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

[Matt Carden]

> I would like to share ground for all of these.

You need to share a ground for all of the DC equipment. If you can, run all GND signals along with the power supply wiring to the same power source (DC/DC, AC/DC, Vreg, etc). If you are using multiple DC/DC converters or AC/DC converters, tie all of their grounds at a common point, but keep the power/GND lines running as a pair to each supply to each load. The tie exists simply to make sure everything is at a similar reference, and only very small currents used for signals should ever cross this.

> Additionally I would think I could tie this ground into the mains ground.

Unless you have a very specific reason to, do NOT do this.

This mostly cleared things up. However I was confused by this, "and only very small currents used for signals should ever cross this".
I have a Cana kit power supply designed for rpi4. Any power coming from the pi or hat should be coming from this. I planned to have 1 additional 12v power supply. I assume that i plug the additional DC power supply into the 12v header on the Hat. This would be tieing the grounds of both power supplies together.

 

[theatrus]

This mostly cleared things up. However I was confused by this, "and only very small currents used for signals should ever cross this".
I have a Cana kit power supply designed for rpi4. Any power coming from the pi or hat should be coming from this. I planned to have 1 additional 12v power supply. I assume that i plug the additional DC power supply into the 12v header on the Hat. This would be tieing the grounds of both power supplies together.

Yup - the HAT will have the grounds of both the Pi and HAT joined, from the same standpoint of "there is always a return path" - in this case for the signals. Not much current is going to flow here.

 

[Matt Carden]

I need to figure out these Kamoer dosing pumps i purchased from Alibaba. I believe they are brushless motors with internal controllers. There are 5 wires coming out:

I searched online for days trying to find anything referencing a 5 wire brushless motor. I could only find 1 reference:

FIT0441_Brushless_DC_Motor_with_Encoder_12V_159RPM-DFRobot

What I have come up with is that if I connect 12+ to pin 5 and grd to pin 2 no power will run through the motor until I activate the PWM signal from the hat to pin 1. It seems like if I don't connect pins 3 or 4 it should operate in a forward direction.

 

[theatrus]

Looks like its based on the normal fan motor wiring:

In this case, Red is +, Black is GND, Blue is PWM speed input. FG is the tachometer output so you can measure the actual speed output (its going to be a pulse train back out). I'd tie the yellow wire either GND to make sure it spins in a defined direction and won't flip on you.

Probably using some variant of a fan controller:

https://fscdn.rohm.com/en/products/databook/datasheet/ic/motor/fan/bd6961f-e.pdf

I didn't realize they had PWM controlled pump heads _with_ speed output, which is very nice when you want to spin them faster as it will probably be much quieter than a stepper.

 

[Des Westcott]

@Ranjib or anyone that might know, this is how I have it configured, still not working as I would expect:

As soon as I enable it, with the float in the up position (so that the power outlet pb1 would be off), I get email alerts, but the power outlet behaves as it should (turns off with the float up, turns on with the float down):

A macro option to send a single email/alert would be helpful, I think I could get this to work with that.

What am I doing wrong?

What version of reef-pi are you running?

There was a bug on the ATO and alerting recently. Something like it would work the first time and then fail. I remember downgrading a version which solved the problem for me.

 

[Yov]

So after i do a reset by taking out the sensors and the power. Everything works perfect. until sudenly it doesn't. i have 3 Temp. sensors ant they al stop working at the same time. over and over again :/
always with:

{"error":"open /sys/bus/w1/devices/28-03119779400c/w1_slave: no such file or directory"} | HTTP 404

any info in this by now?

 

[waynel]

What version of reef-pi are you running?

There was a bug on the ATO and alerting recently. Something like it would work the first time and then fail. I remember downgrading a version which solved the problem for me.

Version 3.3.1. This really seems like a bug. I "think" that the ATO reporting/alerts is a combination of all ATOs you have defined, not seperate, and it's alerting for the combination of my two.

 

[Ranjib]

So after i do a reset by taking out the sensors and the power. Everything works perfect. until sudenly it doesn't. i have 3 Temp. sensors ant they al stop working at the same time. over and over again :/
always with:

{"error":"open /sys/bus/w1/devices/28-03119779400c/w1_slave: no such file or directory"} | HTTP 404

any info in this by now?

Check if your sensor is being detected. It looks like reef-pi cant find the sensor

 

[Matt Carden]

Looks like its based on the normal fan motor wiring:

In this case, Red is +, Black is GND, Blue is PWM speed input. FG is the tachometer output so you can measure the actual speed output (its going to be a pulse train back out). I'd tie the yellow wire either GND to make sure it spins in a defined direction and won't flip on you.

