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

[denierlexiese]

Re-reading over the 193 pages of posts, it looks like 4 people have tried the black box leds with varying degrees of success. Did anyone ever figure out how to get them to dim/ramp without buzzing noises, and smoothly go between values on the reef pi slider? Here are pictures of my black box leds. I can't tell if people are sending the vdim+ / - signals from the pca9685 digitally or with an analog converter. Do we have a fritz diagram for the black boxes with 4 wires? Did we decide we need a 12 volt or 10 volt power supply, and does it require a voltage regulator to drop from 12 to 10. The black box posts are very confusing. Please help.

Thanks!!!

 

[Ryan115]

Re-reading over the 193 pages of posts, it looks like 4 people have tried the black box leds with varying degrees of success. Did anyone ever figure out how to get them to dim/ramp without buzzing noises, and smoothly go between values on the reef pi slider? Here are pictures of my black box leds. I can't tell if people are sending the vdim+ / - signals from the pca9685 digitally or with an analog converter. Do we have a fritz diagram for the black boxes with 4 wires? Did we decide we need a 12 volt or 10 volt power supply, and does it require a voltage regulator to drop from 12 to 10. The black box posts are very confusing. Please help.

Thanks!!!

I was able to get it to work on an SBReeflights BB, though it only has a 3 wire interface to the driver and the voltage was from a separate supply inside.
Can you pin it out and see what voltage is on the V+ pin and see if any are tied together as common GND.
Here is my fritzing diagram and some images with it. I did use a regulator to drop from 12v to 10V.
I am currently not using the on/off feature for each driver, rather using a relay to turn the entire light system off.

Here is the circuit (before I removed the RC filter)

 

[Ranjib]

I was able to get it to work on an SBReeflights BB, though it only has a 3 wire interface to the driver and the voltage was from a separate supply inside.
Can you pin it out and see what voltage is on the V+ pin and see if any are tied together as common GND.
Here is my fritzing diagram and some images with it. I did use a regulator to drop from 12v to 10V.
I am currently not using the on/off feature for each driver, rather using a relay to turn the entire light system off.

Here is the circuit (before I removed the RC filter)

love these little perf board based circuits. They are robust, solve one thing, and solve it well, and very easy to understand for the DIY folks :-p . Thank you for sharing

 

[Ranjib]

Re-reading over the 193 pages of posts, it looks like 4 people have tried the black box leds with varying degrees of success. Did anyone ever figure out how to get them to dim/ramp without buzzing noises, and smoothly go between values on the reef pi slider? Here are pictures of my black box leds. I can't tell if people are sending the vdim+ / - signals from the pca9685 digitally or with an analog converter. Do we have a fritz diagram for the black boxes with 4 wires? Did we decide we need a 12 volt or 10 volt power supply, and does it require a voltage regulator to drop from 12 to 10. The black box posts are very confusing. Please help.

Thanks!!!

In addition to what @Ryan115 said,
I know for sure viparspectra and sbreef worked at the end. We postulated the humming noise could be from two possible reasons
- Low PWM frequence
- 10v pwm input instead of 0-10v analog signal.

For the first reason, I'll be bumping up the pwm frequency to 1024 in next realease. I 'll try to make it configurable, so users can tweak it if needed
If this does not solve the issue, we'll experiment with the 0-10v analog conversion using an op-amp. The pcb board that @theatrus is designing has one, so we can use that circuit (only the op-amp part) to convert 5v pwm to 0-10v analog. I have to prototype the circuit and test out, so thats gonna take some time., and probably we should only do this if bumping up the pwm frequency does not work

 

[denierlexiese]

@Ryan115 can you give me a link to the voltage regulator you used? Amazon link? Also in your perf you don't have the voltage regulator on it right, that's just the transistor? @Ranjib As a beginner in electronics I find the perf boards hard to read because I can't assume flow of electricity like I can on a breadboard through pin holes.

Can you tell me the colors on the blue resistor, it looks like the other two are 10k. Is that right?

 

[Danny Taylor]

how would I wore a float switch to ato instead of a sensor please

 

[Ranjib]

@Ryan115 can you give me a link to the voltage regulator you used? Amazon link? Also in your perf you don't have the voltage regulator on it right, that's just the transistor? @Ranjib As a beginner in electronics I find the perf boards hard to read because I can't assume flow of electricity like I can on a breadboard through pin holes.

Can you tell me the colors on the blue resistor, it looks like the other two are 10k. Is that right?

I use the perf boards that has bread board like layout. Gikfun, adafruit are few of the vendors.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R3BFNL/
or https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DDANXQQ/ , i'll post some pics of my builds with these

 

[Ryan115]

love these little perf board based circuits. They are robust, solve one thing, and solve it well, and very easy to understand for the DIY folks :p . Thank you for sharing

I liked this because I could house it directly inside the light without having to alter anything internally. It was straight plug and play.

