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

[Yov]

I think when you're within the range your graph is showing it's not really a big issue if you use the heater or not. It's when the sensor is in an environment that's above 80% for long periods of time that it can become stuck and show too high readings.
.....

I have it in a Terrarium setup so Yes its between 70-100% I have no idea how to change the heating interval i think this is an isue for @Ranjib to sort out? XD

What i do know is that i do have a more " correct" reading with the new update. (beatuiful 3 day interval below with 3 spikes of spraying every day!). Ofcourse i do not have 96.21% atm. This would be more 86.21% this time of day. So the sensor works but is 10 knots to high up!

I would not recomend it to be near a fan, this would affect the reading to much! i printed a "cage" for it so it is not directly in the misting. and placed it al the way up to the glas and close with the lamps (hotest spot in the terrarium).

i can not "Hot swap" my current setup. but i like the Idea of printing 2 cages with a "plug" type of connector to switch out the sensors faster! I am not sure how much the frog's would like me to be in the top back corner of the terrarium every week... but with my current setup i could make this work!

 

[Ranjib]

I think when you're within the range your graph is showing it's not really a big issue if you use the heater or not. It's when the sensor is in an environment that's above 80% for long periods of time that it can become stuck and show too high readings.

I'm soon about to start my build thread for a reef-pi that will control a tropical vivarium I'm setting up. It will be constantly between 70-100% humidity in there so we will see how it goes. My plan is to have a second sensor and rotate them but if the sensor reaches saturation too quickly that will be a pain in the butt lol. Best scenario is of course if there's a way to keep it from reaching that saturated state from the start. Combination of heating element and maybe putting it in front of a fan or something.

Found this study comparing unheated sensors to heated ones in a high humidity environment and the heated sensor had a cycle like this: Heating 1 min, waiting 4 min, measuring 1 min. Basically one reading every 5-6 min. I know that Adafruit in their example code only heats the sensor for like a few seconds and makes a reading directly after. I have my doubts about that cycle being very efficient in battling condensation etc.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/364/1/012093/pdf

"The HCS internal working cycle consists of three phases: measuring - heating - waiting (before undertaking further measurements). The working cycle lasts 6 min: 1 min for measuring, 1 min for heating and 4 min for waiting, in order not to undertake the measuring just after heating."

"The heated capacitive sensor has resulted to be more effective in recording RH daily fluctuations. In fact, the heating cycle, allowing the desorption of water from the dielectric material, provides a RH measurement which is accurate and with a lower time response with respect to the capacitive sensor without heating cycle. This result should encourage the use of the heated capacitive sensor when indoor environmental conditions are characterized by such high RH values."

Thank you for sharing this. I'll try my best to incorporate this learning to build a better driver for sht31d. Its not an immediate priority. But i'll create a ticket to make sure we dont loose track and have these details.

Allow heater control mechanism in sht31d driver · Issue #65 · reef-pi/drivers

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/reef-pi-an-opensource-reef-tank-controller-based-on-raspberry-pi.289256/post-7986731

github.com

Thank you again.

 

[Yov]

@Ranjib Suddenly the graph time /date error "jumped" from 17 september to today! 22 september. 17 sept graph is "Cured" now... strange...

 

[Des Westcott]

Nice work,

But, is it intended to have the temperature graphs go from zero to some margin above the upper level now? Before i actually could see the swings, which was nice because tiny drops would tell me that the ATO was still functioning and the reservoir not empty, now it's all one unidentifiable blob. The same happens if i create a new temp sensor. Theres no 0-value in the graph, checking right now if theres one in the database, although there shouldn't be in my existing data.

edit: Nope, no 0 values in the db either

I've just upgraded to 3.5 and noticed this as well. A bit disappointed in this change as I very much liked the old "auto range" style almost as much as the older "specified range" that existed previous to it.

My temp typically swings by less than 2 degrees C and that is impossible to see in any meaningful way on a graph that shows 0-27 DegC

 

[Ranjib]

I've just upgraded to 3.5 and noticed this as well. A bit disappointed in this change as I very much liked the old "auto range" style almost as much as the older "specified range" that existed previous to it.

My temp typically swings by less than 2 degrees C and that is impossible to see in any meaningful way on a graph that shows 0-27 DegC

This is temporary measure to address the previous issue due to fixed range , i a, planning to make it customizable (with a few other things in chart/ui ) .

