Reef-pi with ML hat and viparspectra controller issue

[waynel]

Hi. I'm building my reef-pi using the ML hat and his viparspectra controller to hopefully control my two 165w viparspectra lights. The lights are new and work fine out of the box. My reef-pi and ML hat are working with great an ADJ power strip, three temp sensors, and some float sensors for ATO and overflow warning. I've wired up the viparspectra controller to the Light1 connector using gnd, pin 13, and pin 14. I added the PCA9685 driver to reef-pi using address 64 and a frequency of 150 (default, I think). The lights do not come on when I set either/both channels to anything above 0. I'm also not getting any voltage on pins 13/14. I've checked all of my soldering and wiring for opens/shorts. I also tried switching to Light2 and pins 11/12, same result.
In playing around, I did notice that the light flickers briefly (less than a second) when I plugin the connector from the pi hat to the light controller, so it's getting a voltage very briefly it seems.

I've been emailing Michael Lane, about this, and he's giving great customer support, but thought I'd put this out here in case anyone else ran into this issue already as I sit here pondering why it's not working!

Here's some pics if it helps. I was playing around with the frequency and some other stuff to see if anything changed, so the pictures may not match exactly what I stated above:

 

[Ranjib]

If you can’t detect any voltage on the output pins then this is likely a circuit issue.

 

[waynel]

If you can’t detect any voltage on the output pins then this is likely a circuit issue.

I'll try testing at the header this time and see if there's any difference

 

[waynel]

I'll try testing at the header this time and see if there's any difference

I enabled Light1, Light2, and Light3 (all three available light connectors on the ML hat), and don't get any voltage on any of the pins (8,9, 10, 11, 12 and 13), with light output set to 100 on all lights.

And - I can't Lights to the dashboard. When I try, the page refreshes, but it reverts back to Health. Don't know if that's related.

 

[waynel]

Any way to verify that the 9685 is functional, besides what I've done already?

 

[Michael Lane]

Can you see if the PCA9685 is recognized? You’ll need i2c-tools to run these commands from the command line.

sudo apt-get install i2c-tools

If you have that software installed, you can run the following command to scan the i2c bus.

sudo i2cdetect -y 1

The PCA9685 should be on address 0x40. You should see something like the following.

 

[waynel]

@Michael Lane - Thank you. I'll try that this evening and let you know the results. You said the PCA9685 should be on address 0x40, however, in an earlier email you said it's on address 64. for 0x40, I'm assuming that hex so it would be 64 in decimal (base10). If reefpi's config, do I enter 40 or 64? Maybe that's my issue?

 

[Michael Lane]

@Michael Lane - Thank you. I'll try that this evening and let you know the results. You said the PCA9685 should be on address 0x40, however, in an earlier email you said it's on address 64. for 0x40, I'm assuming that hex so it would be 64 in decimal (base10). If reefpi's config, do I enter 40 or 64? Maybe that's my issue?

Your assumptions is correct (0x40 = 64). reef-pi expects it to be entered as a decimal value, so I don't think that's the issue based on previous screenshots.

 

[waynel]

@Michael Lane -
sudo i2cdetect -y 1

results in:
Error: Could not open file `/dev/i2c-1' or `/dev/i2c/1': No such file or directory

 

[waynel]

I may have it. I googled the error I got above, and it's recommended to add this to the /boot/config.txt:

dtparam=i2c1=on


I did that, rebooted, and now:
sudo i2cdetect -y 1

results in the output you said I should get. I'm getting ready to test with the lights.

 

[Michael Lane]

Exactly! You can also enable i2c using rasp-config if you don't want to edit a configuration file directly.

sudo raspi-config

 

[waynel]

The lights and reef-pi are working great so far. Need to get one more viparspectra and add to the setup. Need to enable the alerts in reef-pi and see about configuring it to securely access it away from home.