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

[bishoptf]

I have a question about multiple heaters and temp probes, I have searched but couldnt find what I think is the answer. I am going to run 2 smaller heaters vs one large heater. I do not think one smaller heater will be able if stuck to raise the temp to dangerous levels but will still have reef-pi monitor the temp. When you have more than one heater and more than one temp probe, if the temp rises how do you know which heater is malfunctioning. The scenario is I am using reef-pi as my safety net and using the internal thermostat of the heater, if the temp reaches a certain point I won't reef-pi to turn off the heater. If I have 2 heaters I assume I will have to disable both heaters since I am not sure how to know which heater is mis-behaving.

Hope this makes sense, TLDR, if you have a multiple heater setup how do you distinguish between the two heaters when one is stuck on.

Thanks :)

PS. right now both of the heaters are the preset kind, I guess another option would be to have one that I can set higher than the other and just use it as a back up, that way I would know which heater is running, need to think this through...

 

[elysics]

I have a question about multiple heaters and temp probes, I have searched but couldnt find what I think is the answer. I am going to run 2 smaller heaters vs one large heater. I do not think one smaller heater will be able if stuck to raise the temp to dangerous levels but will still have reef-pi monitor the temp. When you have more than one heater and more than one temp probe, if the temp rises how do you know which heater is malfunctioning. The scenario is I am using reef-pi as my safety net and using the internal thermostat of the heater, if the temp reaches a certain point I won't reef-pi to turn off the heater. If I have 2 heaters I assume I will have to disable both heaters since I am not sure how to know which heater is mis-behaving.

Hope this makes sense, TLDR, if you have a multiple heater setup how do you distinguish between the two heaters when one is stuck on.

Thanks :)

You could attach additional temp probes directly to the heaters to see which one is on while the temp is high. Or get more sophisticated with power monitoring if you can.

 

[Des Westcott]

I have a question about multiple heaters and temp probes, I have searched but couldnt find what I think is the answer. I am going to run 2 smaller heaters vs one large heater. I do not think one smaller heater will be able if stuck to raise the temp to dangerous levels but will still have reef-pi monitor the temp. When you have more than one heater and more than one temp probe, if the temp rises how do you know which heater is malfunctioning. The scenario is I am using reef-pi as my safety net and using the internal thermostat of the heater, if the temp reaches a certain point I won't reef-pi to turn off the heater. If I have 2 heaters I assume I will have to disable both heaters since I am not sure how to know which heater is mis-behaving.

Hope this makes sense, TLDR, if you have a multiple heater setup how do you distinguish between the two heaters when one is stuck on.

Thanks :)

PS. right now both of the heaters are the preset kind, I guess another option would be to have one that I can set higher than the other and just use it as a back up, that way I would know which heater is running, need to think this through...

I have also been comnemplating this as I run 2 x heaters. My solution which I have tested in concept, but still need to implement is to use the one temp probe and have each heater on it's own temp control. My plan is to have one heater with a setpoint of 25 degrees and the second with a setpoint of 24.5 degrees. The thinking being that if the temp is dropping slowly, one heater should catch it and heat the water back up slowly. If the ambient is very cold, the temp should drop to the 24.5 point despite the first heater and the second will kick in and do its job. The main benefit to this is that I can have separate alerts on each heater and monitor the usage on the graph. Maybe we could ask for usage alerts on temp like ATO has?

Des

 

[bishoptf]

I have also been comnemplating this as I run 2 x heaters. My solution which I have tested in concept, but still need to implement is to use the one temp probe and have each heater on it's own temp control. My plan is to have one heater with a setpoint of 25 degrees and the second with a setpoint of 24.5 degrees. The thinking being that if the temp is dropping slowly, one heater should catch it and heat the water back up slowly. If the ambient is very cold, the temp should drop to the 24.5 point despite the first heater and the second will kick in and do its job. The main benefit to this is that I can have separate alerts on each heater and monitor the usage on the graph. Maybe we could ask for usage alerts on temp like ATO has?

