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

[Cristian2281]

If you just want to turn the pump on/off you can use the Pi pins as is with a mosfet like these.

Amazon.com : mosfet module

I need pwm to control the speed of the motors. If I use a pca9685 board for pwm and a mosfet module will I be able to control the pumps from the reef-pi? I only need the pumps to run in one direction anyway.

 

[GaryE]

I need pwm to control the speed of the motors. If I use a pca9685 board for pwm and a mosfet module will I be able to control the pumps from the reef-pi? I only need the pumps to run in one direction anyway.

Yes

 

[robsworld78]

I need pwm to control the speed of the motors. If I use a pca9685 board for pwm and a mosfet module will I be able to control the pumps from the reef-pi? I only need the pumps to run in one direction anyway.

Yeah, based on PWM level the output voltage off the mosfet will be say between 6v-12v. Most DC motors on dosing pumps are ok with under voltage however motors that need a set voltage can sound sick when you slow it down.

 

[Paulo Hanashiro]

Hello everyone.

Has anyone tried the new RPi Zero 2 yet with reef-pi?

Just wondering what would be the benefits of having RPi 3 cores into a zero form factor for the reef-pi overall usability.

Cheers.
Paulo

 

[Ranjib]

I have not , but it should be a wonderful thing for reef-pi. Pi zero is my favorite model due to its low current draw and small form factor. It’s plenty for running the controller but not good enough to power a GUI. Which makes it a bad choice for beginner or folks who are not comfortable with command line. I think that’s gonna change with pi zero , and we should be able to run a full graphical desktop with reef-pi . We’ll see.

 

[Ranjib]

my old assortment of corals , in the new Red Sea reefer

 

[Leafwee]

Hi Ranjib what an amazing project! I'm trying to control some Kessil A360Ws, I've read that they need 0-10v dc for control signals, is this true or can 0-10v PWM be used? Also My DAC and Op Amp put out 10.2v at max is this too much for the Kessils? Thanks!

 

[Ranjib]

Hi Ranjib what an amazing project! I'm trying to control some Kessil A360Ws, I've read that they need 0-10v dc for control signals, is this true or can 0-10v PWM be used? Also My DAC and Op Amp put out 10.2v at max is this too much for the Kessils? Thanks!

thank you
yes 10v pwm works for us. 10.2v should not be a concern, i think. kessil blinks below 1.3V (13% dimming) for me.

 

[Leafwee]

Ok, I'll test it out and see, if I knew PWM would work I think I would have tried that first!

 

[Ranjib]

Thanksgiving is on the way, and that means a major release of reef-pi.
I had a few remaining wish list , other than what has already been shipped part of 4.1/4.2/4.3,
- Reset ATO usage
- Light graph
- Ability to control light enable/disable from macro
- ph control chart (similar to temperature)
I dont expect any breaking changes, i.e. 4.0 users should be able to upgrade without any hiccups. I am expecting most of these to be done within next two weeks, after which we'll have release candidate, or direct general availability release if we feel confident on the build/test.

Let me know if you folks have any thoughts, particularly any major bugs that we should be focusing on instead.

 

[crapshoot]

I just picked up a couple of Chinese Black Box LED fixtures for cheap.. They came with two of these LED Drivers in them, so it got me thinking.. How can I connect these to the reef-pi to control them....


I'm thinking I should be able to connect the PWM wire to an open pin on the pca9685 and control it that way....

If so, this opens up a nice lighting option..

Amazon product ASIN B07DFLPJY4

New to the forum and signed up because I have these exact same lights on a tank I'm building and wanted to gain some insight on the easiest way to dim these with the reef-pi I'm putting together.

I'll also be hacking away on my reef-pi and figured this would be as good as a place as github to pick at peoples brains. I've been mulling over my approach to automating my tank going back and forth between using reef-pi or some of my own controllers since I work in the automation field for a living.