Probably using some variant of a fan controller:

https://fscdn.rohm.com/en/products/databook/datasheet/ic/motor/fan/bd6961f-e.pdf

I didn't realize they had PWM controlled pump heads _with_ speed output, which is very nice when you want to spin them faster as it will probably be much quieter than a stepper.

Thanks for the response and verification.

 

[bishoptf]

OK so I am running 3.3.1 and just had something odd happen. I know email alerts are buggy with 3.3.1 but I had alerts enabled after a period of time and disable on alert. I get an alert about a very extended runtime, of course I was pretty nervous and went to check both tanks and everything appeared to be working as expected. So when I dug into it deeper it was alerting for something that happend almost a month ago when I was initially setting things up etc. Why would it go back and read a previous entry and is there a way to clear the past ATO values and start fresh?

One additional comment, since I am running multiple reefpi's is there any way to include the name of the tank in the alerts that go out, I might have missed something but when I get alerts I am not always sure which tank its for....I think I see what I can do I need to give a unique name for the ATO based on the tank and then I will know...

Thanks :)

 

[Yov]

Check if your sensor is being detected. It looks like reef-pi cant find the sensor

The Strange thing is,

it is 3 sensors. Connected on diferent ports on the Robo tank board. When i unconnect them and reconect he finds them again. (see spike in the graphs) an then x hours later he forgets them all. All at the same time... 0:55 time of photo 7:40 AM.

 

[robsworld78]

The Strange thing is,

it is 3 sensors. Connected on diferent ports on the Robo tank board. When i unconnect them and reconect he finds them again. (see spike in the graphs) an then x hours later he forgets them all. All at the same time... 0:55 time of photo 7:40 AM.

Hi Yov, this sounds hardware related as nobody else has reported this. How long has it been happening and how often does it happen? Do you have to unplug them all to get it working again? How long are your cables? I think you have a RevA boarb, the power pins on temp ports are 3.3v but I should have had 5v there. Can you try powering them up with a 5v pin from a sensor port to see if that clears it up.

 

[Yov]

Hi Yov, this sounds hardware related as nobody else has reported this. How long has it been happening and how often does it happen? Do you have to unplug them all to get it working again? How long are your cables? I think you have a RevA boarb, the power pins on temp ports are 3.3v but I should have had 5v there. Can you try powering them up with a 5v pin from a sensor port to see if that clears it up.

Wel i have this from the start of the board now. :( 3 lenghts between 50cm-1 Meter.
Can i change the 3,3V on the board ? For now il just change the pin to a 5V source.

 

[robsworld78]

Wel i have this from the start of the board now. :( 3 lenghts between 50cm-1 Meter.
Can i change the 3,3V on the board ? For now il just change the pin to a 5V source.

That's not good, don't hesitate to contact me if you have issues, I'm here to help.

Those cable lengths should be fine, I've run 3 with 5m with no issues. The sensors are fine on 3.3v but 5v is better and if that solves it you can make a small change on the board to get 5v on those pins.

If it locks up regularly it might also be worth trying to run one sensor to see if it locks, it could be something with a sensor.

 

[Des Westcott]

Version 3.3.1. This really seems like a bug. I "think" that the ATO reporting/alerts is a combination of all ATOs you have defined, not seperate, and it's alerting for the combination of my two.

OK. My issue went away when I downgraded to 3.3.1, so possibly not the same.

I have 3 x ATO's defined, but only ever have one enabled at a time. Controlled by Timers and Macros. Alerting disabled on all of them though.

 

[Des Westcott]

OK so I am running 3.3.1 and just had something odd happen. I know email alerts are buggy with 3.3.1 but I had alerts enabled after a period of time and disable on alert. I get an alert about a very extended runtime, of course I was pretty nervous and went to check both tanks and everything appeared to be working as expected. So when I dug into it deeper it was alerting for something that happend almost a month ago when I was initially setting things up etc. Why would it go back and read a previous entry and is there a way to clear the past ATO values and start fresh?

One additional comment, since I am running multiple reefpi's is there any way to include the name of the tank in the alerts that go out, I might have missed something but when I get alerts I am not always sure which tank its for....I think I see what I can do I need to give a unique name for the ATO based on the tank and then I will know...

Thanks :)

I had this as well. Deleted the ATO and re-created it and the problem went away.

 

[waynel]

OK. My issue went away when I downgraded to 3.3.1, so possibly not the same.

I have 3 x ATO's defined, but only ever have one enabled at a time. Controlled by Timers and Macros. Alerting disabled on all of them though.

