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

[Ranjib]

this rainbow challice is almost 6 years old. its one of my very first coral ... i has dozens of mouth now.. back when i first got it, it had only two heads

macro...

same coral in 2017,

 

[elysics]

I opened a pack, calibrated 7. Hit done. Readied pack of 10 fluid, couldn't calibrate it and since it's a pouch I couldn't set it down. Had to open another package of 7, calibrate 7, and then immediately calibrate another pouch of 10.

This one doesn't use a powder mixed with ro/di to make the solution.

You should use some kind of cup or glass or tube as a stand to put those packets in once open, like a specimen cup that's hanging in your tank for temperature stability for example, or even just a glass on your desk, much more comfortable and stressfree.

And in general, making calibrating both at the same time an optional thing is a weird solution, how often do people hit done by accident when they are not in fact done calibrating (at least after the first time when they learned/ read that that is a bad idea)? If one value has drifted, then in all likelihood both have, so only calibrating one of the two makes pretty much never sense, unless you clicked the done button by accident.

 

[Ranjib]

You should use some kind of cup or glass or tube as a stand to put those packets in once open, like a specimen cup that's hanging in your tank for temperature stability for example, or even just a glass on your desk, much more comfortable and stressfree.

And in general, making calibrating both at the same time an optional thing is a weird solution, how often do people hit done by accident when they are not in fact done calibrating (at least after the first time when they learned/ read that that is a bad idea)? If one value has drifted, then in all likelihood both have, so only calibrating one of the two makes pretty much never sense, unless you clicked the done button by

Should we change the calibration ui behavior ? Instead let user specify both observed and expected value ?

 

[elysics]

Should we change the calibration ui behavior ? Instead let user specify both observed and expected value ?

I guess what i would do is change the done button to say "Abort" when you open the menu and have that change to "Finish" once you calibrated both points, and have it only save to database in the second case. That would probably cause less confusion. Calibrating the first point and not the second one and then forgetting about it is what i would want to avoid, could be dangerous if there's stuff controlled based on ph

 

[Sral]

Should we change the calibration ui behavior ? Instead let user specify both observed and expected value ?

Since the whole thing is done with modularity in mind, I think it should be a possibility, that would make it easier to be used for other sensors as well. There are also calibration fluids that come at values other than 4.0, 7.0 and 10.0, so would be helpful there as well.

Similar to elysics idea you could change the button label and color based on the amount of points you have calibrated and/or display a message saying "x of 3 points calibrated". Not sure how it looks right now, but I think you should always have both Save and Cancel button in case you drop your last pH solution or something.
So I'm thinking something like:
- no point calibrated: red cancel - disabled save - red message: "0 of 3 points calibrated"
- one point calibrated: red cancel - normal save - orange message "1 of 3 points calibrated"
- 2+3 point calibrated: normal cancel - green save - green message "X of 3 points calibrated"

 

[KonradTO]

Since the whole thing is done with modularity in mind, I think it should be a possibility, that would make it easier to be used for other sensors as well. There are also calibration fluids that come at values other than 4.0, 7.0 and 10.0, so would be helpful there as well.

Similar to elysics idea you could change the button label and color based on the amount of points you have calibrated and/or display a message saying "x of 3 points calibrated". Not sure how it looks right now, but I think you should always have both Save and Cancel button in case you drop your last pH solution or something.
So I'm thinking something like:
- no point calibrated: red cancel - disabled save - red message: "0 of 3 points calibrated"
- one point calibrated: red cancel - normal save - orange message "1 of 3 points calibrated"
- 2+3 point calibrated: normal cancel - green save - green message "X of 3 points calibrated"

I never tried but today I will get my ph probe. Can't you already specify the ph value of the calibrating solution? Or you can only calibrate to 4, 7 and 10?

 

[SilverBulletPRN]

Calibrated the pH probe without any issues, the UI seemed pretty intuitive

 

[Simonv92]

Hi @Ranjib, I’ve a quick question: using a macro can I set a delay between 2 outputs? I mean.. I have return pump and skimmer pump. On every controller restart (for example after a power outage) I want my skimmer pump to start 1 minute after the return pump… or when I turn off the return pump it’ll shut off also the skimmer pump… is that possibile? Thank you!!
simone

 

[DWKDiver]

I used a float switch to do this. Float in sump a bit above normal water level. If the level is high then Skimmer is turned off, as in a restart as the return pump was off and now starts pumping water out off the sump. When the float drops the Skimmer turns on.