 

[Dave's Reef]

I finally got around to add a low sump level incase ATO fails and I set up notifications and have it set to run a dummy outlet I'm not using the outlet triggers as it should on and off but the notifications never stop? Has anyone else had this trouble and how did you fix it? Thanks in advance..

 

[Ranjib]

I finally got around to add a low sump level incase ATO fails and I set up notifications and have it set to run a dummy outlet I'm not using the outlet triggers as it should on and off but the notifications never stop? Has anyone else had this trouble and how did you fix it? Thanks in advance..

theres a setting under telemetry configuration on the maximum alerts of an individual type in an hour. Set it to 3 or something you like..

 

[Dave's Reef]

BUT will I still keep getting 3 alerts every hour? I think this may be a bounce issue after watching it all day I noticed sometimes it would turn the outlet on even when it does change state. I should have stated before I am using a float switch with only two wire one to ground and a resistor to the GPIO pin. Does reef-pi have debounce written in the program?

theres a setting under telemetry configuration on the maximum alerts of an individual type in an hour. Set it to 3 or something you like..

 

[crapshoot]

I got my reef-pi up and running today. it took some digging to find out what the available gpio were and I was going to start digging through the code this week to make some customizations.

I used an old UPS for an enclosure because for the past month I keep forgetting to order a hobby box and there's nobody local that I can pick one up from. Everything I used is scavenged from parts I've had laying around other than I had to order a temp sensor. I have dozens of 10k thermistors laying around that I was going to use but I have no ADC's and I don't want to bother ordering one just for temp, so I bought the 5 pack of DS18B20 and a PCA9685 so I can dim my LED's and I may eventually connect my pumps to it for a custom wavemaker.

No, I probably didn't need 12 receptacles, but I had them so why not. I also plumbed a 1/4" poly line from my RO/DI in my well room right into my sump and have it controlled with a 1/2" valve on the supply line to the filter for my ATO. I thought about doing a build thread, but I forgot to take pics while I was putting everything together. I got the tank for $100 on craigslist which was a piece of junk. Built the stand, canopy, painted the back of the tank, drilled the bottom for the overflow bulkheads, picked up acrylic and built my own overflows, built my own sump out of a pestco aqueon 40 gallon breeder with acrylic pieces I cut and siliconed myself. I've had the tank up and running for about a week now, but still need to pick up some odds and ends. I still have time since it needs to cycle.

 

[robsworld78]

Thanksgiving is on the way, and that means a major release of reef-pi.
I had a few remaining wish list , other than what has already been shipped part of 4.1/4.2/4.3,
- Reset ATO usage
- Light graph
- Ability to control light enable/disable from macro
- ph control chart (similar to temperature)
I dont expect any breaking changes, i.e. 4.0 users should be able to upgrade without any hiccups. I am expecting most of these to be done within next two weeks, after which we'll have release candidate, or direct general availability release if we feel confident on the build/test.

Let me know if you folks have any thoughts, particularly any major bugs that we should be focusing on instead.

This sounds great, on behalf of many thanks for your hard work.

This isn't a bug but yesterday I got a sad email where someone's dosing pump didn't turn off, thankfully no harm was done. He restarted things which immediately turned off the pump. The control for the pump was coming from the pca9685, my guess is reef-pi sent out the command to turn off the pump but that command didn't make it to the pca9685 in tact. Unfortunately this is the problem with I2C, it'll never be 100% perfect as it has no acknowledge system.

I didn't think it was possible to read the current value of a specific pca9685 pin as I've looked into this in the past however after hearing this I thought I would try again. I stumbled across a new c++ Arduino based library from Rob Tillaart last updated early this year. Again it looks like he did what few could and added a function to read the set value of a pin. I've tested it out and it works perfectly. You're able to set the value normally then immediately check and verify if it in fact changed.

So now I'm wondering if you're able to incorporate a verification on mainly the dosing pumps as they are critical. When reef-pi turns on/off the pump it could check the pin to verify it's set proper and move on, if not try again.

