Reef Pi Build

[ScottBrew]

I wasn't able to get the lights to respond using the dosing controller. I checked it using reef-pi software like I did with the lighting controller, assigning it to the correct pins and playing with the software to change the speed and got nothing, I didn't check to see if the pwm was responding like it did on the lighting controller with a multi meter. I would assume that it does but if the frequency is the problem I would expect the same result.
I still need to experiment with changing the pwm frequency in reef-pi.

I have to take a break from all things reef pi. I had a pipe burst in the wall behind my shower. So I'm in the process of ripping out a wall and doing some home repairs. Once that's taken care of I will get back to this.
Gotta love the messes life throws at you.:mad:

I understand that, always have "projects" thrown at you when you don't really need it to happen! Good luck and hopefully no major damage.

 

[Diamond1]

The pipe didn't actually burst, it is a bad connection from the pvc to a copper pipe on the bathtub faucet, and was the result of crappy install by whoever did the bathroom remodel before I bought the house.
Unfortunately there is no wet wall access to the pipe so I am in the process of cutting a hole in the wall replacing the connection and then putting an access door in the room next to it.
Yesterday I installed a gate valve on the supply line to to the faucet so I could isolate everything till I get it fixed.

 

[b4tn]

That sucks! I wish I could contribute more but I cant afford to loose a light as I dont have any spares so I have to be fairly certain something is going to work before taking it apart.

I do remember reading somewhere that the frequency in the video of the guy using the Arduino to control the light was set at 1000 Hz. Also, are you taking the PWM signal directly from the pi pins? I am not sure what the current draw of the OR lights are and if the Raspberry can safely provide the required current directly from the GPIO pins. Like @Ranjib had mentioned make sure you are not converting the PWM signal to a different voltage. The below image is an example of converting the volage to 5 volts. It would be ideal where 3.3 v at R2 would be the PWM voltage and the 5 volts would be replaced by 3.3 constant voltage supply. If you have any 2N2222 transistors left over from the adafruit light build those would probably work just fine. I understand the concept but have never been good at calculating the resistance values though for the resistors. Maybe someone with better knowledge could chime in on some good values.

 

[b4tn]

Actually now I am confusing myself lol. I dont think that would work because you have to provide the light with a positive 0-3.3.volts.

 

[Diamond1]

That sucks! I wish I could contribute more but I cant afford to loose a light as I dont have any spares so I have to be fairly certain something is going to work before taking it apart.

I do remember reading somewhere that the frequency in the video of the guy using the Arduino to control the light was set at 1000 Hz. Also, are you taking the PWM signal directly from the pi pins? I am not sure what the current draw of the OR lights are and if the Raspberry can safely provide the required current directly from the GPIO pins. Like @Ranjib had mentioned make sure you are not converting the PWM signal to a different voltage. The below image is an example of converting the volage to 5 volts. It would be ideal where 3.3 v at R2 would be the PWM voltage and the 5 volts would be replaced by 3.3 constant voltage supply. If you have any 2N2222 transistors left over from the adafruit light build those would probably work just fine. I understand the concept but have never been good at calculating the resistance values though for the resistors. Maybe someone with better knowledge could chime in on some good values.

No worries I have extra t5 lighting and the light was over my frag tank (which is in the middle of a rework)not my display. I do need to get into the pi and change the frequency I believe that's where the problem is. For all the testing I've been running at 100Hz. I'll mess around with the frequency tonight after work and see what I come up with.
Yes I'm running the pwm straight off GPIO pin 18. I was wondering about the pi signal being enough to run it directly, from what I understand it should be.

 

[Ranjib]

I wasn't able to get the lights to respond using the dosing controller. I checked it using reef-pi software like I did with the lighting controller, assigning it to the correct pins and playing with the software to change the speed and got nothing, I didn't check to see if the pwm was responding like it did on the lighting controller with a multi meter. I would assume that it does but if the frequency is the problem I would expect the same result.
I still need to experiment with changing the pwm frequency in reef-pi.

I have to take a break from all things reef pi. I had a pipe burst in the wall behind my shower. So I'm in the process of ripping out a wall and doing some home repairs. Once that's taken care of I will get back to this.
Gotta love the messes life throws at you.:mad:

Oops. Hope things get fixed.

 

[Diamond1]

Well got the pipe fixed. This weekend I'll do some drywall work and after a bit of elbow grease and a few choice words things should be back to normal.

I found the problem with getting reef pi to control my LED fixture. It was the frequency of the pwm on the configuration tab of reef pi (Thanks @b4tn and @Ranjib ).
It is set to 100 by default. As soon as I changed it to 1000 the lights responded to input from reef pi. So as of right now I can run an OR T247 off of reef-pi!
I'm running it straight off GPIO 18 and only the blue channel is hooked up for testing.

