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

[bishoptf]

Looks like I will start to tinker with the Jaebo doser, anyone have any tips on calibration and speed? I know in reef-pi you can set the speed to a certain percentage, any advantages for going slower etc? Since I have a nano tank my volumes are going to be pretty small so hoping I can get them to run close to 1ml per minute or there abouts. The other thing is I'd rather run hard tubing like rodi tubing for the longet portions and convert to the soft tubing close to the doser head, any issues with doing that?

Thanks :)

 

[Urtoo]

You set the speed and time in reef pi
I calibrated by running 100% for 8-7-6-5 seconds and recorded the ml volume dispensed for each head. Using RODI for testing.
Then you have a pretty good baseline for inputting your dosing regimens or for imputing into an online dosing calculator.
You can dispense as fast or slow as you want.
I don’t know what you would does at 1ml over a minute for.
I have mine dispense in the last overflow of my sump to mix it up before hitting my return pump.
My PH only rises about .1 max after the addition, and only for about 2 minutes, as I have my probe in the return pump chamber.

 

[b4tn]

my pumps run mid 80’s. 1 second per ml. I fine tune it my running it for 20 seconds into a measuring cup and tweak the numbers till it hits the 20ml mark at 20 seconds of run time. If you wanted to further fine tune it you could run it for longer like 40 seconds for 40 ml. I have never had to dose less that 1 ml of anything

 

[Mikeneedsahobby]

I run all of mine at 100%. Depending on the tube wear I get from 0.8ml/s to 1.3 ml/s.

I do have problems connecting hard rodi (polyethylene) tubing to the doser. I bought a big roll of the cheap polyethylene at Home Depot. It tends to split over time at the doser connector. I have some other colored tubing that came with my rodi that has held up okay though. I now connect the polyethylene to small piece of silicone tube then that to the doser connector.

 

[bishoptf]

my pumps run mid 80’s. 1 second per ml. I fine tune it my running it for 20 seconds into a measuring cup and tweak the numbers till it hits the 20ml mark at 20 seconds of run time. If you wanted to further fine tune it you could run it for longer like 40 seconds for 40 ml. I have never had to dose less that 1 ml of anything

I run all of mine at 100%. Depending on the tube wear I get from 0.8ml/s to 1.3 ml/s.

I do have problems connecting hard rodi (polyethylene) tubing to the doser. I bought a big roll of the cheap polyethylene at Home Depot. It tends to split over time at the doser connector. I have some other colored tubing that came with my rodi that has held up okay though. I now connect the polyethylene to small piece of silicone tube then that to the doser connector.

Yep just played with it, I was using 70% for 14s on one head gave me about 10ml. For kalk I was wanting to do 10ml every hour per the calculations gives me roughly 240ml per day. I assume since it's calc you would want to do a little at a time spaced out, still learning but I think this will work. I wasn't sure if short run times would be as accurate as longer run times.

What I am looking for and going to look tonight, but what I would like to find is a push to connect with a barb fitting, that way I could run the rodi tubing to the fitting then silicon to the doser connector. Going to look for something tonight and see what I can find. I just didn't want to run the silicon tubing through my cabinet since it kinks so easily.

Thanks for all the input, great advice. :)

 

[thamnasteroid]

I planning on building myself a reef pi and researching how to build it. I am looking for a tutorial full tutorial online but can only find the adafruit tutorials, which is a bit confusing. Are there any other tutorials that cover how to build everything besides the adafruit tutorials?

 

[b4tn]

Honestly the adafruit tutorials are an excellent way to learn the system. It covers the basics and as you get a feel for it you can modify it as you go. But they show you how to build everything that you need. There are other builds based of reefpi with pre built boards that are still priced reasonably. Leviathan and robo tank are two that come to mind right away but there are some other boards out there also like the Michael lane board.

 

[thamnasteroid]

I was looking through the adafruit tutorials and noticed that you need more than one raspberry pi for the whole build.

 

[Mikeneedsahobby]

I was looking through the adafruit tutorials and noticed that you need more than one raspberry pi for the whole build.

