Reef Pi Build

[Diamond1]

Can you check in private/incognito mode ? I have encountered the issue but it went away after a refresh. I am not able to . reproduce it again on my end. I'll keep looking,

Not sure what you mean by incognito/private. How do I do that?

 

[crusso1993]

Not sure what you mean by incognito/private. How do I do that?

I'm guessing you put some panty hose over your head and run around the house with the Mission Impossible theme song cranked to 11!
But I'm goofy like that...

 

[Diamond1]

Did you by chance put the Lux meter under the lights and change the intensity in reefpi? I see an obvious dimming affect from 50% down but above 50% I visually don’t see a change. I am wondering if 50% is actually 100%. I really wish I had a par meter.

@b4tn I just checked the light intensity on my white channel going from 40% to 100% and there was a major increase in intensity. At 40% I was getting around 600 par. At 100% I was getting over 1000 par. So I can safely say that even though there isn't a big visual difference there is a large jump in par at 100%. I'll check it again at 2:00 today when my lights are both at their max setting and get a par reading from there.
I would really recommend a lux meter from Amazon. They won't give you exact par but it will put you in the ballpark and give a good representation of par values at water level.

 

[Diamond1]

I'm guessing you put some panty hose over your head and run around the house with the Mission Impossible theme song cranked to 11!
But I'm goofy like that...

Have you been spying on me!!

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Not sure what you mean by incognito/private. How do I do that?

It depends on what browser you are using but google "how to open an incognito tab in *insert browser name here* "

Its just a new tab where it doesn't use any previous cookies or browser history and it wont record any cookies or browser history.

 

[Diamond1]

It depends on what browser you are using but google "how to open an incognito tab in *insert browser name here* "

Its just a new tab where it doesn't use any previous cookies or browser history and it wont record any cookies or browser history.

Thanks!

 

[b4tn]

I'm guessing you put some panty hose over your head and run around the house with the Mission Impossible theme song cranked to 11!
But I'm goofy like that...

lol!! This made my day ha ha.

@b4tn I just checked the light intensity on my white channel going from 40% to 100% and there was a major increase in intensity. At 40% I was getting around 600 par. At 100% I was getting over 1000 par. So I can safely say that even though there isn't a big visual difference there is a large jump in par at 100%. I'll check it again at 2:00 today when my lights are both at their max setting and get a par reading from there.
I would really recommend a lux meter from Amazon. They won't give you exact par but it will put you in the ballpark and give a good representation of par values at water level.

Thanks, I tried the iPhone app and it reads like 1000 Lux at the water surface which if I found the right calculation is about 20 par. so I’m guessing I need to get an actual meter lol. But thanks for checking.

 

[Diamond1]

lol!! This made my day ha ha.



Thanks, I tried the iPhone app and it reads like 1000 Lux at the water surface which if I found the right calculation is about 20 par. so I’m guessing I need to get an actual meter lol. But thanks for checking.

Yeah the phone apps won't give you a good reading. The meter I have has a 4 digit read out and it tells you what to multiply the reading by (x10 or x100) and then divide that number by 50 to get par.
I have been checking my lights as they ramp every 15 mins or so and I'm seeing par increase at every reading.
I'm also considering flattening the curve some on the blue channel so I'm getting more peak time with just the blue channel.

 

[Diamond1]

It depends on what browser you are using but google "how to open an incognito tab in *insert browser name here* "

Its just a new tab where it doesn't use any previous cookies or browser history and it wont record any cookies or browser history.

@Ranjib
Ok so I tried using an incognito tab in my browser, resigned into reef-pi and got the same result on the dashboard page even after a refresh.

 

[Ranjib]

@Ranjib
Ok so I tried using an incognito tab in my browser, resigned into reef-pi and got the same result on the dashboard page even after a refresh.

Ack

 

[b4tn]

@Diamond1 do you happen to recall where we all got the number that the OR lights do not dim below 10%? Since setting up my new light schedule up I noticed that my blues where not getting as dim as they used to. I had my relays set to turn them on when they reached 10% in adafruit io. So I did a quick test this morning and there is a considerable difference between 1% and 10% in Reefpi. Actually there is a considerable difference between 1% and 2% and up.

