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

[robsworld78]

The board seems dead, I couldn't replicate the momentary power on...

I have another relay module, not sure if it works though, the board is active low will that work on reef pi @Ranjib ?

If you connect the power to your other board does it power up? If so then something must of happened to the other. You can reverse the logic for the outputs in reef-pi by ticking the 'reverse' option for the connectors.

 

[Cole.mormon]

I will be following along

 

[Cole.mormon]

You know what I mean

 

[bishoptf]

I was having a similar issue and it was because the female BNC connector was not allowing a good connection. Try lightly pushing or wiggling the male BNC connector to see if that gets the pH value to change. If it does, you don't have a good connection.

I thought it was the calibration fluid or the pH probe and replaced them both. That led me to the BNC connector. Once I got a new connector, the problem was solved.

Thanks for the feedback, its a @Michael Lane ph board and its not loose, appears to be a real good board. I did re-connect the bnc but it appears to be all over the place. I don't have another method of testing the ph but I do not think it varies that much over 5min span and this one is all over the map. I've had readings over 10ph and I am pretty sure that is not the case, just crazy swings. It appears to have settled somewhat and I will let it ride for awhile and see what it does, will give it a few more days and if it doesn't appear any better will swap it out.

 

[bishoptf]

Okay seems to be a different failure mode. I’m still interested in what the root cause is. I have the same setup as you for the dosers.

I am not to the point of dosing, who know when I will get there but I have it setup and dosing has always concerned me. I guess there are lots of failure points with all of this stuff, I am using reefpi for ATO and if somehow sticks on its a bad day, I have multiple floats etc., but lots of ways that things can fail. I have the @Michael Lane dosing board and a jaebo dp-4s but starting to think that going with the BRS dosers and then controlling it via reefpi since its just and on off via an outlet may be safer, might not be. If reefpi locks up would the outlet stay in the on state, if so you end up in the same place. What if the outlet was a TPlink type, you might could automate the dosing via their software but then you are relying on it to do things proper also, tough cookie. Thats part of the trade off with automation, failure modes can be crazy to figure out and eliminate. Since we are using off the shelf parts tied to the PI there can be a lot of variation.

I will think about the dosing and how we could have additional fail safes since I would like to be as safe as possible but this really is an automation problem and not a reefpi problem, any automation has inherent risks. If you are able to pull your journal logs that may point to an issue that can then be solved and make things more reliable. Maybe someone else can think of a better solution for dosing, like I said before I worry about my ATO for the very same reason.

:)

 

[Ranjib]

I am not to the point of dosing, who know when I will get there but I have it setup and dosing has always concerned me. I guess there are lots of failure points with all of this stuff, I am using reefpi for ATO and if somehow sticks on its a bad day, I have multiple floats etc., but lots of ways that things can fail. I have the @Michael Lane dosing board and a jaebo dp-4s but starting to think that going with the BRS dosers and then controlling it via reefpi since its just and on off via an outlet may be safer, might not be. If reefpi locks up would the outlet stay in the on state, if so you end up in the same place. What if the outlet was a TPlink type, you might could automate the dosing via their software but then you are relying on it to do things proper also, tough cookie. Thats part of the trade off with automation, failure modes can be crazy to figure out and eliminate. Since we are using off the shelf parts tied to the PI there can be a lot of variation.

I will think about the dosing and how we could have additional fail safes since I would like to be as safe as possible but this really is an automation problem and not a reefpi problem, any automation has inherent risks. If you are able to pull your journal logs that may point to an issue that can then be solved and make things more reliable. Maybe someone else can think of a better solution for dosing, like I said before I worry about my ATO for the very same reason.

:)

For the ph module, I’ll suggest to run it without any calibration for couple of days at least, it’s should still show the daily cycle , with values in millivolts. 3-7k. If this is not happening, we have different issue which needs to be solved before calibration, I think

 

[Cole.mormon]

You know what I mean

 

[Des Westcott]

Thanks for the feedback, its a @Michael Lane ph board and its not loose, appears to be a real good board. I did re-connect the bnc but it appears to be all over the place. I don't have another method of testing the ph but I do not think it varies that much over 5min span and this one is all over the map. I've had readings over 10ph and I am pretty sure that is not the case, just crazy swings. It appears to have settled somewhat and I will let it ride for awhile and see what it does, will give it a few more days and if it doesn't appear any better will swap it out.

