Schreiber
Leviathan
My Auto-Aquarium Adventures
The only thing more frustrating than unknown problems in a project is having nobody to share them with. I’ll be chronicling the adventures of my Reef-Pi troubleshooting as I dive into what could wind up being a multi-week undertaking. If you're already familiar with Reef Pi, go ahead & skip to post 2 to dive into the details of my build. If you're not already familiar with Reef Pi, read on!
For those of you unaware what “Reef-Pi” is, it’s an open source aquarium automation platform created & maintained by @Ranjib. It runs on a single-board computer called a Raspberry Pi & can control nearly every aspect of an aquarium. It will monitor & control temperature & pH, schedule light & pump activity, & much more! Sound great, right?
The only problem is, I can’t get mine to work. My first Reef-Pi setup was a simple equipment controller with none of the fancy sensors or extra features. It worked great, so once I found the time, I decided to include nearly all the features in build 2.0. This one….. hasn’t been so great, for reasons I hope to solve & report here!
Wires and Solder and Amps, Oh My!
Full-disclosure, I’m not an Electrical Engineer by any means. I have enough electrical knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough to magic together a working prototype overnight. Unfortunately, I tried to magic together a working prototype overnight & wound up with the results you would expect.
It’s not *quite* as bad as it looks, but it certainly does not work as intended. A few ideas I have on why: I wound up connecting some contacts together that aren’t happy about it, something in my configuration isn’t correct, or one of the changes I made in my pinout wound up not working. That being said, all is not lost! When I power up my tangle of wires & hopes, my relays power on with a burst of mechanical clicks in rapid succession.
![20190811_152529[1].jpg](https://www.reef2reef.com/attachments/20190811_152529-1-jpg.1163743/ "20190811_152529[1].jpg")
Digging In
The reason I’m bothering to type out all of this is two-fold. First & foremost, is for selfish reasons. If you can’t tell from the picture of the current state of my project above, I tend to jump head first into things without much planning. Occasionally, it works out & I save some time. More often, it winds up biting me & I spend twice the time rooting out problems. I figure if I take the time to plan my troubleshooting process out, I’ll be less likely to miss something obvious.
The second reason is for public knowledge. Ranjiib making this project open to the public free of charge is incredible. The community support for people building their own is great, but it sometimes requires searching through literally thousands of unrelated posts interweaved together in one thread. If anyone else runs into the issue I (hopefully) solve in this process, it would be great to have a clear solution to point them to.
My next post will cover my plan of attack-what I think the issues may be & how to solve them. Once I have that laid out, I can go ahead & start trying to make this thing work!
The only thing more frustrating than unknown problems in a project is having nobody to share them with. I’ll be chronicling the adventures of my Reef-Pi troubleshooting as I dive into what could wind up being a multi-week undertaking. If you're already familiar with Reef Pi, go ahead & skip to post 2 to dive into the details of my build. If you're not already familiar with Reef Pi, read on!
For those of you unaware what “Reef-Pi” is, it’s an open source aquarium automation platform created & maintained by @Ranjib. It runs on a single-board computer called a Raspberry Pi & can control nearly every aspect of an aquarium. It will monitor & control temperature & pH, schedule light & pump activity, & much more! Sound great, right?
The only problem is, I can’t get mine to work. My first Reef-Pi setup was a simple equipment controller with none of the fancy sensors or extra features. It worked great, so once I found the time, I decided to include nearly all the features in build 2.0. This one….. hasn’t been so great, for reasons I hope to solve & report here!
Wires and Solder and Amps, Oh My!
Full-disclosure, I’m not an Electrical Engineer by any means. I have enough electrical knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough to magic together a working prototype overnight. Unfortunately, I tried to magic together a working prototype overnight & wound up with the results you would expect.
It’s not *quite* as bad as it looks, but it certainly does not work as intended. A few ideas I have on why: I wound up connecting some contacts together that aren’t happy about it, something in my configuration isn’t correct, or one of the changes I made in my pinout wound up not working. That being said, all is not lost! When I power up my tangle of wires & hopes, my relays power on with a burst of mechanical clicks in rapid succession.
Digging In
The reason I’m bothering to type out all of this is two-fold. First & foremost, is for selfish reasons. If you can’t tell from the picture of the current state of my project above, I tend to jump head first into things without much planning. Occasionally, it works out & I save some time. More often, it winds up biting me & I spend twice the time rooting out problems. I figure if I take the time to plan my troubleshooting process out, I’ll be less likely to miss something obvious.
The second reason is for public knowledge. Ranjiib making this project open to the public free of charge is incredible. The community support for people building their own is great, but it sometimes requires searching through literally thousands of unrelated posts interweaved together in one thread. If anyone else runs into the issue I (hopefully) solve in this process, it would be great to have a clear solution to point them to.
My next post will cover my plan of attack-what I think the issues may be & how to solve them. Once I have that laid out, I can go ahead & start trying to make this thing work!
Working on my new board now... Stay tuned!
