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

[Ranjib]

Guys, I did the thing!

you added all the fish at the same time? :-O

 

[DirtDiggler2823]

you added all the fish at the same time? :-O

Yeah, I know......

 

[Ranjib]

Yeah, I know......

I don’t know how I feel about that, but I guess with tank of that size it’s ok. No QT?

 

[b4tn]

@Ranjib my biggest fear is a runaway doser. I have been dosing from one bottle to the other for about a week now with no issue and officially moved over to dosing my reef last night. But it’s still in the back of my mind that a glitch will dump a bottle of alk in my tank. Any plans to put alerts and maybe an auto disable on the alert similar to what you are doing with the ATO?

 

[DirtDiggler2823]

I don’t know how I feel about that, but I guess with tank of that size it’s ok. No QT?

They were in QT for quite some time. I dosed with prime as a precaution, and I have extra bottles of Dr. Tim's, just in case.

 

[Ryan115]

I'll cross check. I cant recall any changes that would break this functionality.

Did you ever get a chance to verify this? My ato reservoir ran dry the other night and the pump ran for over an hour with no alerts.
Not a big deal as the Aqualifter makes plenty of noise when it runs dry.

 

[rcpalmer1]

I have been driving my two jebao pp4 wave pumps with the 0-5vdc control signal from my reef-pi pwm board. No filters needed, just straight off the pwm. I use the lighting subsection of the program for now. My jebao return pump can not be controlled this way, even though they use the same interface plug.

It seems like the reefpi can control pumps. I just have to wait until someone creates a UI that can cycle them on and off.

 

[Selderf]

Hello,

Sorry for my English, but I just wanted to thank you for your work because I installed Reef Pi for two weeks and I'm very happy with the result. I have 8 controlled sockets by a relay, two temperature probes and a mechanical level sensor for the ATO. I also soldered the board we see here for the PH. Finally, I added a touch screen.

A small detail: I am French, I do not read very much English and I had never touched a Raspberry nor welded a resistance of my life. And yet, I succeeded!

 

[Diamond1]

Hello,

Sorry for my English, but I just wanted to thank you for your work because I installed Reef Pi for two weeks and I'm very happy with the result. I have 8 controlled sockets by a relay, two temperature probes and a mechanical level sensor for the ATO. I also soldered the board we see here for the PH. Finally, I added a touch screen.

A small detail: I am French, I do not read very much English and I had never touched a Raspberry nor welded a resistance of my life. And yet, I succeeded!

Welcome to reef2reef and congratulations on your reef-pi build. We would love to see some pictures of your build.

 

[b4tn]

Hello,

Sorry for my English, but I just wanted to thank you for your work because I installed Reef Pi for two weeks and I'm very happy with the result. I have 8 controlled sockets by a relay, two temperature probes and a mechanical level sensor for the ATO. I also soldered the board we see here for the PH. Finally, I added a touch screen.

A small detail: I am French, I do not read very much English and I had never touched a Raspberry nor welded a resistance of my life. And yet, I succeeded!

Congrats! Feels great doesn’t it :). But just the fact that you tackled surface mount soldering with 0 experience gets big kudos in my book!

 

[Mendeln]

Are physical buttons a thing now?
Do I have to use buttons or can I use switches to start macros?

Tomorrow the soldering begins... facing stage 1 :cool:

 

[Ranjib]

Did you ever get a chance to verify this? My ato reservoir ran dry the other night and the pump ran for over an hour with no alerts.
Not a big deal as the Aqualifter makes plenty of noise when it runs dry.

There’s a bug in the ato alert code. I fixed it two days back, will cut 2.2 tonight. Sorry for the trouble :-( .

 

[Ranjib]

Hello,

Sorry for my English, but I just wanted to thank you for your work because I installed Reef Pi for two weeks and I'm very happy with the result. I have 8 controlled sockets by a relay, two temperature probes and a mechanical level sensor for the ATO. I also soldered the board we see here for the PH. Finally, I added a touch screen.

