reef-pi :: An opensource reef tank controller based on Raspberry Pi.

[i_declare_bankruptcy]

Was wondering if you guys have messed with this before:

Gen 2 Electrically Isolated USB EZO™ Carrier Board | Atlas Scientific

The Gen 2 Electrically Isolated USB EZO™ Carrier Board Allows you to connect your Atlas Scientific circuit directly to your computer or Raspberry Pi.

www.atlas-scientific.com

Converts straight from BNC to USB. Not cheap though. I was thinking of picking a few up and trying to make a sort of modular plug-n-play monitoring system (I am shying away from the breadboards for now lol).

The adapter says it's compatible with their 'EZO' line but it appears just to be a BNC interface. So I'm not sure if it will work with other probes or not -- and their branding/marketing is so terrible it's pretty hard to determine what, exactly, that thing works with anyways (they have different colored PCBs in their marketing to demonstrate the products it works with yet you can only order one color PCB for that adapter).

 

[Ranjib]

Was wondering if you guys have messed with this before:

Gen 2 Electrically Isolated USB EZO™ Carrier Board | Atlas Scientific

The Gen 2 Electrically Isolated USB EZO™ Carrier Board Allows you to connect your Atlas Scientific circuit directly to your computer or Raspberry Pi.

www.atlas-scientific.com

Converts straight from BNC to USB. Not cheap though. I was thinking of picking a few up and trying to make a sort of modular plug-n-play monitoring system (I am shying away from the breadboards for now lol).

The adapter says it's compatible with their 'EZO' line but it appears just to be a BNC interface. So I'm not sure if it will work with other probes or not -- and their branding/marketing is so terrible it's pretty hard to determine what, exactly, that thing works with anyways (they have different colored PCBs in their marketing to demonstrate the products it works with yet you can only order one color PCB for that adapter).

This is the same thing with USB adapter. It may make the circuit little easier (though ezo circuit only needs female female jumpers) but its pricy. 51$ just for the carrier+voltage isolator, add actual ezo circuit, which 40$, so 90$ just on the ciruit. Its almist 3 times more expensive that ph board and 20$ than the stock ezo circuit. You loose an usb port, which is generally useful for setup /troubleshooting etc.

The plug and play format is pretty nice. I 'll check out the driver. I am hesitant to add USB based drivers due to their smaller ecosystem, but if theres more apetite for it.. then why not.

 

[Ranjib]

Amazon product

I've got 2 of these. They go on sale from time to time, I grabbed them when they were $20 each.

I also have a Nest cam (mostly for the dog ). The Nest picture is better, but they're not in the same $$ category. For $24 it's hard, if not impossible, to beat the Wyze.

Amazon product
Amazon product
Amazon product


Let me know how it goes. I'm using wyze currently. I keep looking for RTSP support, so i may switch to something else in future

 

[peejay]

Honestly, if you can, I would return the pi camera and grab a Wyze from amazon for $24. You will get a more robust camera, with better picture and controls than the pi cam.

I've tried to use the pi cam in 2.4 and it was a huge serource hog and was not worth the problems it caused though the resource drain.

I'd be surprised if there is more than a handful of people that use that functionality of the pi, because there simply much better options out there ie. Wyze.

Unfortunately I cant use a wifi camera in my setup. I have some Wyze cameras and agree they are very good.

 

[raketemensch]

Woo, @Michael Lane has hats back in stock, I ordered one this morning.

ML reef-pi hat goby by ML Reefkeeping on Tindie

ML reef-pi breakout hat for aquariums (goby)

www.tindie.com

 

[Octocat]

Woo, @Michael Lane has hats back in stock, I ordered one this morning.

ML reef-pi hat goby by ML Reefkeeping on Tindie

ML reef-pi breakout hat for aquariums (goby)

www.tindie.com

Thanks for the reminder- I just ordered one as well!

Also, huge thanks to @Ranjib, @Michael Lane, and everyone else contributing to the reef-pi project! I set mine up using the guides on adafruit, and have been up and running for a few months with little trouble.

That said, I am running into one problem that I really don't know how to solve. I run metal halide lighting with two 250-watt IceCap ballasts. The problem is, whenever the lights are on, I stop getting readings from my temperate sensors, and my ph probes give inaccurate readings (using interfaces from @Michael Lane). The affect is immediate when the lights come on. This is not a stray voltage in the tank issue, rather is seems the ballasts create some interference across the power line. I was hoping someone might have some insight into what is happening here.