The down side is I still haven't figured out how to get the drivers to go below 10% on start up. Not that that's a deal breaker for me but it does require extra hardware in the form of 2 relays to switch the lights on. On the plus side I will be able to have the relay timers run through reef-pi. I'm thinking if I set the relays up to turn on at the same time the lighting controller starts to ramp up I can get a decent sunrise/sunset effect.

It may be possible to swap the drivers for something that allows reef-pi to control them down to absolute zero but I won't be doing that.

I did a quick little video of how the lights change. They are just adjusted by percentage manually so you won't see them ramp up.
I used the slider in the fixed section of the light tab to make the adjustments.
The video starts off at 100% then goes to 0%. At 0% they are actually still running at 10%. Then I switched them to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% and back to 0%.
Once they get past 50% the change visually is minimal but the intensity increases. This may be due to not using a filter on my camera.

 

[ScottBrew]

Well got the pipe fixed. This weekend I'll do some drywall work and after a bit of elbow grease and a few choice words things should be back to normal.

I found the problem with getting reef pi to control my LED fixture. It was the frequency of the pwm on the configuration tab of reef pi (Thanks @b4tn and @Ranjib ).
It is set to 100 by default. As soon as I changed it to 1000 the lights responded to input from reef pi. So as of right now I can run an OR T247 off of reef-pi!
I'm running it straight off GPIO 18 and only the blue channel is hooked up for testing.

The down side is I still haven't figured out how to get the drivers to go below 10% on start up. Not that that's a deal breaker for me but it does require extra hardware in the form of 2 relays to switch the lights on. On the plus side I will be able to have the relay timers run through reef-pi. I'm thinking if I set the relays up to turn on at the same time the lighting controller starts to ramp up I can get a decent sunrise/sunset effect.

It may be possible to swap the drivers for something that allows reef-pi to control them down to absolute zero but I won't be doing that.

I did a quick little video of how the lights change. They are just adjusted by percentage manually so you won't see them ramp up.
I used the slider in the fixed section of the light tab to make the adjustments.
The video starts off at 100% then goes to 0%. At 0% they are actually still running at 10%. Then I switched them to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% and back to 0%.
Once they get past 50% the change visually is minimal but the intensity increases. This may be due to not using a filter on my camera.

Glad you got the plumbing fixed! Your camera is automatically adjusting the exposure levels. If it's your phone, there is software to allow you to control the iso and exposure manually like a DSLR. If it's a regular camera, some have manual mode.

 

[b4tn]

Well got the pipe fixed. This weekend I'll do some drywall work and after a bit of elbow grease and a few choice words things should be back to normal.

I found the problem with getting reef pi to control my LED fixture. It was the frequency of the pwm on the configuration tab of reef pi (Thanks @b4tn and @Ranjib ).
It is set to 100 by default. As soon as I changed it to 1000 the lights responded to input from reef pi. So as of right now I can run an OR T247 off of reef-pi!
I'm running it straight off GPIO 18 and only the blue channel is hooked up for testing.

The down side is I still haven't figured out how to get the drivers to go below 10% on start up. Not that that's a deal breaker for me but it does require extra hardware in the form of 2 relays to switch the lights on. On the plus side I will be able to have the relay timers run through reef-pi. I'm thinking if I set the relays up to turn on at the same time the lighting controller starts to ramp up I can get a decent sunrise/sunset effect.

It may be possible to swap the drivers for something that allows reef-pi to control them down to absolute zero but I won't be doing that.

I did a quick little video of how the lights change. They are just adjusted by percentage manually so you won't see them ramp up.
I used the slider in the fixed section of the light tab to make the adjustments.
The video starts off at 100% then goes to 0%. At 0% they are actually still running at 10%. Then I switched them to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% and back to 0%.
Once they get past 50% the change visually is minimal but the intensity increases. This may be due to not using a filter on my camera.

.

Awesome it works now! Bummer on the ramping to 0%. But I kind of suspected this. I’m still up in the air on this one. I run 2 lights and they never sync time wise. It would actually be nice to have pi do the timing so they are linked and auto adjust for daylight saving etc.

 

[Diamond1]

.

Awesome it works now! Bummer on the ramping to 0%. But I kind of suspected this. I’m still up in the air on this one. I run 2 lights and they never sync time wise. It would actually be nice to have pi do the timing so they are linked and auto adjust for daylight saving etc.

Yeah it kinda sucks they don't go to zero but if I use the onboard dimmers and turn the blues up to 25% and then turn the white channel up you can barely notice the white channel till it reaches about 10% so you just have to deal with the initial blast of the blues coming on.

Like you said it would be worth it just to have both lights synced to everything reef-pi is running on your set up.

 

[Ranjib]

Well got the pipe fixed. This weekend I'll do some drywall work and after a bit of elbow grease and a few choice words things should be back to normal.