The function is call getPWM and is located in the PCA9685.cpp file here.

PCA9685_RT/PCA9685.cpp at master · RobTillaart/PCA9685_RT

Arduino library for I2C PCA9685 16 channel PWM extender, 12 bit - RobTillaart/PCA9685_RT

github.com

GitHub - RobTillaart/PCA9685_RT: Arduino library for I2C PCA9685 16 channel PWM extender, 12 bit

Arduino library for I2C PCA9685 16 channel PWM extender, 12 bit - RobTillaart/PCA9685_RT

github.com

Unfortunately I'm still not comfortable poking in the code yet, would be great if you could start adding comments, that's my feature request. :)

If it helps any I can convert this function to work with pure c++ and drop the Arduino based libraries.

 

[elysics]

This sounds great, on behalf of many thanks for your hard work.

This isn't a bug but yesterday I got a sad email where someone's dosing pump didn't turn off, thankfully no harm was done. He restarted things which immediately turned off the pump. The control for the pump was coming from the pca9685, my guess is reef-pi sent out the command to turn off the pump but that command didn't make it to the pca9685 in tact. Unfortunately this is the problem with I2C, it'll never be 100% perfect as it has no acknowledge system.

I didn't think it was possible to read the current value of a specific pca9685 pin as I've looked into this in the past however after hearing this I thought I would try again. I stumbled across a new c++ Arduino based library from Rob Tillaart last updated early this year. Again it looks like he did what few could and added a function to read the set value of a pin. I've tested it out and it works perfectly. You're able to set the value normally then immediately check and verify if it in fact changed.

So now I'm wondering if you're able to incorporate a verification on mainly the dosing pumps as they are critical. When reef-pi turns on/off the pump it could check the pin to verify it's set proper and move on, if not try again.

The function is call getPWM and is located in the PCA9685.cpp file here.

PCA9685_RT/PCA9685.cpp at master · RobTillaart/PCA9685_RT

Arduino library for I2C PCA9685 16 channel PWM extender, 12 bit - RobTillaart/PCA9685_RT

github.com

GitHub - RobTillaart/PCA9685_RT: Arduino library for I2C PCA9685 16 channel PWM extender, 12 bit

Arduino library for I2C PCA9685 16 channel PWM extender, 12 bit - RobTillaart/PCA9685_RT

github.com

Unfortunately I'm still not comfortable poking in the code yet, would be great if you could start adding comments, that's my feature request. :)

If it helps any I can convert this function to work with pure c++ and drop the Arduino based libraries.

Yeah, that's a very scary failure mode, had it twice before, I've made a bandaid solution by wiring the enable pins on the l293n boards to the pi and enable and disable the motor drivers on a timer, not relying on i2c

But this new solution would be way better

 

[bishoptf]

Does anyone know how to configure Prometheus for persistent storage, I have a vm running Prometheus and grafana but when I went back to look at some data for this summer no data was found. I'm pretty sure I need to have Prom set up to keep the data and not roll over but not sure how to configure it to do that, tried googling but lots of container based stuff and still trying to find the right how to....Thanks in advanced

:)

 

[bishoptf]

Does anyone know how to configure Prometheus for persistent storage, I have a vm running Prometheus and grafana but when I went back to look at some data for this summer no data was found. I'm pretty sure I need to have Prom set up to keep the data and not roll over but not sure how to configure it to do that, tried googling but lots of container based stuff and still trying to find the right how to....Thanks in advanced

:)

Nevermind, finally figured it out...not sure how much storage it actually uses but set it up for a year and I guess I can increase that if needed.

 

[Ranjib]

Nevermind, finally figured it out...not sure how much storage it actually uses but set it up for a year and I guess I can increase that if needed.

Yup. Prometheus is a persistent storage. You just have to tune the retention time per your requirements