A small detail: I am French, I do not read very much English and I had never touched a Raspberry nor welded a resistance of my life. And yet, I succeeded!

That’s awesome :-) . Bonjour and Welcome to reef2reef . We have several French developers and users here .

 

[Ranjib]

@Ranjib my biggest fear is a runaway doser. I have been dosing from one bottle to the other for about a week now with no issue and officially moved over to dosing my reef last night. But it’s still in the back of my mind that a glitch will dump a bottle of alk in my tank. Any plans to put alerts and maybe an auto disable on the alert similar to what you are doing with the ATO?

Adding alerting should not be that hard, but since doser are based on schedule not by some sensor output (like ph) , I don’t know if it’s useful. As and when we allow dosing based on ph or something else , I can see the usefulness of this

 

[Erica-Renee]

@Ranjib my biggest fear is a runaway doser. I have been dosing from one bottle to the other for about a week now with no issue and officially moved over to dosing my reef last night. But it’s still in the back of my mind that a glitch will dump a bottle of alk in my tank. Any plans to put alerts and maybe an auto disable on the alert similar to what you are doing with the ATO?

@b4tn
Make sure your Dosing container never has enough in it to crash your tank. Plug the dosing pump into a Pi-controlled outlet. Set that outlet on a timer to start before dosing is to begin and stop when dosing is done..

this way if the dosing procedure fails running the outlet will have the pumps power turned off..

 

[Bigtrout]

@b4tn
Make sure your Dosing container never has enough in it to crash your tank. Plug the dosing pump into a Pi-controlled outlet. Set that outlet on a timer to start before dosing is to begin and stop when dosing is done..

this way if the dosing procedure fails running the outlet will have the pumps power turned off..

As with heaters failsafes are always a good thing

 

[b4tn]

@b4tn
Make sure your Dosing container never has enough in it to crash your tank. Plug the dosing pump into a Pi-controlled outlet. Set that outlet on a timer to start before dosing is to begin and stop when dosing is done..

this way if the dosing procedure fails running the outlet will have the pumps power turned off..

I had thought about using a timer actually. Problem is my dosing pumps are incorporated into reefpi. I guess one of the benifits of building things separate instead of incorporating it all together lol

 

[That Crusso Kid]

I had thought about using a timer actually. Problem is my dosing pumps are incorporated into reefpi. I guess one of the benifits of building things separate instead of incorporating it all together lol

It may make very good sense to pick up another SPi and set it up to only control your dosing. I do believe there are a number of other users following this method.

 

[Ryan115]

There’s a bug in the ato alert code. I fixed it two days back, will cut 2.2 tonight. Sorry for the trouble :-( .

On top of things as always.
No trouble at all.

 

[bishoptf]

I threw this together last night since I had an out of memory issue, I assume restarting the reef-pi service would reset the memory usage. It still needs some cleanup and some additional error checking to verify that the service started up. The basic idea is you drop this in cron.daily (/etc/cron.daily) which is executed at 3am your local time, if the available free memory is less than 150M then it will restart the reef-pi service. Outputs to a file in your directory the information for the free command and also if it restarts the service. Update the file with your path to your home directory.

#!/bin/bash
/bin/date > /home/bishop/pi-memory.txt
/usr/bin/free >> /home/bishop/pi-memory.txt
freemem=`/usr/bin/awk '{print $7}' /home/bishop/pi-memory.txt`
if  (( $freemem < 150000 ))
then
    /bin/echo $freemem >> /home/bishop/pi-memory.txt
    /bin/echo "restarting reef-pi" >> /home/bishop/pi-memory.txt
    /bin/systemctl restart reef-pi.service
else
   /bin/echo "not less that 150M" >> /home/bishop/pi-memory.txt
fi

If anyone has any questions or something that would work better just let me know, just wanted something to check things overnight and reset if necessary, no warranties as usual ;)