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

AbjectMaelstroM · Feb 3, 2020

Tom Bishop said:
Insert dramatic music.....

It has begun, probably going to be the slowest build ever but we are on our way, would like to have been around but a lot of life/health stuff showed up and side tracked me for awhile. I will be starting a build thread but have so much to learn and figure out yet. I am reading boatloads and trying to figure out a good path, will be a nano 29g with a 20l sump. I have been lazy this time and purchased all the reef-pi hat stuff from Michael Lane, currently its all in my holding spot (the sump tank) until I get a lot further down the road.

Glad things are still chugging along...wooo hooo!

Haha I know the feeling. I started on my saltwater journey in June of 2019....didnt get water in my tank until 2020. Still don't know you know what from a hole in the ground, but I'm getting there.

Slow and steady wins the race here, no doubt about it. You're off to a good start.

jhoop · Feb 3, 2020

FYI :

New Version 3.2 Set it up fine. Then it looked like the same issue with 3.1 Dashboard was not updating. I would reload and it would work for a bit. Then dashboard stopped working or could not configure it. After playing around..........found out.

Firefox was using cached pages. So I would configure it then go to look at the config and it would cache back to where I started. Found where to reload all new pages and it is working fine.

Thank You Ranjib for a great project and all the work you do !

Ranjib · Feb 4, 2020

jhoop said:
FYI :

New Version 3.2 Set it up fine. Then it looked like the same issue with 3.1 Dashboard was not updating. I would reload and it would work for a bit. Then dashboard stopped working or could not configure it. After playing around..........found out.

Firefox was using cached pages. So I would configure it then go to look at the config and it would cache back to where I started. Found where to reload all new pages and it is working fine.

Thank You Ranjib for a great project and all the work you do !

Glad it worked out.
Frontend is not my main strength. Browser specific nuances and caching behavior adds to more complexity :-/

Ranjib · Feb 4, 2020

Tom Bishop said:
Insert dramatic music.....

It has begun, probably going to be the slowest build ever but we are on our way, would like to have been around but a lot of life/health stuff showed up and side tracked me for awhile. I will be starting a build thread but have so much to learn and figure out yet. I am reading boatloads and trying to figure out a good path, will be a nano 29g with a 20l sump. I have been lazy this time and purchased all the reef-pi hat stuff from Michael Lane, currently its all in my holding spot (the sump tank) until I get a lot further down the road.

Glad things are still chugging along...wooo hooo!

Looking good

. Take your time, family first

Justinlee120 · Feb 4, 2020

Just starting to dig into all of this, but thank you so much for putting this all together! It's incredible really.

Ranjib · Feb 4, 2020

Justinlee120 said:
Just starting to dig into all of this, but thank you so much for putting this all together! It's incredible really.

Thank you for the kind words. It means world to us.
Welcome to reef2reef

drbogger · Feb 5, 2020

I'm going to start my Reef-Pi build soon.

Raspberry Pi 3 or 4.... Which is better to use for Reef-Pi?

Schreiber · Feb 5, 2020

drbogger said:
I'm going to start my Reef-Pi build soon.

Raspberry Pi 3 or 4.... Which is better to use for Reef-Pi?

Go for the 3, unless you're planning on using that same Pi to run multiple other things other than Reef-Pi.

Even the 3 is way more powerful than Reef-Pi really needs, but it has full-size HDMI & USB ports, which is a nice upgrade from the Zero W. Plus, if you were to use the 4, it only comes with Micro HDMI, so you'll need an adapter to set it up.

NeonRabbit221B · Feb 5, 2020

a pi4 would be overkill. Pi zero W or pi 3 will work. Just kinda depends on what you would like to do, how much you will be accessing it and if you want to connect a display. Either way go cheap!

AbjectMaelstroM · Feb 5, 2020

3B would be my choice. For full lan/hdmi.

Zero if on a budget. I run a 3B for my main tank (temp, pH, ATO, lights, etc). On my coral/invert QT use a zero for temp and lights.

drbogger · Feb 5, 2020

Is reef-pi fully functional with the Raspberry Pi 4?

For being the same price, I'm debating on just going for the Pi 4... Should I?

NeonRabbit221B · Feb 5, 2020

drbogger said:
Is reef-pi fully functional with the Raspberry Pi 4?

For being the same price, I'm debating on just going for the Pi 4... Should I?