I found the problem with getting reef pi to control my LED fixture. It was the frequency of the pwm on the configuration tab of reef pi (Thanks @b4tn and @Ranjib ).
It is set to 100 by default. As soon as I changed it to 1000 the lights responded to input from reef pi. So as of right now I can run an OR T247 off of reef-pi!
I'm running it straight off GPIO 18 and only the blue channel is hooked up for testing.

The down side is I still haven't figured out how to get the drivers to go below 10% on start up. Not that that's a deal breaker for me but it does require extra hardware in the form of 2 relays to switch the lights on. On the plus side I will be able to have the relay timers run through reef-pi. I'm thinking if I set the relays up to turn on at the same time the lighting controller starts to ramp up I can get a decent sunrise/sunset effect.

It may be possible to swap the drivers for something that allows reef-pi to control them down to absolute zero but I won't be doing that.

I did a quick little video of how the lights change. They are just adjusted by percentage manually so you won't see them ramp up.
I used the slider in the fixed section of the light tab to make the adjustments.
The video starts off at 100% then goes to 0%. At 0% they are actually still running at 10%. Then I switched them to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% and back to 0%.
Once they get past 50% the change visually is minimal but the intensity increases. This may be due to not using a filter on my camera.

you should be able to set mininum threshold to 10 in reef-pi

 

[Ranjib]

I love that OR light dimming video

 

[Diamond1]

I love that OR light dimming video

I'm hoping to have them set up and running on the tank this weekend.

 

[b4tn]

I'm hoping to have them set up and running on the tank this weekend.

I’m excited to see how it works out and how you wired it. I ordered some part today for more pwm channels and some darlington transistors to drive a couple more relays. I enabled some more gpio pins and have the lights configured in reef-pi so I can play around with it a bit. Just need to build it.

 

[Diamond1]

I’m excited to see how it works out and how you wired it. I ordered some part today for more pwm channels and some darlington transistors to drive a couple more relays. I enabled some more gpio pins and have the lights configured in reef-pi so I can play around with it a bit. Just need to build it.

Sounds like you have a good plan. I still have a few things to figure out for the wiring but it should be pretty straight forward.

My whole system is going to be changing. Thanks to @speedstar I will be getting one of @wykat 's pi hats. As soon as I get the board populated I will be doubling my relays to 16, adding multiple temp probes, 2 ATO sensors and dosing pumps all run from 1 rpi.
A second rpi will be dedicated to lighting and maybe a ph probe. I'm still debating on using an Atlas Scientific set up or the one that @Roberto_b is working on.

I ordered these 8 pin male/female aviation connectors to tie into the lights https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G9IVM5E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and a 2 channel 12v relay module for the light off/on https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077Z7RB7L/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's probably not ideal but I'm going to try to run the relays right from 2 gpios from the pi without the darlington transistors.
I'm going to use cat 5 or 6 cables to run from the pi to the light via the aviation connectors (4 wires per channel). I'm hoping that the cat 5 cable won't get to much interference but It shouldn't be too bad as the run length is only about 3 1/2 feet.

 

[Diamond1]

All right more parts!!

Going to start working on the wiring and set up for the light controller today.
Time to heat up the soldering iron.

 

[Diamond1]

Made some progress on the light install.

Got the 8 pin cable soldered up and checked continuity for all the pins and it's good to go.

Removed the onboard timer/controller.

Cut some 1/16" black sheet pvc to mount the jack in the hole where the old dimmer control was. Not the prettiest install but it beats drilling a hole in the metal of the light fixture.

Temporarily installed all the wires for both channels for testing.
The 22AWG solid core wire actually fits in the female sockets nicely but I'm going to try and find a male socket for the new wires.

Everything cut to length wired up and working!! The wires with the blue tape on them goes to the blue light channel.

 

[Diamond1]

Went to start working on the circuit for this thing and my soldering iron broke. So I thought that was as good an excuse as any to get one with an adjustable temp controller.
This should be here this week. I know it's a cheapo but it's gotta be better than the one I was using.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/GAOYUE-936...=item567f7b2bbc:g:YYEAAOSwHnFV3YuY:rk:12:pf:0

 

[Ranjib]

Made some progress on the light install.

Got the 8 pin cable soldered up and checked continuity for all the pins and it's good to go.

Removed the onboard timer/controller.

Cut some 1/16" black sheet pvc to mount the jack in the hole where the old dimmer control was. Not the prettiest install but it beats drilling a hole in the metal of the light fixture.

Temporarily installed all the wires for both channels for testing.
The 22AWG solid core wire actually fits in the female sockets nicely but I'm going to try and find a male socket for the new wires.

Everything cut to length wired up and working!! The wires with the blue tape on them goes to the blue light channel.

Clean soldering

 

[Diamond1]

Clean soldering

With all this building I've been doing I'm getting better at it.
Maybe even good enough to try Roberto's ph board...