I had huge issues with my pH readings being all over the place. I also use Michael Lane's pH board. I tracked them down to the pH module suffering from interference from my 12V Meanwell Power supply when it powered my Peristaltic pump running my ATO. The same power supply runs other equipment, but causes no interference with anything except the Peristaltic pump. I have since changed the power supply for the ATO Pump and my problems have gone away.

The only errant pH readings I get now are when my cushion stars in the sump crawl over the probe. Need to put a guard on the probe.

 

[Mikeneedsahobby]

I had ph interference from my light relays. I rerouted wires and moved the relays further from the ph board and ph become stable.

 

[Bigtrout]

Thanks for the feedback, its a @Michael Lane ph board and its not loose, appears to be a real good board. I did re-connect the bnc but it appears to be all over the place. I don't have another method of testing the ph but I do not think it varies that much over 5min span and this one is all over the map. I've had readings over 10ph and I am pretty sure that is not the case, just crazy swings. It appears to have settled somewhat and I will let it ride for awhile and see what it does, will give it a few more days and if it doesn't appear any better will swap it out.

I had interference from bad led light power supply, it did the same as yours graph wise.

Run the probe wire away from any power. If they have to cross, do so at a right angle. If u still have problems shield the ph board in an altoids box with a ground tail.

Observe what may be running when you get interference

 

[bishoptf]

Thanks everyone, I've yet to route my wire until I am convinced that the readings are proper. I do not have a way to verify it so I am going to let it run, the wire right now crosses a few wires at 90 deg but lots of good input on what to look for. It has settled down somewhat but is lower ph wise then I would think but I am currently only running with ambient light so that might have something to do with it. Will see what it does....

:)

 

[Ranjib]

Thank you @Bigtrout @Mikeneedsahobby @Des Westcott for calling out the interference issue. I'll make sure i update the official guide with these details.
Over the years i have collected a set of guidelines for good power adapter , things like UL listed, switching adapter, built in ferrite core etc. Let me know if there anything in particular you would like to see in the official guides.

@Tom Bishop keep us posted.

 

[Des Westcott]

Thank you @Bigtrout @Mikeneedsahobby @Des Westcott for calling out the interference issue. I'll make sure i update the official guide with these details.
Over the years i have collected a set of guidelines for good power adapter , things like UL listed, switching adapter, built in ferrite core etc. Let me know if there anything in particular you would like to see in the official guides.

@Tom Bishop keep us posted.

For me it made no difference how I routed the cables, I tried all sorts of routes. Moving things etc, nothing helped. Even moved the the offending peristaltic pump to the other side of a brick wall. I was running the peristaltic pump directly off the 12V power supply running it through one of my relays -switching the 12V.

What solved the issue for me was changing the peristaltic pump to run off of a 5V phone charger. I ran a 220V circuit through a relay and ran the 220V supply to the pump and mounted the wall-wart inside the box with the peristaltic pump. pH sensor routing did not change. Problem went away immediately. Peristaltic pump runs slower, but that isn't a big deal as I add the Top-Up water through a kalk stirrer.

 

[Bigtrout]

Cable routing didnt help in my case either, but depending on circumstances bad routing of cables can cause issues. The worst thing is routing a sensitive circuit parallel to a power cable because it will easily pick up inductive interference.
In my case, the beamswork power supply that was bad put out such bad harmonics back onto the AC mains that everything plugged into that whole circuit was affected badly. A new quality power brick solved the issue and my ph probe has worked great ever since.