Des

Yeah there are lots of ways to do this, I am more concerned with the failing in a stuck on mode, I think that is the more common failure mode and it bakes the tank. I think over heating is probably worse than under heating but that is just my assumption. I think you have a good idea with tracking run times of each heater, you could set a threshold and set it for each heater that if out side of that run time its turned off. Then one issue I see is how do you tie a heater to a single temp probe, I can have multiple temp probes but how do you know that a heater is misbehaving, well you know if the temp is hi or low but how do you know which heater it is. One thought is it doesnt matter and I turn both off, or I turn one off,whether its the right one or not is irrelevant since my heaters are undersized it won't bake the tank.

That is what I think I am going to go with, I will have 2 undersize heaters and set one temp to turn off one unit if it goes over 80 degrees and if the tempo keeps rising above 81 degrees I will turn the second unit off and alert on both of them. I will still have to figure out which unit is really busted but this is my current thinking right now. With the size of the units that I am using right now one unit in the winter will probably not even keep it at 78deg, it will take both working to do that, that is at least my thinking right now...

:)

 

[Des Westcott]

Then one issue I see is how do you tie a heater to a single temp probe, I can have multiple temp probes but how do you know that a heater is misbehaving, well you know if the temp is hi or low but how do you know which heater it is.

:)

From what I've tested. you can have multiple individual "Temp Controls" all using the same sensor. So you can have 2 "Temperature Control" and each can have its own parameters, alerts and control its own equipment but can be controlled by the same one temp probe.

 

[bishoptf]

From what I've tested. you can have multiple individual "Temp Controls" all using the same sensor. So you can have 2 "Temperature Control" and each can have its own parameters, alerts and control its own equipment but can be controlled by the same one temp probe.

Yup understand that part but the problem is how do you know which heater is baking the tank, if I have 2 or more heaters and one probe it only sees that the tank is reaching 81 degrees, how can you know which heater is the one stuck on. I mean you can tell since it's on but not sure you have that logic in reef-pi, if I have 2 heaters and the temp reaches 80deg see which heater is on and turn it off. I need to play with it some more and im sure I've made things lots more complicated but with multiple heaters I am not sure how you identify a mis-behaving heater vs the one that is working properly.

Clear as mud :)

Neat graph of three preset heaters....

 

[Des Westcott]

Yup understand that part but the problem is how do you know which heater is baking the tank, if I have 2 or more heaters and one probe it only sees that the tank is reaching 81 degrees, how can you know which heater is the one stuck on. I mean you can tell since it's on but not sure you have that logic in reef-pi, if I have 2 heaters and the temp reaches 80deg see which heater is on and turn it off. I need to play with it some more and im sure I've made things lots more complicated but with multiple heaters I am not sure how you identify a mis-behaving heater vs the one that is working properly.

Clear as mud :)

It seems that this is a good case for letting reef-pi control the heater and having the heater's internal thermostat as the "high safety". You could have a heater with the contacts welded closed and never know until reef-pi has a brain-fart. By the same argument, you could have a 10 year old heater that the thermostat has never been used.

 

[BenB]

It seems that this is a good case for letting reef-pi control the heater and having the heater's internal thermostat as the "high safety". You could have a heater with the contacts welded closed and never know until reef-pi has a brain-fart. By the same argument, you could have a 10-year-old heater that the thermostat has never been used.

Yes, and at that moment you wish you had a backup temp sensor for if the one is failing.... Is that possible to have 2 temp sensors (1 to control and 1 as failsafe) to control the heater(s)? Or is that overkill?

 

[Ranjib]

Sorry about cluttering up the thread, I thought about this last night when going to bed, it's the cross compiling. Make is working, make pi is not. I so an old issue on the Oto stuff that referenced cross compiling, so if you need to make for a pi it needs to be on a pi. Kind of a bummer since my linux box is a whole lot faster, I guess for development and testing you can make and test on linux etc, but when needed to make for a pi it needs to be on a pi. Has it always been that way, I could have sworn in the 2.x days I could make pi on linux, but maybe not.

Thanks for clearing that up, at least for my my bench pc is using Arch. :)

It’s was not always like that. The audio driver dependency made cross compiling hard. Still it’s not impossible , it’s bit more involved . You just have to create the binary (make go) on pi, rest all can be done on your deskTop,

 

[Ranjib]

It seems that this is a good case for letting reef-pi control the heater and having the heater's internal thermostat as the "high safety". You could have a heater with the contacts welded closed and never know until reef-pi has a brain-fart. By the same argument, you could have a 10 year old heater that the thermostat has never been used.

