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

[Erica-Renee]

that is strange :-/ . Can be due to powerdraw as well.. ds18b20 has known limitations around length of the chord, i guess by reusing a single jack, you are limiting the overall wire length that the signal has to traverse.

Maybe so... but we are talking about 2 inches of wire for each probe... if its even that much... anyway I know this is not a reef-pi issue and i only really need 3 probes.. Just thought i would see how all for ports work ....

 

[Zephrant]

The Lighting sliders don't work under Firefox 59.0.2:
The sliders can't be moved. Appears to work fine in Safari 11.1.1.

I would like more granularity on the lights though. I need to feed at 7:30am so need some lights on by then, but don't want them on at 6:00.

 

[HM3105]

@Ranjib I just want to say how cool this is again. I got the probes working and managed to set an email alert up that goes to my SMS on my phone. Thanks again all your work on this!

 

[WhiskeyCoffee]

So without reading almost 250 pages... Can someone tell me how much soldering is involved in this, or are most of the connections just plugs? Thanks!

 

[Ranjib]

So without reading almost 250 pages... Can someone tell me how much soldering is involved in this, or are most of the connections just plugs? Thanks!

Not a whole lot or hard soldering (SMD), but at least a dozen or so for the entire build, all beginner level soldering task. You can also use breadboards for prototyping,

 

[Erica-Renee]

So without reading almost 250 pages... Can someone tell me how much soldering is involved in this, or are most of the connections just plugs? Thanks!

Well ..

That is a hard one to answer..Most you can get operational on a Bread board.. But do NOT let a soldering iron intimidate you , you can get a good one for under 20.00 On amazon.. NOT A GREAT ONE.. BUT one good enough for this... Get some cheap pcb proto boards and a good magnified helper . There are some good soldering tutorials on the internet and you tube....
You can Do this..
Good Luck

 

[Erica-Renee]

@Ranjib Do you use 3v or 5v for your temp and float sensor circuits... The 1wire protcol seems to sugged 5v is most reliable.. and 100m is easily achieved as we have now..
Length = weight
a Temp sensor has a wight of .5 meters ..
So i have 4 sensors.. 2m..... i have a 10 meter cable then 4-1m pig tails..
so my total weight = 2+10+4 16 meters.. Well below the 100m limitation.... But i am running at 3.3v not 5v as they advise doing..

Will give this a test and see. If not i have to change the circuit board layout.. Now I am what they are calling a Star network..
I need to what i think i need is a stubbed network.. 3 SENSORS Will be about 3 meters long and one will be 13 meters... If you reach over 50 meters on the stub they say adding 150 resisters on each of the pull downs ..

anywhere is where i got most of my info.. Confirmed from a few other sources.
https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/148

NOW Does pi follow the standard 1wire protcol.. as this link


Any thoughts ?

--------------------------------

Network weight is limited by the ability of the cable to be charged and discharged quickly enough to satisfy the 1-Wire protocol. A simple resistor pullup has a weight limitation of about 200m. Sophisticated 1-Wire master designs have overcome this limitation by using active pullups, that provide higher currents under logic control and have extended the maximum supportable weight to over 500m. See application note 244, "Advanced 1-Wire Network Driver."

Parasite Powering Issues
The 1-Wire waveform must not only be sufficient for communication, but also provide operating power for the slaves. Each slave "robs" power from the bus when the voltage on the bus is greater than the voltage on its internal energy storage capacitor. When the weight of the network becomes excessive, the current delivered by the master may not be sufficient to maintain operating voltage in the slaves.

 

[Zephrant]

Minor bug- GUI lets you set the PWM values to 100, which results in a 0 voltage output, not a VCC output as expected. Very different if you are using a low-pass filter on it.

Setting the MAX to 99 in the GUI still allows you to set the sliders to 100, and accepts it. But the log files complains every single update period:

Jun 26 13:46:58 seahorse reef-pi[673]: 2018/06/26 13:46:58 Lighting: Calculated value(100) for channel 'Blue' is above maximum threshold(99). Resetting to 99

If the sliders are not going to obey the Max setting, there is no need to log errors to the file and flood it.

The word "Equipment" is both singular and plural in US English, so "Equipments" is not correct English.