 

[Des Westcott]

On another note though, I have also tested the alert feature as a step in a Macro and think it's great. Thanks.

 

[Des Westcott]

This is temporary measure to address the previous issue due to fixed range , i a, planning to make it customizable (with a few other things in chart/ui ) .

Aaaaah! Great! Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Mandelstam]

I have it in a Terrarium setup so Yes its between 70-100% I have no idea how to change the heating interval i think this is an isue for @Ranjib to sort out? XD

What i do know is that i do have a more " correct" reading with the new update. (beatuiful 3 day interval below with 3 spikes of spraying every day!). Ofcourse i do not have 96.21% atm. This would be more 86.21% this time of day. So the sensor works but is 10 knots to high up!

I would not recomend it to be near a fan, this would affect the reading to much!

I'm also putting my reef-pi in a vivarium! Possible frogs too in the future.

Why do you think putting it in front of a fan would effect readings? I'm not talking about a fan blowing in air from outside, I mean an internal fan inside the vivarium in my case.

And yes, the heating/reading cycle is something for the devs to look into You and me we just reap the rewards of their hard work haha!

 

[theatrus]

I'm also putting my reef-pi in a vivarium! Possible frogs too in the future.

Why do you think putting it in front of a fan would effect readings? I'm not talking about a fan blowing in air from outside, I mean an internal fan inside the vivarium in my case.

And yes, the heating/reading cycle is something for the devs to look into You and me we just reap the rewards of their hard work haha!

A lot of humidity sensors start to struggle near 80%+ RH since everything just condenses. A fan would probably affect the temperature reading as you're going to be actually pushing a little bit of evaporation cooling on the sensor?

TBQH I've never dealt with environments fully saturated with water so I may be totally guessing

 

[Mandelstam]

A lot of humidity sensors start to struggle near 80%+ RH since everything just condenses. A fan would probably affect the temperature reading as you're going to be actually pushing a little bit of evaporation cooling on the sensor?

TBQH I've never dealt with environments fully saturated with water so I may be totally guessing

You're probably right above the temp reading being affected by the evaporation... And maybe cooling it could cause further condensation issues too... Good point. I'm going to have separate temp sensors in the tank as well though so it wouldn't be too big of an issue in my case. But the fan cooling the sensor might be counter productive.

I guess I'll just have to play around with it when it's all set up and see how it behaves.

 

[DeeEmm]

I had to fork embd and apply pi4 specific patches for 3.5 release. I am planning to remove the embd dependency and use periph or go-rpio or just roll our own,, going forward. I have tried to minimize external dependencies.. even for embd we only use the gpio bits. pwm and i2c are all from reef-pi/rpi.

Yes, being dependent on other libraries always carries an element of risk. maintaining overall control by removing them is always preferably, but this comes at the expense of system compatibility. Not really an issue in this case.

Of course an alternate solution is to write your own HAL as a seperate controller (assuming something like a MVC architecture) which then makes it fairly trivial to utilise whatever libraries you wish, making it easy to change down the track should you need as it's all on one place. It also make it easy for others to modify the HAL and swap the libraries out for whatever other library they may need. (for example orange Pi ).

Of course it could be a massive headache to implement this half way through a project if the code has not been structured this way. (I've not looked at your source so not sure how it is structured)

I think I could possibly make the Orange Pi work by fixing the issue in the EMBD library, but I already have too many other projects on the go. So that's likely never going to happen, plus there's a high possibility that it would break again in future Reef-Pi updates so I've started a build using a RPi3B+

I've made a start - still a long way to go tho.

If anyone is interested, I've documented what I've done so far...

Aquarium automation with Reef-Pi

I'm setting up a reef-pi controller on my tank. I had considered making a simple controller using an Arduino, but when i was searching online I found the Reef-Pi project and decided it was perfect for my needs and would save a bunch of work and time. Win-Win!

deeemm.com

 

[DeeEmm]

Is it possible to trigger a macro from an external input or sensor value?

I note that it's possible to create a simple driver using a text file to read an input into the system, but is it possible to use this in an if-this-then-that type of scenario. Or even do the same from an input from the GPIO.