@Ryan115 can you give me a link to the voltage regulator you used? Amazon link? Also in your perf you don't have the voltage regulator on it right, that's just the transistor? @Ranjib As a beginner in electronics I find the perf boards hard to read because I can't assume flow of electricity like I can on a breadboard through pin holes.

Can you tell me the colors on the blue resistor, it looks like the other two are 10k. Is that right?

The regulator is directly below the connector on the top right. The regulator I used was a LM7810 from digikey https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/on-semiconductor/LM7810CT/LM7810CT-ND/1954730.
Digikey was also the source for all of the other components as well.

 

[Ranjib]

how would I wore a float switch to ato instead of a sensor please

Use some other gpio pin instead of 18 if possible (its used for pwm/light control).
Specify the GPIO pin number in the ato ui

 

[denierlexiese]

In addition to what @Ryan115 said,
I know for sure viparspectra and sbreef worked at the end. We postulated the humming noise could be from two possible reasons
- Low PWM frequence
- 10v pwm input instead of 0-10v analog signal.

For the first reason, I'll be bumping up the pwm frequency to 1024 in next realease. I 'll try to make it configurable, so users can tweak it if needed
If this does not solve the issue, we'll experiment with the 0-10v analog conversion using an op-amp. The pcb board that @theatrus is designing has one, so we can use that circuit (only the op-amp part) to convert 5v pwm to 0-10v analog. I have to prototype the circuit and test out, so thats gonna take some time., and probably we should only do this if bumping up the pwm frequency does not work

Based on Fish of Hexes video on youtube with the aquamars and sb reef light my guess is it's going to work on my generic black boxes. I believe the apex vm modules put out analog 0-10V, but since people on youtube seem to say pwm simulates analog output my guess all the black boxes will accept pwm. I agree @Ryan115 that my main light power will come from a generic relay completely separate from this loop. I'll just wire the onoff and ground together like fishofhex did, and control vdim+ and vdim- with the output of the pca9625. I'm going to try with the npn transistor ranjib recommends on his lighting build page PN2222. The only addition is to use the voltage regulator to drop the 12 volts down to 10volts. I just need the voltage regulator link to buy.

 

[Danny Taylor]

thanks

 

[denierlexiese]

I liked this because I could house it directly inside the light without having to alter anything internally. It was straight plug and play.


The regulator is directly below the connector on the top right. The regulator I used was a LM7810 from digikey https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/on-semiconductor/LM7810CT/LM7810CT-ND/1954730.
Digikey was also the source for all of the other components as well.

Well you're the guy that got it to work, so I'm ordering the exact same one too then.

 

[Ranjib]

Based on Fish of Hexes video on youtube with the aquamars and sb reef light my guess is it's going to work on my generic black boxes. I believe the apex vm modules put out analog 0-10V, but since people on youtube seem to say pwm simulates analog output my guess all the black boxes will accept pwm. I agree @Ryan115 that my main light power will come from a generic relay completely separate from this loop. I'll just wire the onoff and ground together like fishofhex did, and control vdim+ and vdim- with the output of the pca9625. I'm going to try with the npn transistor ranjib recommends on his lighting build page PN2222. The only addition is to use the voltage regulator to drop the 12 volts down to 10volts. I just need the voltage regulator link to buy.

2n222a, 2n3904 ... most common npn transistor will do. Keep us posted,

 

[denierlexiese]

how would I wore a float switch to ato instead of a sensor please

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking, but if you watch youtube videos about hooking up switches to raspberry pis you will see that a lot of people don't use resistors because the rasbperry pi has built in gpio resistors that can be activated with software. That way you can use less wires. A convenience once you start adding lots of stuff to the gpio pins of the rasberry. That said using external resistors are still good, and extra safety precaution.

The line that states GPIO.setup(11, GPIO.IN, pull_up_down=GPIO.PUD_DOWN) - sets a pull down resistor. I believe all my sensors have been set to pull up to start with. I'm definetly new at this so double checkmy logic, but this is based on the research i have found when i was intially confused on how to setup switches with raspberry pis. I have 5 leak detectors, and 2 floats valves simply hooked up via gpio and ground, with no issues for 2 months thus far.

 

[denierlexiese]

2n222a, 2n3904 ... most common npn transistor will do. Keep us posted,

@Ranjib - I'm planning on using a separate 12volt power supply as indicated in your lighting diagram on the main reef pi page. i found 3 in my closest that all have 12V output listed, with varying degrees of amps listed, 800 ma, 2 amp, and 3 amp on each. Does it matter which one i use? The amp rating on a psu's output is just max amps allowable based on the gauge of the cord right and other internal components? It's not an indication of how many amps it will supply right? That's more based on what's in the circuit right? Thanks!!!