So does 1 actually equal 10%? I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this. If 1% on the reef pi dial is actually 10%. Where does that put the light at say 50 on the reefpi dial?

 

[Ranjib]

@Diamond1 do you happen to recall where we all got the number that the OR lights do not dim below 10%? Since setting up my new light schedule up I noticed that my blues where not getting as dim as they used to. I had my relays set to turn them on when they reached 10% in adafruit io. So I did a quick test this morning and there is a considerable difference between 1% and 10% in Reefpi. Actually there is a considerable difference between 1% and 2% and up.

So does 1 actually equal 10%? I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this. If 1% on the reef pi dial is actually 10%. Where does that put the light at say 50 on the reefpi dial?

The internal logic at least does not have any such thing . We translate 1% into appropriate duty cycle based on the period (frequency)

 

[rushbattle]

@Diamond1 do you happen to recall where we all got the number that the OR lights do not dim below 10%? Since setting up my new light schedule up I noticed that my blues where not getting as dim as they used to. I had my relays set to turn them on when they reached 10% in adafruit io. So I did a quick test this morning and there is a considerable difference between 1% and 10% in Reefpi. Actually there is a considerable difference between 1% and 2% and up.

So does 1 actually equal 10%? I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this. If 1% on the reef pi dial is actually 10%. Where does that put the light at say 50 on the reefpi dial?

This could be a manufacturer recommendation. Some drivers continue to dim below the threshold, but they are overheating, or some other issue like flicker. It MAY decrease longevity of your driver or LEDs (I am not certain on either or both) to dim below the recommended threshold. Also, some drivers will dim to almost off or off with 0% signal, but could do damage to the driver.

 

[Diamond1]

@Diamond1 do you happen to recall where we all got the number that the OR lights do not dim below 10%? Since setting up my new light schedule up I noticed that my blues where not getting as dim as they used to. I had my relays set to turn them on when they reached 10% in adafruit io. So I did a quick test this morning and there is a considerable difference between 1% and 10% in Reefpi. Actually there is a considerable difference between 1% and 2% and up.

So does 1 actually equal 10%? I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this. If 1% on the reef pi dial is actually 10%. Where does that put the light at say 50 on the reefpi dial?

I believe that info on the dimming to only 10% came from the thread where the guy used the Stormx controller.
When i was doing my original testing I didn't see much difference between using the OR built in timer to turn the lights on at 1% and the relay turning them on and then reef-pi doing the ramping.
I didn't have my LUX meter at the time so I couldn't check the levels of intensity as it turned on and ramped up but it seemed pretty close to me visually. If that's the case then the percentages in reef-pi are pretty close to the intensity settings of the OR controller.

 

[Ranjib]

One of the thing I have planned for 3.0 release is custom pwm profile . It should allow finer control in smaller time intervals (say 30 minutes).

 

[Sky_Sky]

Hi Diamond1,
Sorry for question. I See you use 5-channel-5V-Relay
https://www.ebay.com/itm/8-Channel-...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2648
But when you user ULN 2803A chip then you use 12VDC?
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/reef-pi-build.482170/page-5

 

[Rayzzfish]

Made a little more progress tonight, got the db9 connector installed.

Since the box is about 1/4 inch thick and the db9 plug wouldn't mount to the wood, I had to drill a couple holes with a 3/4" Forstner bit and make a little plastic plate for it to mount to. I used some male to female jumper wires to connect the db9 to the relay control inputs.

I stripped off the male ends of the jumper wires and the tinned them.

Tinning your wires makes them easier to work with and makes for a better connection. If you don't know about tinning or soldering there's a ton of you tube videos out there that are very good.

Using the jumper wires with different colors made it easier for me to make sure I wired the one in the power module and the one in the pi the same way.


I will be using 2 of these. One for the power module and one for the pi.

I still have a few more things to do to the box, but this is what the finished product is going to look like.

Still trying to figure out how they mounted that db9. I'm looking at mine and can't see how it goes..