 

[Ranjib]

Thanks for the reminder- I just ordered one as well!

Also, huge thanks to @Ranjib, @Michael Lane, and everyone else contributing to the reef-pi project! I set mine up using the guides on adafruit, and have been up and running for a few months with little trouble.

That said, I am running into one problem that I really don't know how to solve. I run metal halide lighting with two 250-watt IceCap ballasts. The problem is, whenever the lights are on, I stop getting readings from my temperate sensors, and my ph probes give inaccurate readings (using interfaces from @Michael Lane). The affect is immediate when the lights come on. This is not a stray voltage in the tank issue, rather is seems the ballasts create some interference across the power line. I was hoping someone might have some insight into what is happening here.

Anyway you can isolate the power line from rest of the setup. i.e. run the lights from a separate socket/extension?

 

[buddy.]

Thanks for the reminder- I just ordered one as well!

Also, huge thanks to @Ranjib, @Michael Lane, and everyone else contributing to the reef-pi project! I set mine up using the guides on adafruit, and have been up and running for a few months with little trouble.

That said, I am running into one problem that I really don't know how to solve. I run metal halide lighting with two 250-watt IceCap ballasts. The problem is, whenever the lights are on, I stop getting readings from my temperate sensors, and my ph probes give inaccurate readings (using interfaces from @Michael Lane). The affect is immediate when the lights come on. This is not a stray voltage in the tank issue, rather is seems the ballasts create some interference across the power line. I was hoping someone might have some insight into what is happening here.

I had the exact same problem. As soon as I turned on the MH it would knock out all of my sensors. My solution was to go to LEDs in the end.

 

[daveCB]

Ranjib - I will be creating a new thread for my Reef-Pi re-build. My original implementation was a complete DIY hat. Its been working very well for a year, but I now have invested in Mikes Reef-Pi Hat Goby and also the Mars-Aqua board. I am looking forward to the rebuild and will have some questions.

Concerning V3, I have a question; What are Jacks vs Inlets and Outlets? Super simple question that I can not seem to locate an answer for. When would you use Jacks as opposed to the other two?

 

[dmolavi]

Happy Holidays everyone!!

I posted this on the slack channel, but there doesn't seem to be much (non-bot) traffic there.

I have a lot of time off and want to get the DLI Web Switch Pro working in ReefPi. The TPLink addition actually makes this a lot easier (DLIs authentication is simpler, and the interface is all RESTful, so it shouldn't be too hard).

But, I can't find any docs anywhere on how to get a dev environment setup that will allow for this. I see the standard dev environment docs, but doing a make/etc doesn't seem to pull in anything new that I do. What additional steps do I need to do?

Thanks

 

[hhaase]

I wonder, for those having issues with the halides and such, if a isolation transformer on the lamps may be what you need? Pretty common piece of equipment in older arcade games and pinball machines, they are used to isolate the control electronics from the CRT tubes of the TV's.

-Hans

 

[Octocat]

Anyway you can isolate the power line from rest of the setup. i.e. run the lights from a separate socket/extension?

I tried running an extension cord into my kitchen to see if a running off a different circuit would fix the problem. Unfortunately, it did not

I had the exact same problem. As soon as I turned on the MH it would knock out all of my sensors. My solution was to go to LEDs in the end.

The thought has crossed my mind. As is, I can't use the pi as a heater controller, which is a big problem. But, I'd really like to make the halides work.

I wonder, for those having issues with the halides and such, if a isolation transformer on the lamps may be what you need? Pretty common piece of equipment in older arcade games and pinball machines, they are used to isolate the control electronics from the CRT tubes of the TV's.

-Hans

Thanks for sharing this! If I end up finding a solution, I'll be sure to share it here.

 

[Ranjib]

I tried running an extension cord into my kitchen to see if a running off a different circuit would fix the problem. Unfortunately, it did not



The thought has crossed my mind. As is, I can't use the pi as a heater controller, which is a big problem. But, I'd really like to make the halides work.



Thanks for sharing this! If I end up finding a solution, I'll be sure to share it here.

