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

[Ranjib]

one of them will be honestly I have many tanks. my current project is a simple 2 channel light for a small reef tank. if I like this though i'm now playing with the idea of controlling the leds in my fish room with it (12v rigid led strip based so prolly a bit different to wire up)

is this the correct wiring for a LDD drivers till? found it on an old thread

if this is all it takes I could slap a pi zero W plus the PCA9685 board right on the heatsink for the light. (the light is in a makersled slim enclosur) would really make for a slick setup just need to have power in for it and everything else is self contained. would just need to find a way to either drop the 48V main supply voltage down to 5 or just run a seperate psu for the pi.

Driver wise i'm planning LDD-xxxH driver like above or a driver from blueacro which is a bit nicer but electronically compatable with anything that works with a LDD driver (wireing is the same just nicer 2 channel package)

Very nice :-)
It should work. I use straight mosfet or tip120 to dim one of those cheap par bulbs, this is lot nicer than that :-)

 

[Kampo]

I've done some research and done some testing on methods to control led strips with PWM just didn't have a controller I liked. this seems like a very slick option though. and only slightly more expensive than the modded TC420 controllers i've been using, but still easy enough for me to wire up with some jumper cables and keep it looking reasonably neat since low part count. any suggestions on a reliable 48V to 5V step down module?

 

[Ranjib]

I've done some research and done some testing on methods to control led strips with PWM just didn't have a controller I liked. this seems like a very slick option though. and only slightly more expensive than the modded TC420 controllers i've been using, but still easy enough for me to wire up with some jumper cables and keep it looking reasonably neat since low part count. any suggestions on a reliable 48V to 5V step down module?

I am using lm2596 breakout boards. You'll need the high voltage variant, search for hv lm2596 . I dont know if theres other options with better heat dissipation.

 

[Kampo]

would something like this work?

 

[Ranjib]

would something like this work?

Never used something like this, but it should work.

 

[Kampo]

awesome thanks for the help, I think i'll order me up a Pi Zero and a PCA9685 board tonight to tinker with :D

 

[Ranjib]

Godspeed :0-)

 

[Kampo]

one more question is there any provisions for multiple reef-pi's on the same network? if I like this i'd be very tempted to do it on a couple other tanks, and possibly my fish room as a whole. would they conflict with eachother? or would I just need to know the indivdual addresses to each

 

[Ryan115]

one more question is there any provisions for multiple reef-pi's on the same network? if I like this i'd be very tempted to do it on a couple other tanks, and possibly my fish room as a whole. would they conflict with eachother? or would I just need to know the indivdual addresses to each

It should not be a problem running multiple systems. The IP address on each pi will be assigned by your wireless router. For telemetry on the multiple systems, you will just need to add something into the prefix box.

 

[Kampo]

cool that should work, would be cool as an added feature in the future maybe adding the ability for addutional units to be slaved to the main, I can't be the only one tat has multiple tanks in different rooms that may be interested.

 

[Mandelstam]

That's one thing that has kept me a little hesitant about what route to go with controllers. An all-in-one controller makes the system very vulnerable. If that controller goes, everything goes. What I was thinking of doing instead was making every subsystem independent and then try to have a form of monitor that monitors every subsystem and collects and presents the data. If that makes sense. But the lights run off a separate independent system, same as ATO, powerheads, dosing, etc, etc.

With the reef-pi I can just make multiple controllers for each one of the systems I want to control, but it would be nice to be able to send the data/status to one central hub for monitoring.

 

[Somnifac]

That's one thing that has kept me a little hesitant about what route to go with controllers. An all-in-one controller makes the system very vulnerable. If that controller goes, everything goes. What I was thinking of doing instead was making every subsystem independent and then try to have a form of monitor that monitors every subsystem and collects and presents the data. If that makes sense. But the lights run off a separate independent system, same as ATO, powerheads, dosing, etc, etc.

With the reef-pi I can just make multiple controllers for each one of the systems I want to control, but it would be nice to be able to send the data/status to one central hub for monitoring.

That shouldn't be a problem. Between the built-in telemetry options, as well as the ability to create a monitoring dashboard via the API. With that, you could bring together data from various systems and present it in one place.

While I'm going with an AIO system, I do plan on doing a dive into the API to create a different front end that monitors the data I am most interested in, and present it in a manner that I like.

 

[Ranjib]

one more question is there any provisions for multiple reef-pi's on the same network? if I like this i'd be very tempted to do it on a couple other tanks, and possibly my fish room as a whole. would they conflict with eachother? or would I just need to know the indivdual addresses to each

It is possible, but is there a reason you dont want single reef-pi to control multiple tanks? I am not recommending, just curious. With Pi3 you can churn a whole lotta thing.

