ReefPi and RoboTank equipment questions

[Weasel1960]

@robsworld78 and @Ranjib. I am starting to draw the plans for my DIY stand and planning where equipment will go so have some questions to ask you both. My build will be a 180g tank of which 120 wi be the main display and 60 will be for seahorse tank. Will likely do all lights on same dimmable program, have separate heat controls, separate flow control, and separate temp/pH/alk testing. Questions:

1. Can I run more than 1 tank on the same power brick?
2. Can RoboTank w/ ReefPi handle more than 1 tank with a the tasks listed above and or more than 1 powerbrick or will I need 2 RoboTanks?
3. I will lily start out with a fixed monitor screen mounted to control panel. Will a RaspberryPi touch screen work ok? I am also assuming that I can use a ready made screen and don’t need to do a PC kit with another R-Pi.
4. What other planning strategies do I need on my radar?

Hope these arent dumb questions to be asking. The main thread is difficult to traverse. Would be great if you had some basic guidelines on sticky threads and your own forum here on R2R.

 

[robsworld78]

I guess it depends on how much equipment overall you have and how you want to manage the separate tanks. Reef-pi basically has no limit on how much it can control but you can't setup two dashboards or profiles so you would have to get creative with labelling sensors and equipment.

If the controller has enough ports for both tanks it will be fine as well. If you wanted to run two reef-pi's you would need two controllers / Pi's. It sounds like their will be enough ports though, you can connect up to 2 power bars or with an expansion 4 giving 32 outlets so you should be covered there.

As for a Pi touch I'm not really sure the status of it, I believe it doesn't function fully but haven't really seen a clear answer, unfortunately I don't have one to test. I believe a lot of people dedicate a laptop or tablet, I assume with the tablet the touch works as it's like a large phone, am I correct @Ranjib?

At this time you can't monitor alkalinity but pH and temp are ok.

What light do you have? It will need a PWM input to control or need to be hacked.

 

[3sgterror]

@robsworld78 and @Ranjib. I am starting to draw the plans for my DIY stand and planning where equipment will go so have some questions to ask you both. My build will be a 180g tank of which 120 wi be the main display and 60 will be for seahorse tank. Will likely do all lights on same dimmable program, have separate heat controls, separate flow control, and separate temp/pH/alk testing. Questions:

1. Can I run more than 1 tank on the same power brick?
2. Can RoboTank w/ ReefPi handle more than 1 tank with a the tasks listed above and or more than 1 powerbrick or will I need 2 RoboTanks?
3. I will lily start out with a fixed monitor screen mounted to control panel. Will a RaspberryPi touch screen work ok? I am also assuming that I can use a ready made screen and don’t need to do a PC kit with another R-Pi.
4. What other planning strategies do I need on my radar?

Hope these arent dumb questions to be asking. The main thread is difficult to traverse. Would be great if you had some basic guidelines on sticky threads and your own forum here on R2R.

I have had no real issues with using the official raspberry pi touch in in my reef-pi build. I printed a console for it and mounted it to my stand.

I have the pi3 in kiosk mode so when it boots all I see is reef-pi. The only issue that I run into is that the on-screen keyboard doesn't work in kiosk mode, at least that I can't figure it out. But that doesn't matter much to me, because once it was setup, I didn't need to adjust values. And if I need to adjust values for anything, i do it from my computer via SSH.

All other functions of fee-pi work perfect on my setup.

 

[Weasel1960]

Good info to know, thank you. Getting creative with naming convention won’t be that hard...MD_Return & SH_Return for example.

Not going to go super control mode but enough for some simple tasks and monitoring. Glad I will be able to do on 1 controller and maybe 2 power bars.

As for lighting I was planning on using the T5 Retro kit and LEDs below in my DIY canopy. All are 0-10V dimmable/controllable. Kessil also has a similar light for the refugium.

Dimmable T5 HO Miro-4 Retrofit Kit

Add to your canopy with the Dimmable Miro-4 T5 High Output Retrofit Kit from LET Lighting. Having the ability to dim your T5 lamps will give you the same dimming control of LED lighting, while having a tried and true lighting source. Retrofit kits give you the flexibility to add T5 lamps...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

A80 Tuna Blue Nano LED Light

Kessils most efficient LED module yet! The Kessil A80 is perfect for nano mixed reef tanks, most soft coral tanks, and fish only tanks too. The design of the A80 integrated the body as the actual heat sink for the module allowing for fanless operation making it totally silent. The LEDs in the...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

 

[Weasel1960]

I have had no real issues with using the official raspberry pi touch in in my reef-pi build. I printed a console for it and mounted it to my stand.

I have the pi3 in kiosk mode so when it boots all I see is reef-pi. The only issue that I run into is that the on-screen keyboard doesn't work in kiosk mode, at least that I can't figure it out. But that doesn't matter much to me, because once it was setup, I didn't need to adjust values. And if I need to adjust values for anything, i do it from my computer via SSH.

All other functions of fee-pi work perfect on my setup.

Awesome, thanks for sharing was long at their official 10.1” touch screen. The reason for my initial question was if a keyboard would be needed. Sounds lie you have a work around but I don’t know what SSH is...yet

 

[3sgterror]

Awesome, thanks for sharing was long at their official 10.1” touch screen. The reason for my initial question was if a keyboard would be needed. Sounds lie you have a work around but I don’t know what SSH is...yet

SSH is a way for your to remote into a raspberry pi. It gives you access to the console via a remote device. Its easy to do with a program called Putty that you would install on a separate computer.