No this isn’t right. Each of the tutorials are written as a stand alone. But the modules can easily be combined to a single build and raspberry pi. If I were you I would look at the build threads listed on the adafruit site. Many of these follow the day by day build of a system and show the complex parts of the build. I would also really look into the Michael lane hat or the robo tank parts. You don’t lose any flexibility and save a ton of time soldering.
I knew very little when I started but started with the simple steps until I understood the overall plan.

 

[dmolavi]

The wires that come off the motor controller are either positive or negative depending on which direction you want the motor to spin (configurable in reefpi) you just have to supply the controller breakout board with the appropriate voltage source. In my case I think I am using 12 volts.

Vmotor gets the voltage source for the motors, vcc is the logic voltage (3-5v), PWM A and B are the PWM sorce, Ain and Bin are your gpio inputs, and motor a and b go direct to the motors.

Adafruit TB6612 1.2A DC/Stepper Motor Driver Breakout Board

Fire four solenoids, spin two DC motors or step one bi-polar or uni-polar stepper with 1.2A per channel (3A peak) using the TB6612. These are perhaps better known as "the drivers in our assembled Adafruit Motorshield or Motor HAT." We really like these dual H-bridges, so if you want to control...

learn.adafruit.com

Since I'm not using ReefPi to directly control my outlets (I have a DLI strip), would the 12V for Vmotor come from the Jebao's wall wart?

 

[b4tn]

Since I'm not using ReefPi to directly control my outlets (I have a DLI strip), would the 12V for Vmotor come from the Jebao's wall wart?

You could. It will take any independent DC power source 4.5-13.5v to drive motors. The jeabo ones take 12 volts.

You can see the gist of how it’s wired in the above diagram. You need 1 PWM per doser and 2 GPIO inputs per motor for bi directional. It’s exactly the same as ranjibs guide I just prefer the tb6612 over the L293D. Wiring is the same though. In my current build I have a PCA9685 that handles all the PWM and GPIO to two motor controllers. I use a CAT5 cable to get the 8 power wires to 4 doser motors.

reef-pi Guide 7: Dosing Controller

Maintaining optimal water chemistry in a reef aquarium is essential for coral growth. In this tutorial, we'll go through the build process of a reef-pi based dosing controller that can automate per...

learn.adafruit.com

 

[arbiter42]

Hi all, got an issue with my pH probe setup I'm hoping someone can help with.

Right now when I add a new pH driver, input, and probe (all newly created to be safe), I get the following error when I activate or try to calibrate the probe:

{"error":"write /dev/i2c-1: remote I/O error"} | HTTP 404

I have a vague idea from my coding background of what might be causing this, but I want to see if anyone has experience fixing this before I blow up my .db and settings (because it's a pain to re-build all of that).

For further context, my first attempt to fix this involved manually tweaking the drivers in the .db file (via the terminal download to json/update commands), so it's very possible that my db file has something weird going on based on that manual update.

Happy to provide more info as needed, I'm just a little out of my depth on this one. Thanks in advance!

 

[Mikeneedsahobby]

Hi all, got an issue with my pH probe setup I'm hoping someone can help with.

Right now when I add a new pH driver, input, and probe (all newly created to be safe), I get the following error when I activate or try to calibrate the probe:



I have a vague idea from my coding background of what might be causing this, but I want to see if anyone has experience fixing this before I blow up my .db and settings (because it's a pain to re-build all of that).

For further context, my first attempt to fix this involved manually tweaking the drivers in the .db file (via the terminal download to json/update commands), so it's very possible that my db file has something weird going on based on that manual update.

Happy to provide more info as needed, I'm just a little out of my depth on this one. Thanks in advance!

Do you have any other i2c devices running? Temp probes?

 

[arbiter42]

Do you have any other i2c devices running? Temp probes?

Yep, I've got one temp probe running. i2cdetect included below for reference:

 

[Mikeneedsahobby]

Hi all, got an issue with my pH probe setup I'm hoping someone can help with.