Curious, why you are not able to use reef-pi for heater control

 

[Ranjib]

I wonder, for those having issues with the halides and such, if a isolation transformer on the lamps may be what you need? Pretty common piece of equipment in older arcade games and pinball machines, they are used to isolate the control electronics from the CRT tubes of the TV's.

-Hans

Yeah, thats one option. I would also start researching what we can do from reef-pi circuit side to contain this risk

 

[Ranjib]

Happy Holidays everyone!!

I posted this on the slack channel, but there doesn't seem to be much (non-bot) traffic there.

I have a lot of time off and want to get the DLI Web Switch Pro working in ReefPi. The TPLink addition actually makes this a lot easier (DLIs authentication is simpler, and the interface is all RESTful, so it shouldn't be too hard).

But, I can't find any docs anywhere on how to get a dev environment setup that will allow for this. I see the standard dev environment docs, but doing a make/etc doesn't seem to pull in anything new that I do. What additional steps do I need to do?

Thanks

I responded in the slack channels. Treat these communication mediums as asynchronous . I'll repeat my suggestion here,
The development guide is linked in the website, as well as in the github repo/readme. Its here: https://reef-pi.github.io/additional-documentation/development/
Take a look at the tplink driver for example, all you need to do is support hal.DigitalOutputDriver interface... https://github.com/reef-pi/drivers/tree/master/tplink

Best course is to write some go, put it in a github repo, and share it with us, so that we can help you by providing specific advice relevant to your code

 

[raketemensch]

I responded in the slack channels. Treat these communication mediums as asynchronous . I'll repeat my suggestion here,
The development guide is linked in the website, as well as in the github repo/readme. Its here: https://reef-pi.github.io/additional-documentation/development/
Take a look at the tplink driver for example, all you need to do is support hal.DigitalOutputDriver interface... https://github.com/reef-pi/drivers/tree/master/tplink

Best course is to write some go, put it in a github repo, and share it with us, so that we can help you by providing specific advice relevant to your code

Thanks for the additional links, I’m going to set up an environment tomorrow in hopes of getting more explicit logging.

it appears that the Slack invitation link in github has expired.

 

[Octocat]

Curious, why you are not able to use reef-pi for heater control

I should have been more clear. Reef-pi works fine as a heater controller with the halides off. But, with them on, there is no temperature input for it to use

 

[daveCB]

Link to my build thread - I will be posting photos shortly.

DaveBs Reef-Pi Build

 

[Bigtrout]

Yeah, thats one option. I would also start researching what we can do from reef-pi circuit side to contain this risk

One thing that may help is shielded cables on sensitive circuits. Unfortunately we dont know what type of interference is going on with the halides.
It could be emf interference which good grounding and shileding practices would help with. It could also be harmonic inteference which is being put back thru the AC mains which is harder to deal with...but isolation transformers as was mentioned a few posts back is a possibility.
When my Beamswork LED power supplies went south they were throwing both types of interference and because my temp probes use shielded cables it only affected them intermittently. The ph probe was affected big time because it is only reading millivolt level signals. My cable router was affected as well because it was plugged into the same circuit.
New quality power bricks for the beamswork led lights were an instant solution in my case.

Because interference can be so difficult to track down, we need to take a methodical approach to identify what we are dealing with.

So my first questions are:
What type of ballasts are the MH lights using?
Is it electronic or electromagnetic(more likely)?

Are the lights themselves grounded and shielded properly?

From what I read so far the lights cause issues when they turn on. Once the metal halide lamps are warmed up to full brightness does the interference go away?

I know that electronic ballasts made in china tend to bypass FCC testing and cause problems in commercial applications.

This may be a bit technical for most but here is a good article on the subject:

Grow Light RFI Kits - Palomar Engineers®

Grow Light RFI Kit for Digital Ballast To suppress interference to neighbors and nearby electronic devices, we suggest a RFI-BALLAST kit with 1 ring filter on the AC input and another on the ballast lamp output side for each grow light ballast used. (e.g. 20 ballasts = 20 RFI-BALLAST kits...

palomar-engineers.com

 

[Bzar]

How do we, or is there a way to make a macro/timer repeat itself? For example I want to turn an equipment on for 5 seconds, turn off for 120 seconds, on for 5 seconds, off for 120 seconds, and do that for 5 hours. Is there a way to do that with macro's and timers? I see in dosers there's duration and what not, but can't figure how to get it working outside dosing. I can't seem to make it work :/