I am working on getting my reef pi setup to do automatic water changes for me. I am testing , but I am having issues.
The concept is to use a timer to run a macro that pumps fresh saltwater in for a certain amount of time. An ATO with an optical sensor then pumps out water until it is back at the correct level. Simple and it should work.
Timer triggering a macro - So far this isn't working for me at all. I set it for 11 this morning, but nothing happened.
Macro- turns on fresh salt water pump for xx seconds. This works well, but I learned the hard way to make sure the fill line went into the top of my tank to avoid creating a siphon.
ATO with optical sensor and a pump on a reversed relay. That makes the ATO empty the sump until the sensor tells it to stop. The relay is "off" when the sensor is wet and so the pump is running. When the sensor goes dry the relay turns on and then pump turns off. When it works its great, but the optical sensor keeps missing and the pump tries to run my sump dry. THIS IS BAD. I had a backup float switch set to alert me if the sump is low but it kept triggering every few minutes despite no change in water level. If I can't sort out this part I won't be able to rely on it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am wondering if I should look in to other options or just go back to manual changes.
The concept is to use a timer to run a macro that pumps fresh saltwater in for a certain amount of time. An ATO with an optical sensor then pumps out water until it is back at the correct level. Simple and it should work.
Timer triggering a macro - So far this isn't working for me at all. I set it for 11 this morning, but nothing happened.
Macro- turns on fresh salt water pump for xx seconds. This works well, but I learned the hard way to make sure the fill line went into the top of my tank to avoid creating a siphon.
ATO with optical sensor and a pump on a reversed relay. That makes the ATO empty the sump until the sensor tells it to stop. The relay is "off" when the sensor is wet and so the pump is running. When the sensor goes dry the relay turns on and then pump turns off. When it works its great, but the optical sensor keeps missing and the pump tries to run my sump dry. THIS IS BAD. I had a backup float switch set to alert me if the sump is low but it kept triggering every few minutes despite no change in water level. If I can't sort out this part I won't be able to rely on it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am wondering if I should look in to other options or just go back to manual changes.
