, I have just about squeezed all my desired capabilities out of the Pins of my Pi using the kind of suboptimal breadboard HAT used in the Adafruit guides.

Here is a short overview of what I did with the pins exposed on the Adafruit Perma- proto HAT:

So I still have 5 unused pins, 8 in total if you count those that are not well exposed. On a "custom" PCB you would have those as well.

Another note: the 2 Temp I have noted are 2 Temperature pins, where you should be safely able to connect 3 DS18B20 sensors each, so 6 temperature sensors in total.

Great! Thanks for the reassurance about my project. I have been out of both the saltwater hobby as well as all things Raspberry Pi for a few years now, so I'm rusty at both. I am currently going through the introductory build modules, but I appreciate knowing that my project is at least possible.

Thank you again for your help!

-FF

 

[Sral]

Great! Thanks for the reassurance about my project. I have been out of both the saltwater hobby as well as all things Raspberry Pi for a few years now, so I'm rusty at both. I am currently going through the introductory build modules, but I appreciate knowing that my project is at least possible.

Thank you again for your help!

-FF

You're very welcome !

If you need any assistance, you might think about starting a build-thread (like mine here, I also made a Github Readme since that is more easy to have a single editabe overview with resource links). That way you can document your progress and planning and people might be able to answer questions more precisely if they can see what you are doing/thinking.

The Adafruit guides are a bit outdated, but are still usefull. In general you are still able to do everything you see there, just that the UI looks a bit different now :)

 

[diegolo8]

Hola, soy nuevo en esto y quiero hacer modificaciones personales al código. ¿Alguien puede ayudarme con algunos enlaces sobre cómo puedo compilar y liberar Reef-pi? ¿Tengo que usar un IDE o algo así?

Translation:
Hi, I'm new to this and I want to make personal modifications to the code. Can anyone help me with some links on how I can build and release reef-pi? Do I have to use an IDE or something?

 

[Fish Fan]

You're very welcome !

If you need any assistance, you might think about starting a build-thread (like mine here, I also made a Github Readme since that is more easy to have a single editabe overview with resource links). That way you can document your progress and planning and people might be able to answer questions more precisely if they can see what you are doing/thinking.

The Adafruit guides are a bit outdated, but are still usefull. In general you are still able to do everything you see there, just that the UI looks a bit different now :)

Thank you again for your reply! I will absolutely check out your build guide!

I am going through the Adafruit build guides and realizing that they haven't changed too much since I last looked into this in about 2018, and I emphatically DO NOT in anyway mean that to sound negative at all towards Ranjib, the Reef Pi project, or anyone else here. To the contrary, I am very grateful for all the work all of you do. But I know things have to have progressed, and I have so many questions like, is there anyone 3D printing enclosures for all this stuff nowadays. Is this what Robo-Tank is doing, or am I mistaken?

And I'm going through the first build guide (which I did complete and build back in 2018, though I did not complete any of the subsequent module builds), and it specifically says, "Pi Zero, 2, 3 any Pi B+ will work". Well, I have several old RPi Model 3B's in my parts box. I don't have a B+ specifically. And I looked and I see that the RPi now comes in a version 4 (and I pooped a little at the price of these things these days lol!). Can I use my old RPi Model 3B's, or do I need a "+" version, or should I be looking at a version 4? What would you guys suggest?

Thank you very much for your help!

-Fish Fan

 

[Sral]

Thank you again for your reply! I will absolutely check out your build guide!

I am going through the Adafruit build guides and realizing that they haven't changed too much since I last looked into this in about 2018, and I emphatically DO NOT in anyway mean that to sound negative at all towards Ranjib, the Reef Pi project, or anyone else here. To the contrary, I am very grateful for all the work all of you do. But I know things have to have progressed, and I have so many questions like, is there anyone 3D printing enclosures for all this stuff nowadays. Is this what Robo-Tank is doing, or am I mistaken?

