REEF PI - REACTOR- PROBLEMS WITH THE LIGHT CONTROLLING

[RobertoRC]

Good morning,

My name is Roberto Rojas, I'm an environmental engineering student from Ecuador, I'm developing a reactor that will be controlled by the reef pi software specifically the lights, temperature and pH. The main problem I have is related with the light controlling. At first, everything worked just making a circuit to connect the lights, but then I started using a perma proto board for controlling the lights and the temperature probes. Here is were I started experiencing some problems with the light configuration, once I connect the circuit for the lights, I get this message in the reef pi. I add the jacks for each light, then I declare each light in the reef pi and it doesn't work when I reboot the software. I think that something is wrong with the PCA9685, so if you have other ideas of what I might be doing wrongReef please let me know. Here I send you some photos, and thank you in advance for your comments.

Best regards,
Roberto

 

[Bigtrout]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

A couple of things to check...wiring is first!

Is the i2c bus enabled in raspi-config?

Do you have the PCA9685 driver check box ticked in reef pi?

 

[Ranjib]

Good morning,

My name is Roberto Rojas, I'm an environmental engineering student from Ecuador, I'm developing a reactor that will be controlled by the reef pi software specifically the lights, temperature and pH. The main problem I have is related with the light controlling. At first, everything worked just making a circuit to connect the lights, but then I started using a perma proto board for controlling the lights and the temperature probes. Here is were I started experiencing some problems with the light configuration, once I connect the circuit for the lights, I get this message in the reef pi. I add the jacks for each light, then I declare each light in the reef pi and it doesn't work when I reboot the software. I think that something is wrong with the PCA9685, so if you have other ideas of what I might be doing wrongReef please let me know. Here I send you some photos, and thank you in advance for your comments.

Best regards,
Roberto

Hi Roberto,
welcome to reef2reef. I am stoked to see you started working on this. Thank you for considering reef-pi and give our warmest regards to Professor Thomas Cadenbach.
Now, on the issue at hand. You mentioned the lights were working without the perma board, this makes me think that your i2c configuration is done (rasp-config .. enable i2c) and the current problem is related to wiring/permproto board. Lets first confirm that the pca9585 board is detected or not. Can you run this command and share the output with us

i2cdetect -y 1

Lets also double check the wiring. If i understand correctly you are using blue wire for both GND as well as PWM. Can you power down the build and run check for continuity with multimeter, from the scl pin of pi/perma proto board to the pca9685 board? do the same for sda, gnd and 5v connection. This will reveal if the connections are indeed correct.

 

[crusso1993]

Welcome to R2R, Roberto.

 

[RobertoRC]

Hi all, thank you for your feedback!!

So the raspi configuration is ok, also I double checked the wiring with the multimeter and everything seems alright. Here is the output I got from the code you sent me.
Thanks again to all of you!

 

[Ranjib]

Hi all, thank you for your feedback!!

So the raspi configuration is ok, also I double checked the wiring with the multimeter and everything seems alright. Here is the output I got from the code you sent me.
Thanks again to all of you!

So, as we suspected , the pca9685 is not being detected. This is either a wiring issue or the pca9685 has gone bad. Check if you can get it working without the perma Proto board, I.e. directly connected with pi. That will confirm if it’s wiring or the board has gone bad

 

[RobertoRC]

Hi Ranjib, so I connected the PCA9685 to the Pi and it worked, so it seems its the perma proto board problem. Here I send you the photos of the board, I think something is happening with the SDA SCL connection, I want to use the board for the light controlling and for the temperature probes. What can I do to fix this? Thanks a lot for your help so far.

 

[Bigtrout]

Looks like you may have some bad solder joints possibly, dont see much solder thru the holes where your sda and scl wires are soldered. Check continuity of all your wires from end to end to see where the bad connection may be

 

[RobertoRC]

Right now Im trying to configure the without the proto board, just using the pins form the Pi directly and I keep having the same problem. So I dont think is just a proto board problem. Thanks for your feedback!

 

[RobertoRC]

Right now Im trying to configure the pca9685 without the proto board, just using the pins form the Pi directly and I keep having the same problem. So I dont think is just a proto board problem. Thanks for your feedback!

 

[RobertoRC]

Hi all!

So these days I have been checking the wiring and the continuity of the circuit and changed the soldering in the parts that could be a problem, I also got a new PCA9685 just to be sure that is not the problem and the lights are still not working. I also changed the scl and sda connections to be sure that it is soldered properly checking continuity and I keep having the same issues, it seems that the RPi is not recognizing the PCA9685 and Im not sure why is that happening. At this time it doesnt even show that there is an error in the reef pi. I also even connected it just with the pins of the RPi and run the code you have given me and I got the same output a the last time. At this point Im not sure what could be the issue! Thanks all in advance for your recommendations.

 

[Bigtrout]

Lets start with basics...
1. Check continuity from sda pin on pi to sda pin on pca9685.
2. Check the same end to end on scl pin
3 Check that the scl and sda are not shorted to each other.

Report results

 

[RobertoRC]

I have it in 1000 Hz!

 

[Bigtrout]

Re-read my post above

 

[RobertoRC]

1. Check continuity from sda pin on pi to sda pin on pca9685. Checked! the continuiy between these are fine
2. Check the same end to end on scl pin. Checked! the continuiy between these are fine
3 Check that the scl and sda are not shorted to each other. Checked! they are not shorted

 

[Bigtrout]

If thats all good we have to figure out why its not on the i2c bus.

You have i2c enabled, but I see you also have SPI enabled, disable that in raspi-config.

Then reboot and try these 2 commands and see if the pca9685 has an address.

i2cdetect -y 1
i2cdetect -y 0

Which raspberry pi are you running? A 3b or a pi zero w?

 

[RobertoRC]

I disabled the SPI as you said, I still got the same output and these time I'm connecting the PCA9685 directly to the pins in the Raspberry PI 3b.

 

[Bigtrout]

If the connections are correct and the pi womt recognize it, its either a bad pca9685 or the pins on the pi are burn out

 

[RobertoRC]

So I have tried to connect directly from the RPi pins 4 different PCA9685 boards and none of them have worked. So I dont think its a PCA problem, also the 5v and GND pins on the RPi are working fine because it gives power to the screen and the PCA so, how can I check if just the SDA and SCL are burn out? Thank a lot for your feedback!

 

[SDchris]

Switch them to high and check with a multimeter.

how can I check if just the SDA and SCL are burn out?