Could you temporarily enable alerts and see if you get something similar to mine? If I disable alerts, mine is working, but no way to know if the topoff tank is low unless I plug a light/bell/something into that outlet to let me know (that's why I'd like it to email alert me, of course). It's the alerting that seems to be broken/buggy, not the ATO control itself. This might be similar to the issue that @robsworld78 mentioned in a posting today about alerting.

Maybe an ATO control isn't the best way to set this up, but I don't see another option in reef-pi to do this. I just need it to send me an email if the float switch detects low water level (electrical contact will be open). Right now, it sends 10 messages at a time (the limit I have it set to) every hour saying "Elevated ATO usage..." no matter what position the float switch is in, although the outlet I have it controlling works correctly.

@Ranjib - any insight into this?

 

[Freccialata]

The Strange thing is,

it is 3 sensors. Connected on diferent ports on the Robo tank board. When i unconnect them and reconect he finds them again. (see spike in the graphs) an then x hours later he forgets them all. All at the same time... 0:55 time of photo 7:40 AM.

Sometimes it happened to me too (same Robo Tank controller).
Sometimes only one sensor... sometimes 3 sensors at the same time.
Last time it happened on the 19th of August.
At the moment I'm not at home and I haven't so much time to "play" with the controller.
I had problem with the ph board too... but I will try to setup it on the next week.

 

[robsworld78]

This might be similar to the issue that @robsworld78 mentioned in a posting today about alerting.

The problem I was discussing was related to the DS18B20 temp sensors, sorry I don't have much experience with the alerts so not sure what to suggest.

Sometimes it happened to me too (same Robo Tank controller).
Sometimes only one sensor... sometimes 3 sensors at the same time.
Last time it happened on the 19th of August.
At the moment I'm not at home and I haven't so much time to "play" with the controller.
I had problem with the ph board too... but I will try to setup it on the next week.

Sorry to hear about the problems, for the pH board did you add this line to the config.txt file in the /boot/ folder of the SD card? Not sure what was happening to you but if you were getting a bunch of parsing errors this will be why.

dtparam=i2c_arm_baudrate=10000

For your temp issue do the sensors keep working or do you need to restart the controller?

I read this message about 4 hours ago but wanted to try and get an answer and now I'm really confused. :(

After reading this I plugged in two 5m sensors, running a Pi 3 with v3.4, checking sensors every second. Almost immediately I got two errors like yours and the time stamp on error would continue to update every 0-5 minutes so the error kept happening. The sensors didn't stop working though and charts were updating as they should. This didn't make sense as months ago I ran three sensors each with 5m cable for weeks and never seen an error and I've been using the same hardware for another project for weeks reading the same sensors and no issues.

Then I decided to setup another SD card running 3.3.1 as I believe that's what I was running then and it's been going 4 hours and no errors and I really don't expect one. So this does seem to be a problem with software at least what I'm experiencing however @Yov sounds more hardware related as the controller actually needs to be restarted.

Is anyone else seeing these errors with v3.4? I would think if this is software I would have seen more discussion about it but I was definitely get a lot of errors with 3.4 that I've never seen before so really confused, any suggestions?

 

[theatrus]

The problem I was discussing was related to the DS18B20 temp sensors, sorry I don't have much experience with the alerts so not sure what to suggest.



Sorry to hear about the problems, for the pH board did you add this line to the config.txt file in the /boot/ folder of the SD card? Not sure what was happening to you but if you were getting a bunch of parsing errors this will be why.

dtparam=i2c_arm_baudrate=10000

For your temp issue do the sensors keep working or do you need to restart the controller?

I read this message about 4 hours ago but wanted to try and get an answer and now I'm really confused. :(

After reading this I plugged in two 5m sensors, running a Pi 3 with v3.4, checking sensors every second. Almost immediately I got two errors like yours and the time stamp on error would continue to update every 0-5 minutes so the error kept happening. The sensors didn't stop working though and charts were updating as they should. This didn't make sense as months ago I ran three sensors each with 5m cable for weeks and never seen an error and I've been using the same hardware for another project for weeks reading the same sensors and no issues.

Then I decided to setup another SD card running 3.3.1 as I believe that's what I was running then and it's been going 4 hours and no errors and I really don't expect one. So this does seem to be a problem with software at least what I'm experiencing however @Yov sounds more hardware related as the controller actually needs to be restarted.

Is anyone else seeing these errors with v3.4? I would think if this is software I would have seen more discussion about it but I was definitely get a lot of errors with 3.4 that I've never seen before so really confused, any suggestions?

Just as a sanity check, are both SD cards running the same kernel?

The ReefPi 1wire code is pretty boring, in that it only knows how to read devices the kernel provides. Maybe its now reading faster? Only impacting difference I could think of.