And I'm going through the first build guide (which I did complete and build back in 2018, though I did not complete any of the subsequent module builds), and it specifically says, "Pi Zero, 2, 3 any Pi B+ will work". Well, I have several old RPi Model 3B's in my parts box. I don't have a B+ specifically. And I looked and I see that the RPi now comes in a version 4 (and I pooped a little at the price of these things these days lol!). Can I use my old RPi Model 3B's, or do I need a "+" version, or should I be looking at a version 4? What would you guys suggest?

Thank you very much for your help!

-Fish Fan

There has definitely been progress, though I could not tell you from the top of my head what that was :grinning-face-with-sweat:
You might have a look at the Release LIst.

There have definitely been a few people 3D printing cases, @robsworld78 has definitely been one, there have been a few in between like this pretty one. Just do an advanced search for threads with the terms "3D print" in the Reef-Pi subforum and you will find a couple.

After having a quick look for the differences of the Pi3B and Pi3B+ I don't see anything inhibitive on first glance. The pin-header is there and the System should be able to handle it from a load perspective without a problem (as far as I guesstimate). If you have it lying around anyway: just try if you can get it running on a 3B, if you can get the ReefPi page out of it and can for example control an LED to flash on a pin, as in the guides, you should be fine.

[Amendment to my earlier post]: I finally remembered what kind of Display I was thinking for that Serial port: a Nextion display. Simple Serial interface, but quite a bit of coding involved to get that to work.

 

[Fish Fan]

@Sral Thank you again for your help! I did in fact have Reef Pi installed on one of my old RPi 3's, so as long as nothing drastic has changed I think it should work now too. I have been doing a lot of thinking today, and my plans for a display tank is now changing, lol! However, I know that I want to have a couple of quarantine tanks this time around and I thought I could get them going now, even while I finalize the plan for a display tank. These will inherently be simpler systems, and I think I can cobble together a working Reef Pi install and try it out on the QT tanks (before adding livestock, of course). This way, I can reacquaint myself with the RPi and Reef Pi, and then add on to Reef Pi as I learn more and need more functionality.

I have no less than a million questions, but I feel bad adding to an already long thread. Let me get some tanks going and get a working Reef Pi install, and I'm sure I'll be back with more questions.

Thanks again for your help!

-FF

 

[Sral]

@Sral Thank you again for your help! I did in fact have Reef Pi installed on one of my old RPi 3's, so as long as nothing drastic has changed I think it should work now too. I have been doing a lot of thinking today, and my plans for a display tank is now changing, lol! However, I know that I want to have a couple of quarantine tanks this time around and I thought I could get them going now, even while I finalize the plan for a display tank. These will inherently be simpler systems, and I think I can cobble together a working Reef Pi install and try it out on the QT tanks (before adding livestock, of course). This way, I can reacquaint myself with the RPi and Reef Pi, and then add on to Reef Pi as I learn more and need more functionality.

I have no less than a million questions, but I feel bad adding to an already long thread. Let me get some tanks going and get a working Reef Pi install, and I'm sure I'll be back with more questions.

Thanks again for your help!

-FF

You‘re very welcome again !

Feel free to ask, that is what this thread is for. If you are uncomfortable doing so, you might just start a dedicated „ReefPi 6.0 questions“ thread and ask everything there. That way we have a nice collection of questions that we should probably include in the „official documentation“ on GitHub.

 

[Fish Fan]

Hello again! I dug up one of my old Pi 3's, did a fresh install of Raspbian, and I have Reef Pi up and running. I'm following through the Reef Pi guide 1 and everything installed well. I decided to skip the test lighting of the LED's just because I didn't feel like digging the breadboard and everything out of storage. I am up to the point of trying to set up email and texts alerts, and I am stuck. I cannot get it to send me a message either by text (preferred) or email. Here's what I've done, could someone let me know if I have all these correct please?