When you are talking about $10-30 part costs it doesn't vary a whole ton so I would say if you won't miss the extra $40 or so, go for it. Pi zero w is about $10 and a pi 4 is about $45

It should be fully functional. If you ever want to upgrade to an Apex a Pi 4 would make a great retro gaming system or media center.

BZOFIQ · Feb 5, 2020

Dang it! - 689 Pages!

This would have crashed ReefCentral or be split 16 times

crusso1993 · Feb 5, 2020

In a semi-related question for any electronics experts; I have an opportunity to pick up some Tektronix 2215A oscilloscopes. Being that I know very little about oscilloscopes, I'm hoping to get some input or advice. I can get them for about $20 each. I did pose this question to an electronics expert who is an active member of this forum, in a PM, but I believe he is on vacation and if I am going to buy the oscilloscope(s) it has to be by tomorrow afternoon.

Any input would be appreciated!

WVNed · Feb 5, 2020

I had one and gave it away. Other than playing with RC motor timings and some goofing around with stepper motors I never actually found a use for it.

jhoop · Feb 5, 2020

They are $ 300 + on E-bay

Phildago · Feb 5, 2020

crusso1993 said:
In a semi-related question for any electronics experts; I have an opportunity to pick up some Tektronix 2215A oscilloscopes. Being that I know very little about oscilloscopes, I'm hoping to get some input or advice. I can get them for about $20 each. I did pose this question to an electronics expert who is an active member of this forum, in a PM, but I believe he is on vacation and if I am going to buy the oscilloscope(s) it has to be by tomorrow afternoon.

Any input would be appreciated!

That's 100% worth it. If for nothing else, just to play around with.

Ranjib · Feb 5, 2020

For past few days, I have been experimenting with reef-pi in standalone mode where it runs as its own wifi hotspot. This is to facilitate my home migration during which i expect some of the builds to not have internet access. I want reef-pi to run and be accessible even when wifi network is not accessible. If this works, it also means I can run reef-pi powered by a power bank (I shared some benchmarks before) and the setup (mobile power and no network requirement) means I can use reef-pi during a power outage as well as in transit, when my corals will be in containers for several hours.

Following document describe how to configure raspberry pi to run as wifi hotspot: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/access-point.md

After following the guide, I was successfully able to run Pi as a hotspot and access reef-pi running in it by connecting to the hotspot. Everything works as expected.

This setup is more involved than the normal reef-pi setup. It involves installing additional packages, editing configuration files and executing few commands. This is very common for getting new features up in linux userland. I am doing similar things to setup home assistant, octo print and handful of other smart home softwares. There are purpose made tools for this, called configuration management system.

My current apartment setup has 11 pi doing various works, and I expect the number to go up in the new home, covering blinders, sprinklers, gardening system, presence detection and more. Scale like this justifies a full-fledged configuration management system. It will streamline the update and patch management. So I started working on chef cookbooks (a popular configuration management system) for my current setup, a couple of week back. Today I am open-sourcing them: https://github.com/reef-pi/chef-repo.
I don't expect them to be readily useful to others, but once they are polished up, we'll work on some reef-pi integration where users will be able to reconfigure their controller to act as hotspot, or to upgrade reef-pi or to change /boot/config.txt (i2c, one wire etc configurations) using the reef-pi UI directly, and reef-pi will use chef underneath to reconfigure the system.

I know few of you have devops experience, please help us out with code review, testing or any feedback you may have.

Ranjib · Feb 5, 2020

drbogger said:
Is reef-pi fully functional with the Raspberry Pi 4?

For being the same price, I'm debating on just going for the Pi 4... Should I?

Yes. Pi 4 is not super useful, because it costs more money (you need hdmi adapter) and consume more power. Unless you plan to use the extra computing power pi 3 is better. If you are familiar with linux comand line then pi zero is best.

cwalton00 · Feb 5, 2020

crusso1993 said:
In a semi-related question for any electronics experts; I have an opportunity to pick up some Tektronix 2215A oscilloscopes. Being that I know very little about oscilloscopes, I'm hoping to get some input or advice. I can get them for about $20 each. I did pose this question to an electronics expert who is an active member of this forum, in a PM, but I believe he is on vacation and if I am going to buy the oscilloscope(s) it has to be by tomorrow afternoon.

Any input would be appreciated!

if they are functional pick them up for sure. I would check for screen burn if they have been used a ton other than that they should be pretty bulletproof