 

[Ranjib]

It should not be a problem running multiple systems. The IP address on each pi will be assigned by your wireless router. For telemetry on the multiple systems, you will just need to add something into the prefix box.

The only thing I am worried around telemetry is adafruit.io has pretty aggressive data/feed number limits (10 i think) on free account :-/
I am thinking of disabling telemetry data emission for lights. Currently reef-pi emits per channel telemetry data. This was nice in the beginning to validate the light cycle worked as expected, but in long run (and now that light cycle logic is stable) its not informative (remains same) and cost lot more feed/data.

 

[Ranjib]

cool that should work, would be cool as an added feature in the future maybe adding the ability for addutional units to be slaved to the main, I can't be the only one tat has multiple tanks in different rooms that may be interested.

Yes :-) . If you even browse through this thread, somewhere we have discussed this in detail. The API allows us to cluster reef-pi from a single place. I have not written a client yet, but this is something in my mind. Definitely not a priority (lots of important things before that), but we'll get that chicken for sure.

 

[Ranjib]

That's one thing that has kept me a little hesitant about what route to go with controllers. An all-in-one controller makes the system very vulnerable. If that controller goes, everything goes. What I was thinking of doing instead was making every subsystem independent and then try to have a form of monitor that monitors every subsystem and collects and presents the data. If that makes sense. But the lights run off a separate independent system, same as ATO, powerheads, dosing, etc, etc.

With the reef-pi I can just make multiple controllers for each one of the systems I want to control, but it would be nice to be able to send the data/status to one central hub for monitoring.

100% agree with you. AIO controllers are serious reliability risk, unless they have some serious safety mechanism in place. I always emphasize of keeping reef-pi modular because of this (and also the lower price tag). But having an AIO controller just allow us to do lot more things, more intelligent decision making etc. Like delayed skimmer start after return is switched on. etc. So, its a choice, my recommendation will be to take it slow, and only go AIO if you intend to exploit those advantages.
Housing and wiring mess is also another reason, multiple separate controller can take more space/wiring

 

[Gareth elliott]

@Ranjib i know you had discussed it earlier about the small displays. Will the ability to chose what graphs go on the dashboard be something that comes later? I am using a 7” display and after enabling a few more features. Hard to view the graphs.

Also this maybe trivial but say i wanted to tweak the css do you have a non minimized version available to edit? Not a programmer but have a baseline understanding of html and wanted to change the color scheme a touch. And as layman hard to dissect code deconstructed to one line. If not i understand :)

 

[Ranjib]

@Ranjib i know you had discussed it earlier about the small displays. Will the ability to chose what graphs go on the dashboard be something that comes later? I am using a 7” display and after enabling a few more features. Hard to view the graphs.

Also this maybe trivial but say i wanted to tweak the css do you have a non minimized version available to edit? Not a programmer but have a baseline understanding of html and wanted to change the color scheme a touch. And as layman hard to dissect code deconstructed to one line. If not i understand :)

Are you using the standard pi touch display ? Curious about the resolution

reef-pi does not use any custom css as of now, we can certainly add it if need be. As of now, I have kept the static assets to a bare minimum, and include only bootstrap (the omnipotent css library from twitter) for all styling. So any bootstrap styles will be usable as it is.

https://github.com/reef-pi/reef-pi/tree/master/assets

bootstrap is responsive, so there must be we way for us to make individual component render correct on different screens (mobile, desktop & tablets). I know the whole responsive thing in reef-pi UI is absymal. In particular the charts & dialogs (in mobile phones at least). Keep bringing up specific UX/UI issues, I may just ask one of my UI friends to fix them for us in one go :-)

 

[Ranjib]

@Gareth elliott forgot to mention, the css class of individual elements is assigned in the jsx files itself, example of equipment UI is here:
https://github.com/reef-pi/reef-pi/blob/master/jsx/equipment.jsx#L54
you can follow the dev environment setup guide and change the class names (bootstrap class reference is here) and see it in action.

 

[Jackmot]

Hi!!
I'm just starting with Reef-Pi (and loving it haha). Ive succesfuly managed to get to work the ATO and Temp but i'm having some errors with the camera. When i click "update" to enable the camera the error is {"error":"item 'latest' does not exists in bucket 'camera'"}

and when i click on "take photo" the error is {"error":"exit status 64"}.

What should I do?
Thanks :)