If you are using any of the Kasa current monitoring, you can detect which heater is actually running...

 

[becone]

hello ,i`m building my own reef-pi i can do my own hardware but the software ..........let`s say i`m not that good at , could u implement flow sensors and ws8211 ? also i have a problem with the ds18b20 wich worked perfect until i updated the reef-pi too 3.3.1, they both show 85 degrees celsius . i tried removing one ,i tried replacing the resistor , it`s always the same 85 degrees . also one more thing , i can not add lighting to the dashboard .

 

[bishoptf]

hello ,i`m building my own reef-pi i can do my own hardware but the software ..........let`s say i`m not that good at , could u implement flow sensors and ws8211 ? also i have a problem with the ds18b20 wich worked perfect until i updated the reef-pi too 3.3.1, they both show 85 degrees celsius . i tried removing one ,i tried replacing the resistor , it`s always the same 85 degrees . also one more thing , i can not add lighting to the dashboard .

Welcome to R2R! :)

I think flow sensors have been discussed but not sure if they are in the mix for the next release but @Ranjib will know. I also think it would be a nice to have so if the flow stops on my return pump I would get notified. I am planning on doing something with either a float sensor in my sump or with a temp sensor in my display tank. Since my heaters will be in the sump, if the temp in the DT starts to drop the return pump may have failed.

Temperature probes can be picky, sounds like you have tried a couple of things, I am running the latest version and have two temperature probes and both appear to be working. If you are comfortable doing things from the reef-pi command line, at the prompt you can do a journalctl -f and it will show you the log messages in real time. That might provide a clue as to what is happening with the probes. When you upgraded did you go into admin and perform a reload, did you reboot the pi? If you did not reboot, you could try reloading the service and/or just reboot the pi.

Regarding the lights you have to add a jack first then add the the jack information in the lighting tab. Once you have that then you should be able to add it to the dashboard. What kind of light are you adding will it be controlled via the raspberry pi pwm or the pca9685? Provide additional information for your configuration and setup and someone should be able to help guide you to figure out the issues.

:)

 

[GaryE]

Regarding the lights you have to add a jack first then add the the jack information in the lighting tab. Once you have that then you should be able to add it to the dashboard. What kind of light are you adding will it be controlled via the raspberry pi pwm or the pca9685? Provide additional information for your configuration and setup and someone should be able to help guide you to figure out the issues.

lights don't work in the dashboard.

 

[bishoptf]

lights don't work in the dashboard.

Unless something has changed in 3.0 you usually can list the schedule to display, you can't make any changes but you can show what the setting that your currently using...

Thats from my running reef-pi 2.x build...

:)

 

[GaryE]

yeah, not working at all on 3.1.1...

 

[Ranjib]

yeah, not working at all on 3.1.1...

Even for interval profile?

 

[GaryE]

Even for interval profile?

Yes, not working.. never has worked for me. Camera doesn't work either. Never had it working.

 

[narkotix]

Is this still an issue? We have to improve the way we surface the adafruit integration errors. I have a separate ticket to track it: https://github.com/reef-pi/reef-pi/issues/1105, but im not aware of any other bugs. I can cross check if you provide the details.

Happy to volunteer whatever information you need - just let me know what file/extract you need to help. The logging has worked however since I first posted it.

Btw I am working on a prototype idea for an ammonia "sensor" using two commonly available items that could potentially integrate with reef-pi. If i get my prototype working would the community be interested in my findings? (its not using a $1000 probe or anything unaffordable/unmakable but I don't want to share details yet because it could be a total bust).

 

[Ranjib]

Happy to volunteer whatever information you need - just let me know what file/extract you need to help. The logging has worked however since I first posted it.

Btw I am working on a prototype idea for an ammonia "sensor" using two commonly available items that could potentially integrate with reef-pi. If i get my prototype working would the community be interested in my findings? (its not using a $1000 probe or anything unaffordable/unmakable but I don't want to share details yet because it could be a total bust).

If the sensor is opensource I think we can incorporate it.

 

[becone]

Even for interval profile?

u can do everithing vith them in the ligts tab but can`t display them in the dashboard