I have a built in switch on the case I'm using and I'm thinking of using it to trigger things like feeding mode. So when the switch is pressed it can trigger a 'feed' macro or start a timer that calls a feed macro.

The macro would turn my power heads off, reduce return pump flow (more on that later), turn my roll filter off and optionally other stuff.

TIA

/DM

 

[Yov]

You're probably right above the temp reading being affected by the evaporation... And maybe cooling it could cause further condensation issues too... Good point. I'm going to have separate temp sensors in the tank as well though so it wouldn't be too big of an issue in my case. But the fan cooling the sensor might be counter productive.

I guess I'll just have to play around with it when it's all set up and see how it behaves.

It wil have the same effect as when blowing on youre hand when it's wet! You instantly feel cooler there. Also becous the constant flow of air i think you wil have some sort of "micro" climate that tends to be les humid, misreading the info and then maybe driving up the humidity in the rest of the vivarium thinking "its to dry".

 

[Ranjib]

Is it possible to trigger a macro from an external input or sensor value?

I note that it's possible to create a simple driver using a text file to read an input into the system, but is it possible to use this in an if-this-then-that type of scenario. Or even do the same from an input from the GPIO.

I have a built in switch on the case I'm using and I'm thinking of using it to trigger things like feeding mode. So when the switch is pressed it can trigger a 'feed' macro or start a timer that calls a feed macro.

The macro would turn my power heads off, reduce return pump flow (more on that later), turn my roll filter off and optionally other stuff.

TIA

/DM

Should be. Model the switch as ato sensor with a target macro

 

[DeeEmm]

Should be. Model the switch as ato sensor with a target macro

Cool, except I cannot see a way to select a macro, only 'equipment'.

 

[Weasel1960]

hello
new to the hobby and have looked at the apex system setup but its out of the question.
Been trying to read thru the multi hundred pages. does get over whelming
Is the a shopping list of items needed? like what probes are the best? what connectors are best?
is there a compiled shopping list?

I did the same a few weeks ago. Started reading the first 20 and last 20 pages. Ranjib is very helpful with questions as are many others

 

[Ranjib]

Cool, except I cannot see a way to select a macro, only 'equipment'.

Use 3.5

 

[DeeEmm]

hello
new to the hobby and have looked at the apex system setup but its out of the question.
Been trying to read thru the multi hundred pages. does get over whelming
Is the a shopping list of items needed? like what probes are the best? what connectors are best?
is there a compiled shopping list?

I've just jumped in to this as well. It appears there there are some items that will work 'out of the box' whereas other items may need some configuration / assembly to get working. There's also the option of using a number of reef-pi 'hats' to help make the connection process easier.

Things I have noted so far:

The preferred temp probes are DS18B20's
For PWM control the PCA9685 16 channel driver seems to be the one to use
A variety of relay options are available for equipment control (such as heaters) but all require some assembly. There are however some pre-packaged solutions available too such as Robo Tank.
I used the typical Arduino 8 way relay boards but I'll need to make an interface to get them to work.

I guess it depends on how much actual DIYing you want (or are able) to do. The 'Hats' make it more of a plug and play exercise or just roll up your sleeves and dive in.

There's a list of build threads here - https://reef-pi.github.io/additional-documentation/resources/ I got a pretty good idea of what was involved by reading through these

EDIT: Just reading the changelog and note that there are some smart outlets supported -

• Smart outlets & powerstrip support. (TPlink-HS110, HS103, HS300), with current monitoring capabilities

 

[DeeEmm]

Use 3.5

Ahhh, perfect. Thank you

Working now.

Think I must have used an old guide. (D'oh )

 

[DeeEmm]

I have released reef-pi 3.4. Following is the summary:

...I have also added a new subsystem called "journal" for manual testing like workflow where users want to record specific values on-demand, manually. At this time its API ready with minimal UI support. i.e users can only create/update/delete the journal parameters (e.g. alk test results) but not enter their values via UI (API is done, UI still pending). We intend to wrap up the UI in next release.

Ranjib, Is there any more info on this feature? Does this allow us to be able to manually journal test results?

I currently use Aquarimate Live and would love to be able to junk it in favour of being able to log test results on my Reef-Pi and chart them on the dashboard.

Is there any more info on your API?

EDIT: Just found the link in the footer