You will easily learn this function if you follow the install directions for reef-pi.

Once it is setup, you could also just use a phone or tablet to make your changes also and not worry about SSH'ing in.

 

[Weasel1960]

Thanks. Can hold my own on most DIY but not very techno savvy or electronics savvy. I see a slow learning curve here but am up to the challenge.

 

[Ranjib]

We do not have lot of restrictions in reef-pi , in terms of how many equipment or sensor you can control. The limitations generally arise from CPU/memory utilization, which is also impacted by GUI (touch screen for example ) and the exact configuration (check intervals ) of the build. We do know pi zero gets morbidly sluggish when run in GUI mode , to the extent it’s unreliable.
Pi touch should be fine, just know that I don’t personally use it, hence the limited control reef-pi provides out of the box for pi touch (brightness and on/off) is not rigorously tested. But they should work, others are using it. And they should work just fine even without reef-pi providing any features specific to them .

In my experience one power bar is rarely enough for even one pico tank . With light, ato, return, power head, heater and fan , it’s already 6 outlets. Most often I will use multiple power strip for a single tank. I don’t run multiple tanks with single pi for this reason as well as to keep the failure domains separate (I.e. one pi failure won’t impact both the tanks). But just like the pi touch, there’s no reason that you won’t be able to do this. I’ll recommend taking smaller steps and validate , watch out for cpu and memory utilization . You don’t want to cross 1/3rd usage in steady state.

 

[Weasel1960]

We do not have lot of restrictions in reef-pi , in terms of how many equipment or sensor you can control. The limitations generally arise from CPU/memory utilization, which is also impacted by GUI (touch screen for example ) and the exact configuration (check intervals ) of the build. We do know pi zero gets morbidly sluggish when run in GUI mode , to the extent it’s unreliable.
Pi touch should be fine, just know that I don’t personally use it, hence the limited control reef-pi provides out of the box for pi touch (brightness and on/off) is not rigorously tested. But they should work, others are using it. And they should work just fine even without reef-pi providing any features specific to them .

In my experience one power bar is rarely enough for even one pico tank . With light, ato, return, power head, heater and fan , it’s already 6 outlets. Most often I will use multiple power strip for a single tank. I don’t run multiple tanks with single pi for this reason as well as to keep the failure domains separate (I.e. one pi failure won’t impact both the tanks). But just like the pi touch, there’s no reason that you won’t be able to do this. I’ll recommend taking smaller steps and validate , watch out for cpu and memory utilization . You don’t want to cross 1/3rd usage in steady state.

Thanks for the reply Ranjib. It will still be several months before I start the actual build but my plan would be to test everything for a week or so with plain water just to run it through the hoops before going full salt, rock, sand, etc.

 

[robsworld78]

Good info to know, thank you. Getting creative with naming convention won’t be that hard...MD_Return & SH_Return for example.

Not going to go super control mode but enough for some simple tasks and monitoring. Glad I will be able to do on 1 controller and maybe 2 power bars.

As for lighting I was planning on using the T5 Retro kit and LEDs below in my DIY canopy. All are 0-10V dimmable/controllable. Kessil also has a similar light for the refugium.

Dimmable T5 HO Miro-4 Retrofit Kit

Add to your canopy with the Dimmable Miro-4 T5 High Output Retrofit Kit from LET Lighting. Having the ability to dim your T5 lamps will give you the same dimming control of LED lighting, while having a tried and true lighting source. Retrofit kits give you the flexibility to add T5 lamps...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

A80 Tuna Blue Nano LED Light

Kessils most efficient LED module yet! The Kessil A80 is perfect for nano mixed reef tanks, most soft coral tanks, and fish only tanks too. The design of the A80 integrated the body as the actual heat sink for the module allowing for fanless operation making it totally silent. The LEDs in the...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

Those lights will be easy to control, there's 8 outputs available but more can be added.

 

[Weasel1960]

Those lights will be easy to control, there's 8 outputs available but more can be added.

Good to know Rob, thanks for the reply.

 

[markfmvl]

We do not have lot of restrictions in reef-pi , in terms of how many equipment or sensor you can control. The limitations generally arise from CPU/memory utilization, which is also impacted by GUI (touch screen for example ) and the exact configuration (check intervals ) of the build. We do know pi zero gets morbidly sluggish when run in GUI mode , to the extent it’s unreliable.
Pi touch should be fine, just know that I don’t personally use it, hence the limited control reef-pi provides out of the box for pi touch (brightness and on/off) is not rigorously tested. But they should work, others are using it. And they should work just fine even without reef-pi providing any features specific to them .

In my experience one power bar is rarely enough for even one pico tank . With light, ato, return, power head, heater and fan , it’s already 6 outlets. Most often I will use multiple power strip for a single tank. I don’t run multiple tanks with single pi for this reason as well as to keep the failure domains separate (I.e. one pi failure won’t impact both the tanks). But just like the pi touch, there’s no reason that you won’t be able to do this. I’ll recommend taking smaller steps and validate , watch out for cpu and memory utilization . You don’t want to cross 1/3rd usage in steady state.

Is it possible to use reefkeeper powerbars on a reefpi?

 

[Ranjib]

Is it possible to use reefkeeper powerbars on a reefpi?

I dont know. I dont have one, and not aware of anyone trying it out. It will depend a lot on how its built etc. Most likely this wont be easy. But i know folks hack the heck out of things ;-), i recently saw a vertex cerebra (??) powerbar retrofitted to control using a reef-pi, so you never know...