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

[Ryan115]

Following you also. But think this may be over my head.
I'm not a computer geek at all.
Upgrading to a 180 gal reef.
Want to have better controls than previous tank.

Dont be dissuaded, you dont have to know much about computers to be able to get this up and running.
The guides will walk you through everything step by step. There is a lot of high level talk within this thread, but feel free to post ANY questions that you have and we can all help walk you through it. We were all where you are at some point in the past.
There have been many other users that have come in with no working knowledge and now have a fully controlled aquarium.

 

[Bigtrout]

Help please. Why am u getting this error?

temperature sub-system. Failed to read sensor Heater 2. Error:eek:pen /sys/bus/w1/devices/28-020f917741cf/w1_slave: no such file or directory

Check your temp sensor wiring first...

 

[Ryan115]

Help please. Why am u getting this error?

temperature sub-system. Failed to read sensor Heater 2. Error:eek:pen /sys/bus/w1/devices/28-020f917741cf/w1_slave: no such file or directory

Did you change temp probes?
Sounds like you no longer have a connection to the one that was programmed.

 

[Ryan115]

Can you connect in through terminal and run the following and post the results.

cd /sys/bus/w1/devices

ls

cat w1_slave

 

[Mikeneedsahobby]

lol, think I'm in over my head! I just double clicked it in the boot file and pasted this "dtoverlay=pwm-2chan" after the last line of the config.txt file.

How do I add it in with sudo? in the terminal?

thanks

You are not over your head. It is just your head is not in the clouds like these geniuses.

The problem you are having is that the config.txt is a system file and is protected from accidental changes. It won't save changes for a normal user. To get around this open terminal and use the command "sudo nano /boot/config.txt". make the change then save by pressing ctrl X then yes to save.

"sudo" gives you admin rights and allows the file to be changed. "nano" is a text editor you can run from the terminal window.

I only know all this because I spent 30 minutes banging my head into a wall on why I couldn't change the file. The knot on my head grew new brain cells and I finally understood.

 

[4dtough]

Thanks, I have a spare sensor so I'm going to try swapping out it first to see if that solves the problem

 

[4dtough]

Thanks guys, bad probe I guess. Luckily I had another on hand as I have been playing on running multiples.

 

[Ranjib]

I was thinking about that this morning. Couldn't we store on the SD card? I'm running a 64gb card. I have space. That would free up memory quite a bit. Maybe have it archive every 12 hours or so.

We could, but then that will incur disk I/O, which is another performance issue (CPU). I am shipping a feature that will allow customizing the retention period. It will help us identify if this is the actual cause. If so, I'll think of next steps.

 

[daveCB]

I am fighting a temp probe fail issue as well. Appears now that the jump wire or wires from the socket to the pi hat pins were loose. In soldered the pins and soldered the leads direct to the pi hat and so far, so good. I as well thought my sensors, that are new, were bad.

 

[Ranjib]

@Ranjib I I confirmed the doser timer is working. I watched it dump 5ml at 7 this morning. The doser dashboard however is not updating. Which is strange because it used to update. I did a reboot last night to rule that out. In the pic alk is updating showing last dose yesterday at 1900. Alk adjustment has not updated since the 21st.

Did you made a hard restart of reef-pi (or it got killed by memory pressure), that may cause loss of stats as it was in memory

 

[Ranjib]

I am fighting a temp probe fail issue as well. Appears now that the jump wire or wires from the socket to the pi hat pins were loose. In soldered the pins and soldered the leads direct to the pi hat and so far, so good. I as well thought my sensors, that are new, were bad.

I am glad you shared this. I have only one probe failed on me in past 2-3 years, among the dozen I use. Its funny, becuase couple of my probes are really cheap, and not the black powder coated, they didn't even rust.

 

[daveCB]

Also, to jump back a few posts, I also conclude that I have a memory leak. I only have some timers doing wave makers and temp control running with one sensor. The balance is turned off. I also am transmitting data to Adafruit IO. I have a suspicion about that and I am turning it off for now. It was after I configured the IO that I noticed building memory after three or four days.

 

[daveCB]

Ranjib
How close are you to releasing 2.2 or 2.3?

 

[4dtough]

I have had random temp errors before but they have always stopped, today they didn't... I soldered up a new probe and dropped it in and sense to be working fine. Also the new probe reads about 1 degree higher. I have a digital thermometer for backup that had always read different than my first probe so maybe there had been a problem from the start.I've only had the reef pi up and running for about a month.

 

[b4tn]

Did you made a hard restart of reef-pi (or it got killed by memory pressure), that may cause loss of stats as it was in memory

I did a hard restart because 2 of my 4 doser dashboards where not updating. A hard restart did not fix the issue. It still will not update either on the timer or by running the calibrate function. The two main dosers on pin 1 and 0 update. The second dosers Are also on pin 1 and 0 but separate timers and they do not update on the dashboard

 

[Ryan115]

28% and climbing after 2 days, since the last restart.
The processor seems to be spiking fairly excessively as well.

 

[Ranjib]

Ranjib
How close are you to releasing 2.2 or 2.3?

I can cut it tonight, or do some more testing and release it later this weekend. This is such a trick software question :-)

 

[bishoptf]

You are not over your head. It is just your head is not in the clouds like these geniuses.

The problem you are having is that the config.txt is a system file and is protected from accidental changes. It won't save changes for a normal user. To get around this open terminal and use the command "sudo nano /boot/config.txt". make the change then save by pressing ctrl X then yes to save.

"sudo" gives you admin rights and allows the file to be changed. "nano" is a text editor you can run from the terminal window.

I only know all this because I spent 30 minutes banging my head into a wall on why I couldn't change the file. The knot on my head grew new brain cells and I finally understood.

Much better explanation, thanks for providing the details, wasn't sure if nano was loaded by default for the gui, it usually is but wasn't sure. I pretty much always use vi and haven't played with the gui to know how they have things set up. Will try to load that up over the weekend so I can help answer questions from the perspective of the gui.

I have a lot to learn on the electronics side but I can help out with the system questions, been doing that for quite sometime. :)

 

[bishoptf]

I'm up to 58% on memory on day 4, looks like it goes up a little each day, free memory is 127M

2019/01/23 19:06:52 health check: Used memory: 58.36 Load5: 0.12

 

[bishoptf]

WRT storing data to disk, since flash memory is the weakest link, why not make that either a configurable option (every X hrs), to free up memory? Long term, maybe storing on google drive or something similar...

I was thinking about that this morning. Couldn't we store on the SD card? I'm running a 64gb card. I have space. That would free up memory quite a bit. Maybe have it archive every 12 hours or so.

I saw these postings this morning but unable to post from work, actually I would like being able to write to disk also, although I wouldn't write to the SD card I would write to a network share (NFS to be exact). I think this would be nice so if you do restart the reef-pi it reads the file and picks up from where it left off. I would also like to know if you can backup the database file and restore to a new installation so you don't have to re-configure things.

Great discussions as always, just thought I would weigh in. :)