Feature requests:

• Better support for fixed-speed dosers. For example, I'd like to use an AC doser and set it up to run 12 times a day, for 5s each time, without having to make 12 entries in timers.
  
• Ability to edit timers and equipment, instead of having to delete and re-create to make any changes. Especially important if I want to change how much is dosed on a fixed-speed doser.

Thanks Ranjib!

 

[Ranjib]

Minor bug- GUI lets you set the PWM values to 100, which results in a 0 voltage output, not a VCC output as expected. Very different if you are using a low-pass filter on it.

Setting the MAX to 99 in the GUI still allows you to set the sliders to 100, and accepts it. But the log files complains every single update period:

Jun 26 13:46:58 seahorse reef-pi[673]: 2018/06/26 13:46:58 Lighting: Calculated value(100) for channel 'Blue' is above maximum threshold(99). Resetting to 99

If the sliders are not going to obey the Max setting, there is no need to log errors to the file and flood it.

The word "Equipment" is both singular and plural in US English, so "Equipments" is not correct English.

Feature requests:

• Better support for fixed-speed dosers. For example, I'd like to use an AC doser and set it up to run 12 times a day, for 5s each time, without having to make 12 entries in timers.
  
• Ability to edit timers and equipment, instead of having to delete and re-create to make any changes. Especially important if I want to change how much is dosed on a fixed-speed doser.

Thanks Ranjib!

Ability to edit timers and equipment is on my list for 2.0 release. The other feature should already be possible . You can set the value for hour as “*/2” that will trigger the timer after every two hours

 

[Ranjib]

@Ranjib Do you use 3v or 5v for your temp and float sensor circuits... The 1wire protcol seems to sugged 5v is most reliable.. and 100m is easily achieved as we have now..
Length = weight
a Temp sensor has a wight of .5 meters ..
So i have 4 sensors.. 2m..... i have a 10 meter cable then 4-1m pig tails..
so my total weight = 2+10+4 16 meters.. Well below the 100m limitation.... But i am running at 3.3v not 5v as they advise doing..

Will give this a test and see. If not i have to change the circuit board layout.. Now I am what they are calling a Star network..
I need to what i think i need is a stubbed network.. 3 SENSORS Will be about 3 meters long and one will be 13 meters... If you reach over 50 meters on the stub they say adding 150 resisters on each of the pull downs ..

anywhere is where i got most of my info.. Confirmed from a few other sources.
https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/148

NOW Does pi follow the standard 1wire protcol.. as this link


Any thoughts ?

--------------------------------

Network weight is limited by the ability of the cable to be charged and discharged quickly enough to satisfy the 1-Wire protocol. A simple resistor pullup has a weight limitation of about 200m. Sophisticated 1-Wire master designs have overcome this limitation by using active pullups, that provide higher currents under logic control and have extended the maximum supportable weight to over 500m. See application note 244, "Advanced 1-Wire Network Driver."

Parasite Powering Issues
The 1-Wire waveform must not only be sufficient for communication, but also provide operating power for the slaves. Each slave "robs" power from the bus when the voltage on the bus is greater than the voltage on its internal energy storage capacitor. When the weight of the network becomes excessive, the current delivered by the master may not be sufficient to maintain operating voltage in the slaves.

Pi uses the one wire implementation that comes with Linux. Official raspberry pi forum has a thread on this subject , which is what I read . I plan to link the same in official docs

 

[sjeff35]

UPS just stopped by! Let's BUILD SOME STUFF!!!

 

[Zephrant]

Anyone have a decent 12v dosing head that they can recommend? Lots of choices online, most with bad reviews.
I'm looking for two heads to setup on the Reef-Pi relays, not the PWM outputs. Seems like less to fail if I just do timed on/off of calibrated heads, vs. depending on an interpretation of a PWM signal.

Am tempted by this one: https://smile.amazon.com/INTLLAB-Peristaltic-Liquid-Aquarium-Analytical/dp/B0799C8Q7S

 

[Ranjib]

Anyone have a decent 12v dosing head that they can recommend? Lots of choices online, most with bad reviews.
I'm looking for two heads to setup on the Reef-Pi relays, not the PWM outputs. Seems like less to fail if I just do timed on/off of calibrated heads, vs. depending on an interpretation of a PWM signal.