Right now when I add a new pH driver, input, and probe (all newly created to be safe), I get the following error when I activate or try to calibrate the probe:



I have a vague idea from my coding background of what might be causing this, but I want to see if anyone has experience fixing this before I blow up my .db and settings (because it's a pain to re-build all of that).

For further context, my first attempt to fix this involved manually tweaking the drivers in the .db file (via the terminal download to json/update commands), so it's very possible that my db file has something weird going on based on that manual update.

Happy to provide more info as needed, I'm just a little out of my depth on this one. Thanks in advance!

Do you have any other i2c devices running? Temp probes?

Wait ph shouldn’t be i2c. It’s an analog input. I’m confused by your error.

edit: this is wrong the probe is analog but the communication from the ph adapter to pi is over i2c.

which ph adaptor are you using?

 

[arbiter42]

Wait ph shouldn’t be i2c. It’s an analog input. I’m confused by your error.

which ph adaptor are you using?

I'm using the BRS 2 part probe and the robo-tank circuit, but I agree that the error is confusing.

The confusion is what led me here, because I'm out of ideas that aren't "blow up the db and rebuild".

 

[Mikeneedsahobby]

I was looking through the adafruit tutorials and noticed that you need more than one raspberry pi for the whole build.

I just realized you said adafruit tutorials.

try the GitHub site instead. This is where the links for build threads are that ranjib recommends.

Additional Resources | reef-pi - An opensource reef tank controller based on Raspberry Pi

Following is assorted list of online resources related to reef-pi that you may find useful in addition to the adafruit guides and this website. Press releases Make magazine article on reef-pi Adafruit article on reef-pi Raspberry Pi article on reef-pi Open hardware/PCB for reef-pi pH board by...

reef-pi.github.io

 

[Mikeneedsahobby]

I'm using the BRS 2 part probe and the robo-tank circuit, but I agree that the error is confusing.

The confusion is what led me here, because I'm out of ideas that aren't "blow up the db and rebuild".

I’m not familiar with the 2 part probe at BRS. I looked real quick there and didn’t see it. Is it a double junction probe. If so then it should be fine.

the robotank board is communicating to the pi through i2c. Did you do this?

6. Setup reef-pi – Pi Clock Stretching for I2C
Note: If you installed reef-pi using the install script this page can be skipped as it will have been added.
The hardware on Raspberry Pi supports clock stretching however the drivers don’t so we need to manually adjust the clock speed on the Pi so it works with all I2C devices. This is required to use the Robo-Tank pH circuit.

 

[arbiter42]

I’m not familiar with the 2 part probe at BRS. I looked real quick there and didn’t see it. Is it a double junction probe. If so then it should be fine.

the robotank board is communicating to the pi through i2c. Did you do this?

6. Setup reef-pi – Pi Clock Stretching for I2C
Note: If you installed reef-pi using the install script this page can be skipped as it will have been added.
The hardware on Raspberry Pi supports clock stretching however the drivers don’t so we need to manually adjust the clock speed on the Pi so it works with all I2C devices. This is required to use the Robo-Tank pH circuit.

Yeesh I meant double junction, yeah.

And what's weird is that the pH probe *was* working a few days ago, and then after I unplugged it and put it back together (no problems, just rearranging wires) I have these issues.

EDIT: I'm going to go do the clock setup again just to be safe.

EDIT 2: Manually setting up the i2c clock fix seems to have no effect.

 

[arbiter42]

Yeesh I meant double junction, yeah.

And what's weird is that the pH probe *was* working a few days ago, and then after I unplugged it and put it back together (no problems, just rearranging wires) I have these issues.

EDIT: I'm going to go do the clock setup again just to be safe.

EDIT 2: Manually setting up the i2c clock fix seems to have no effect.

@Ranjib maybe you can help me fix this manually -- is there a way to edit the drivers list if I edit the json file manually? I know it's possible to edit individual drivers with the terminal command, but is it possible to edit the entire drivers file as a json?