Reef-Pi Learning sources??

[DaveMorris]

While I am a very adept electrical guy and really know my way around a soldering iron, one thing I lack tremendously is programming experience. Quite a lot of the discussions in the various Reef-Pi threads go right over my head when it comes to the different programming elements. While I know that I can assemble/build the hardware and then get all set up with the guides and these threads, what I really want is a source to learn a lot of the various programming skills needed to really get in and understand how the software side of a Reef-Pi project works. Can any of you Pi experts direct me to some reading material or video material that would aide in learning some of the pertinent details, short of becoming and all out programming expert? I know I can search YouTube for Raspberry Pi videos, and believe me I have watched hours of them, but is there any highly recommended resources that you would send a newbie programmer to?

I am planning on building a Reef-Pi, renaming it to a Frog-Pi, and using it for my 130g reef tank-turned dart frog vivarium. I will need to add in humidity and perhaps figure out how to interface with my MistKing mister. For that I would like to work on it myself. No need to drag down the Reef-Pi folks into a frog tank. To do this and not drive you guys crazy with 1000 questions, I need to feel a little better at understanding the programming basics. I'm just not sure where to go at this point. Any assistance would be very appreciated.
@Ranjib
@Diamond1
@b4tn
@theatrus

 

[theatrus]

While I am a very adept electrical guy and really know my way around a soldering iron, one thing I lack tremendously is programming experience. Quite a lot of the discussions in the various Reef-Pi threads go right over my head when it comes to the different programming elements. While I know that I can assemble/build the hardware and then get all set up with the guides and these threads, what I really want is a source to learn a lot of the various programming skills needed to really get in and understand how the software side of a Reef-Pi project works. Can any of you Pi experts direct me to some reading material or video material that would aide in learning some of the pertinent details, short of becoming and all out programming expert? I know I can search YouTube for Raspberry Pi videos, and believe me I have watched hours of them, but is there any highly recommended resources that you would send a newbie programmer to?

I am planning on building a Reef-Pi, renaming it to a Frog-Pi, and using it for my 130g reef tank-turned dart frog vivarium. I will need to add in humidity and perhaps figure out how to interface with my MistKing mister. For that I would like to work on it myself. No need to drag down the Reef-Pi folks into a frog tank. To do this and not drive you guys crazy with 1000 questions, I need to feel a little better at understanding the programming basics. I'm just not sure where to go at this point. Any assistance would be very appreciated.
@Ranjib
@Diamond1
@b4tn
@theatrus

Hi!

As with any modern software, everything is built on layers. I think the following layers are probably the most useful when considering modifying Reef-Pi:

Learning about Go. Go is used for all the "backend", storage, and hardware interface code, as well as presenting an API for the UI.
Some resources:
https://tour.golang.org/welcome/1
https://www.gopl.io/

The front end (the web pages you can click in) is in Javascript, and uses React to handle views (the entire JS ecosystem changes often and is very fad based IMO). I don't know the best tutorial here.

When it comes to interfaces to hardware, I would look at the https://github.com/reef-pi/drivers package (in Go) which interfaces with a number of I2C devices already. Adding an I2C humidity sensor is likely the easiest, for example one of the Sensirion devices.

 

[DaveMorris]

Thanks. That is the sort of direction I am looking for. There are so many different things that people reference it can be a bit overwhelming even it the individual elements are easy to learn. I don't plan to re-do the great work that has already been done on the Reef-Pi, just want to understand what is hapening and possibly make some minor tweaks here and there for my particular installation.

 

[Diamond1]

All the timers in reef-pi are cron based so this might help also.
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/unix_commands/crontab.htm

 

[lotus02]

anyone know why I can't login to reef-pi after i change the name of my raspberry-pi 3 b+ and change the password on it.

 

[crusso1993]

@lotus02 - you'll get much better results posting any reef pi questions on this thread. It is the main thread for reef pi.

Good luck!

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r...troller-based-on-raspberry-pi.289256/page-480

 

[lotus02]

Thanks

 

[lotus02]

Thanks

 

[lotus02]

Thanks

 

[crusso1993]

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks

I like the enthusiasm! Lol

 

[lotus02]

Thanks

I don't know why it posted it 3 times

 

[Ranjib]

@DaveMorris the best way to learn is by doing. As you already understood reef-pi involves some heavy duty software stack that will require some time to understand. If you try to learn any of the individual technology in isolation it can be frustrating as you have to go through long readings and there’s no guaranteed useful outcome after that , since most useful thing will involve combination of different technologies.
As I was saying, it’s best to pick up a small issue or feature in reef-pi and try to solve that and learn go /react etc along the way. Get a mentor to ensure you pick up something small , doable, related to what you want to learn and you can get help when you are stuck. Happy to help here anyway I can. If it’s not already clear I am learning electronics through reef-pi

 

[Ranjib]

I don't know why it posted it 3 times

Sometime the network or the device you are using to interact with the r2r website is slow, and multiple click (post button of a new message that you have just composed) can not coalesce and you see the result of that as multiple instances of same message in the thread. It can be considered as a minor UI bug on the forum software , as things like this is expected and the website software (post button JavaScript that runs on your device) should deal with this (it should always disable the post button immediate after a server request is dispatched)