@Ryan115, do i have worry about current draw of the circuit for vim+ / vdim - ? Or will it be so small i shouldn't worry about it?

Thanks!!!

 

[denierlexiese]

I liked this because I could house it directly inside the light without having to alter anything internally. It was straight plug and play.


The regulator is directly below the connector on the top right. The regulator I used was a LM7810 from digikey https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/on-semiconductor/LM7810CT/LM7810CT-ND/1954730.
Digikey was also the source for all of the other components as well.

Do you mean the top left - is that the thing sticking out under the jst connector? I feel like such an idiot looking at your perf board. I must have stared at it for over an hour today trying to match your fritz diagram. Can you text label some things on your perf board for us?

 

[theatrus]

Current progress on the reef-pi PCB:

I've added an isolated pH sensor circuit. Of course, in my attempt to "put everything on the board", I've made the connector inter-space very small, which only occurred to me after I ordered a handful of prototype boards. Some wider overmolds on HDMI cables and very wide stereo phono plugs will simply not fit in this spacing. I'm likely going to rotate the pH circuit 180 and put it at the top of the board, giving the rest of the connectors more space.

This is designed to fit in an off-the-shelf plastic box from Polycase, or connect to whatever other enclosure you have with the 4x #2 screw holes.

 

[Ranjib]

Current progress on the reef-pi PCB:

I've added an isolated pH sensor circuit. Of course, in my attempt to "put everything on the board", I've made the connector inter-space very small, which only occurred to me after I ordered a handful of prototype boards. Some wider overmolds on HDMI cables and very wide stereo phono plugs will simply not fit in this spacing. I'm likely going to rotate the pH circuit 180 and put it at the top of the board, giving the rest of the connectors more space.

This is designed to fit in an off-the-shelf plastic box from Polycase, or connect to whatever other enclosure you have with the 4x #2 screw holes.

awesome :-)

Currently reef-pi uses ezo circuit for ph . For this board to work with reef-pi, we have to implement calibration as well voltage to ph value conversion logic , am I right?

 

[jcmental]

Current progress on the reef-pi PCB:

I've added an isolated pH sensor circuit. Of course, in my attempt to "put everything on the board", I've made the connector inter-space very small, which only occurred to me after I ordered a handful of prototype boards. Some wider overmolds on HDMI cables and very wide stereo phono plugs will simply not fit in this spacing. I'm likely going to rotate the pH circuit 180 and put it at the top of the board, giving the rest of the connectors more space.

This is designed to fit in an off-the-shelf plastic box from Polycase, or connect to whatever other enclosure you have with the 4x #2 screw holes.

Thats Sick!

 

[Ryan115]

Based on Fish of Hexes video on youtube with the aquamars and sb reef light my guess is it's going to work on my generic black boxes. I believe the apex vm modules put out analog 0-10V, but since people on youtube seem to say pwm simulates analog output my guess all the black boxes will accept pwm. I agree @Ryan115 that my main light power will come from a generic relay completely separate from this loop. I'll just wire the onoff and ground together like fishofhex did, and control vdim+ and vdim- with the output of the pca9625. I'm going to try with the npn transistor ranjib recommends on his lighting build page PN2222. The only addition is to use the voltage regulator to drop the 12 volts down to 10volts. I just need the voltage regulator link to buy.

2n222a, 2n3904 ... most common npn transistor will do. Keep us posted,

The transistor I used was a PN2222 from Adafruit (I had these already)

@Ranjib - I'm planning on using a separate 12volt power supply as indicated in your lighting diagram on the main reef pi page. i found 3 in my closest that all have 12V output listed, with varying degrees of amps listed, 800 ma, 2 amp, and 3 amp on each. Does it matter which one i use? The amp rating on a psu's output is just max amps allowable based on the gauge of the cord right and other internal components? It's not an indication of how many amps it will supply right? That's more based on what's in the circuit right? Thanks!!!

@Ryan115, do i have worry about current draw of the circuit for vim+ / vdim - ? Or will it be so small i shouldn't worry about it?

Thanks!!!

Current draw for the PWM signal is negligible. I would recommend using the supply inside the BB if possible. Once less thing to deal with. That is assuming you will have this circuit housed inside of the light housing. If not, then disregard.

Do you mean the top left - is that the thing sticking out under the jst connector? I feel like such an idiot looking at your perf board. I must have stared at it for over an hour today trying to match your fritz diagram. Can you text label some things on your perf board for us?

This may help a bit, sorry I forgot to include earlier. Notice traces between pads on the boards that I used.