 

[waynel]

On my reef-pi (using the ML hat, reef-pi version 3.3.1), I have my ATO on address 18, and it's working correctly. Last night I added a second float switch to the jumpers for address 27 and configured it as a second ATO in reef-pi, and set it to activate an unused outlet on my dj sr powerstrip just for testing, however it would not activate the outlet with the float switch in either the up or down position. I checked the float switch with my volt/ohm meter and it's working correctly. How can I check to see if reef-pi is seeing when the float switch opens/closes? If I go to the equipment tab in reef-pi, I can turn the outlet I was using for testing on/off, so I know that's setup correctly. Ultimately, I want to setup this float switch as a second ATO entry and have it alert me (no equipment control, just an alert) via email if my ato topoff tank is close to empty.

 

[waynel]

On my reef-pi (using the ML hat, reef-pi version 3.3.1), I have my ATO on address 18, and it's working correctly. Last night I added a second float switch to the jumpers for address 27 and configured it as a second ATO in reef-pi, and set it to activate an unused outlet on my dj sr powerstrip just for testing, however it would not activate the outlet with the float switch in either the up or down position. I checked the float switch with my volt/ohm meter and it's working correctly. How can I check to see if reef-pi is seeing when the float switch opens/closes? If I go to the equipment tab in reef-pi, I can turn the outlet I was using for testing on/off, so I know that's setup correctly. Ultimately, I want to setup this float switch as a second ATO entry and have it alert me (no equipment control, just an alert) via email if my ato topoff tank is close to empty.

Got home from work, and doing some troubleshooting on this. Noticed my normal ATO is not working. Found this error on the configuration page for reefpi:
Failed to read ato sensor. Name:ATO1. Error:Inlet name: 'Item '2' does not exist in bucket 'inlets'' does not exist

I rebooted the reefpi, same error, and my ATO is not working. I removed the inlet and the ato config, rebooted and added them back, still not working. Why would it all of sudden stop reading the float switches?

 

[Mike Kearns]

Today I received my Robo-Tank Deluxe controller that I won from @robsworld78. This thing is amazing. Puts all my diy builds to shame. No soldering on my end (worth the price for that alone lol). The controller and power bar are super slim. Thanks again @robsworld78 for the awesome giveaway!

 

[waynel]

Got home from work, and doing some troubleshooting on this. Noticed my normal ATO is not working. Found this error on the configuration page for reefpi:
Failed to read ato sensor. Name:ATO1. Error:Inlet name: 'Item '2' does not exist in bucket 'inlets'' does not exist

I rebooted the reefpi, same error, and my ATO is not working. I removed the inlet and the ato config, rebooted and added them back, still not working. Why would it all of sudden stop reading the float switches?

Ok, I goofed and had the addresses flipped, so the ato is working correctly now.

 

[waynel]

Can someone explain the alerting, especially as it relates to the ATO in reef-pi? I setup a second float switch to detect when my topoff water is low. I had it tripped for testing, where it would enable an outlet on my powerstrip. That worked. I went into the config and disabled the control for the outlet and set it to send an alert instead, which is what I want. I have the alerting set to send a max of 10 emails per hour. I'm getting spurts of 10 emails everyhour from reefpi now saying the ATO usage is over the limit, even though it's not tripped now. Is there a way to set this up to work correctly?

 

[Ranjib]

Can someone explain the alerting, especially as it relates to the ATO in reef-pi? I setup a second float switch to detect when my topoff water is low. I had it tripped for testing, where it would enable an outlet on my powerstrip. That worked. I went into the config and disabled the control for the outlet and set it to send an alert instead, which is what I want. I have the alerting set to send a max of 10 emails per hour. I'm getting spurts of 10 emails everyhour from reefpi now saying the ATO usage is over the limit, even though it's not tripped now. Is there a way to set this up to work correctly?

If the ato pump runs more than the specified seconds for the given hour, then reef-pi will send an alert. If you have set this to 120 and check interval is 10, after 12 consecutive postive signal (i.e. water level is low) reef-pi will trigger the alert. Since its computed for every hour, it will send email every hour by default. Therese a separate alert throttle settings under configuration that you can use to suppress alerts after certain times. There is also "Disable on alert" option in ato, where the ato will automatically be disabled when alert is triggered