I checked the "email alerts" box on the Reef Pi Telemetry page
I have Yahoo email, and I put my yahoo mail username in the Adafruit IO user name box
I go here and generate a one-time password and copy/paste that into the AIO Key box
I leave the prefix box blank as shown
Based on this, I enter smtp.mail.yahoo.com in the smpt server box
Limit per hour =10
For the port, I've tried both 587 and 465 based on the smtp server link above
From = [email protected]
To = my full Yahoo mail address - [email protected]
Password = my real Yahoo mail password
I click "update" and that shows no errors
I reload Reef-Pi
I click "send test message" and I get an error about a username does not exists. I think this is the Adafruit IO username at the top. I used my Yahoo mail username, but maybe I need some kind of Adafruit account and username to enter there? Could someone please help me through this part of the setup?

Additionally, for the upcoming power controller build I need to order the power strip, and I just wanted to ask if the one linked to in the Reef Pi build docs is still the best way to go. I know there are all kinds of "smart" power strips nowadays, and I thought maybe there's an even better choice than the American DJ, but if not the ADJ strip is fine. This is what I'll order unless another is suggested:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007EYHBVQ/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=AFD3YB3MPK3U3&psc=1

Thanks in advance for the help!

-FF

 

[Fish Fan]

Hey guys! Is there anyone who can help me with configuring my Reef-Pi build to message me when something gets out of whack? I don't think I have the setting correct on the Telemetry tab, and if someone can help me get this sorted out, or point me to an example or guide, I'd appreciate it very much. Getting notifications is for me one of the cooler and more important features of this controller project, so I'd really like to get this working for my build. Please let me know what info you guys would need to help me.

Thank you in advance for your help!

-FF

 

[Sral]

Hello again! I dug up one of my old Pi 3's, did a fresh install of Raspbian, and I have Reef Pi up and running. I'm following through the Reef Pi guide 1 and everything installed well. I decided to skip the test lighting of the LED's just because I didn't feel like digging the breadboard and everything out of storage. I am up to the point of trying to set up email and texts alerts, and I am stuck. I cannot get it to send me a message either by text (preferred) or email. Here's what I've done, could someone let me know if I have all these correct please?

I checked the "email alerts" box on the Reef Pi Telemetry page
I have Yahoo email, and I put my yahoo mail username in the Adafruit IO user name box
I go here and generate a one-time password and copy/paste that into the AIO Key box
I leave the prefix box blank as shown
Based on this, I enter smtp.mail.yahoo.com in the smpt server box
Limit per hour =10
For the port, I've tried both 587 and 465 based on the smtp server link above
From = [email protected]
To = my full Yahoo mail address - [email protected]
Password = my real Yahoo mail password
I click "update" and that shows no errors
I reload Reef-Pi
I click "send test message" and I get an error about a username does not exists. I think this is the Adafruit IO username at the top. I used my Yahoo mail username, but maybe I need some kind of Adafruit account and username to enter there? Could someone please help me through this part of the setup?

Additionally, for the upcoming power controller build I need to order the power strip, and I just wanted to ask if the one linked to in the Reef Pi build docs is still the best way to go. I know there are all kinds of "smart" power strips nowadays, and I thought maybe there's an even better choice than the American DJ, but if not the ADJ strip is fine. This is what I'll order unless another is suggested:
Amazon product

Thanks in advance for the help!

-FF

Sry for not answering earlier, but I think the most common ways for the AC outlet control are (not in order):
- self build from an 8 channel relay board
- American DJ strip
- Kasa WiFi power strip
- Robo-Tank power bar
- Tasmota single smart sockets

 

[Fish Fan]

Sry for not answering earlier, but I think the most common ways for the AC outlet control are (not in order):
- self build from an 8 channel relay board
- American DJ strip
- Kasa WiFi power strip
- Robo-Tank power bar
- Tasmota single smart sockets

Thank you for your help! I have otherwise heard of the Kasa WiFi strips and I found a video of someone who did the power controller with regular duplex outlets and a relay, but I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet:


I'm going to do a little more research into this tonight if I can.

Any idea why I can't get Reef Pi to send me an email or text notification? Do I need to have an Adafruit IO account?

Thank you very, very much for your help!