Am tempted by this one: https://smile.amazon.com/INTLLAB-Peristaltic-Liquid-Aquarium-Analytical/dp/B0799C8Q7S

I use the adafruit one. Its not best, but I also dont know when it will fail. its cheap and does the job. I drive it via l293d ICs

 

[Ranjib]

Anyone have a decent 12v dosing head that they can recommend? Lots of choices online, most with bad reviews.
I'm looking for two heads to setup on the Reef-Pi relays, not the PWM outputs. Seems like less to fail if I just do timed on/off of calibrated heads, vs. depending on an interpretation of a PWM signal.

Am tempted by this one: https://smile.amazon.com/INTLLAB-Peristaltic-Liquid-Aquarium-Analytical/dp/B0799C8Q7S

Yeah, you should be fine. My rule of thumb is to dilute more, dose more, and adjust over time after understanding your ph/alk trend

 

[sjeff35]

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.

 

[Des Westcott]

Every time some thing like this happens, I would recommend troubleshooting it step by step. i.e. unplug the LED, but keep rest of the things hooks up, and then use multimeter to check if the voltages are what you expect (pca9685 for example), as you change the values via reef-pi UI

I have fiddled around a bit and have discovered the followed :-

• When I test voltages on the PCA9685 board, I find that I get voltages of between 1 and 5V that relate to the % of light I have set the channel to when I test between the PWM pin and GND on the PCA 9685. ie when light is set to 50% I get 2.5V and 20% I get 1V etc
• So my thinking is hat if I could get a way to have that as an input into a "something" that would read the voltage and output a relevant signal to the LED channel (12V; 0.5A / channel). Does such a thing exist? I'm googling, but sometimes run into a brick wall when the info gets too technical.
• http://improvedlivingpe.com/#!/12Vdc-24Vdc-6-10-Dimmable-LED-chip-driver/p/59551631/category=5559005 From what I can recall, these are the drivers that each channel of my lights runs on.
  
• Each channel has 9 x 1W LED's
• Measurements seem to show me getting under 0.5A current draw on each channel at 100%

Des

 

[Des Westcott]

On an upside, I have everything else I want running on the Reef-Pi.

• Return Pump
• Refugium Lighting
• Skimmer
• Wavemaker
• Temperature Probe controlling
  • Heater
  • Fans
• ATO

More than happy with the result. Final steps are to get the lighting sorted and get Port Forwarding working for remote access and control.

Thanks RanjiB. Brilliant project this!!!

 

[sjeff35]

Show your messy desk!!!

I just added the lighting function to Reef-pi. (While on a conference call for work, don't tell my boss)...

And it appears to be working:

I can't thank you enough @Ranjib for this!!! I'm a total noob at this, but I'm figuring it out.

 

[Ranjib]

I have fiddled around a bit and have discovered the followed :-

• When I test voltages on the PCA9685 board, I find that I get voltages of between 1 and 5V that relate to the % of light I have set the channel to when I test between the PWM pin and GND on the PCA 9685. ie when light is set to 50% I get 2.5V and 20% I get 1V etc
• So my thinking is hat if I could get a way to have that as an input into a "something" that would read the voltage and output a relevant signal to the LED channel (12V; 0.5A / channel). Does such a thing exist? I'm googling, but sometimes run into a brick wall when the info gets too technical.
• http://improvedlivingpe.com/#!/12Vdc-24Vdc-6-10-Dimmable-LED-chip-driver/p/59551631/category=5559005 From what I can recall, these are the drivers that each channel of my lights runs on.
  
• Each channel has 9 x 1W LED's
• Measurements seem to show me getting under 0.5A current draw on each channel at 100%

Des

You need logic level (5v) pwm dimmable led drivers. Meanwell ones are popular.
@theatrus has built some of these, which really like (two channels, 5v pwm dimable and 18$) , but I have not used it.

https://blueacro.com/acroiq/

 

[Ranjib]

Show your messy desk!!!

I just added the lighting function to Reef-pi. (While on a conference call for work, don't tell my boss)...

And it appears to be working:

I can't thank you enough @Ranjib for this!!! I'm a total noob at this, but I'm figuring it out.

Wow :-)
You have one lm2596 and another different buck converter board. Is that a 5v -> 3.3 v step down regulator?