Hope this helps.

 

[elysics]

Just randomly looked at the github page and found a new release

The dreaded messed up graph timelines bug on reload with datapoints jumping back and forth seems to be gone. 2 scheduled DC motor dosers worked fine sof far which they didn't in 5.2.

Great work

 

[elysics]

Edited the ph stuff out from the previous post because i was still figuring stuff out switching between 5.1 and 5.3

but in 5.3, theres definitely some weirdness going on with the ph module.

All graphs go from left to right, so older data points to the left and newer data points to the right. Except for pH which goes the other way around. Both on the configuration that was carried over from 5.1 and a newly created one.

 

[Ranjib]

Edited the ph stuff out from the previous post because i was still figuring stuff out switching between 5.1 and 5.3

but in 5.3, theres definitely some weirdness going on with the ph module.

All graphs go from left to right, so older data points to the left and newer data points to the right. Except for pH which goes the other way around. Both on the configuration that was carried over from 5.1 and a newly created one.

thats a chart time sorting bug due to me overlooking. I think i 'll fix it and re-release 5.3. Is there any other thing you found weird/unexpected? Thank you for testing it out and taking the time to report back the issue

 

[elysics]

thats a chart time sorting bug due to me overlooking. I think i 'll fix it and re-release 5.3. Is there any other thing you found weird/unexpected? Thank you for testing it out and taking the time to report back the issue

Yeah i figured it was just a typo.

What was a remote IO error with the ph module in reefpi 5.1 is now a reported value of 0 (in the calibration menu). Not sure if that's intended, also the transform function is not applied to that 0. Calibration is applied to that 0 though, so it shows in the graph as 0.25 for me.


I kinda like the 0, means there's no missing time chunks in the graph, i just wish we could enforce graph scales

 

[elysics]

Oh and i removed a part of that comment again because i was confused with the behaviour, but yeah, transform function applies to the uncalibrated value, not the calibrated one, so with transform the raw sensor value is transformed and only after that calibrated. Probably makes sense for some transformations and not for others. Tried to have a minimum cutoff but i can still have that just have to shift the value around

 

[Ranjib]

Hive mind
I am pleased to announce the immediate availability of 5.3 . This release ships with a decent size of the changelog. Primary focus of this release was to address several UI/UX bugs around calibration , charts, control setting that was annoying. We addressed bulk of those reported issues. As usual, there was community contributions as well. Many hugs goes to the contributors. Following are the highlights:



New features and enhancements:

• Users can now specify a transform expression to be applied on raw analog sensor reading (e.g. to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit). The transform function takes the shape of an arithmatic expression with a variable "v" interpreted as the raw analog sensor value. This feature is implemented using govaluate library that allows numerical values, arithmetic operators, parenthesis and more. Check the library manual for details. Just remember that reef-pi will inject the value of "v" as raw reading in the transform expression provided.
• Doser subsystem will now emit metrics and doser charts will reflect the same
• Error summary in the footer section now links to error section in configuration tab . Users can now just click and check the details of errors conveniently. contributed by @richievos
• Footer section will now show if the controller is running in dev mode, in red as warning. We hope this makes it easy to detect cases where users inadvertently enabled dev mode.
• Footer section will now include "year" information to represent current time. My personal requirement. Now after running reef-pi for 5+ years i miss the years in older screenshots. I felt given reef tanks last years.. it makes sense to have the year info in footer. Any screenshot that way will be amortized
• Driver loading error will be logged under errors section for users to review and assess. No more silent driver failures. Kasa powerstrip load failure like cases were harder to detect due to this. We hope this will make it easier for users to detect driver issues (since it also has timestamp, other than the exact error details).
• Connectors addition/update operation will now prompt only relevant driver choices (e.g. analog connectors will show only drivers with analog input pins in the driver options). Before this all drivers were being listed. This is a small user experience enhancements, suggested by another community member.

Chores

• Equipment entries will show outlet name (restoring older behavior)
• Get rid of spurious log section in the UI. It was there to capture UI errors and causes confusion with Configuration -> Errors tab.

Bug fixes

• Fixed doser calibration bug. Support volume based stepper motor calibration. Make calibration UI reflective of doser type (speed, duration for dcpumps and volume for steppers)
• Sort chart data with timestamp across all entities (ph, temperatures, ato etc). Unsorted data was causing bogus charts where new data would not line up on the time axis.
• Fix cpu usage notify target setting type.
• Make temperature target thresholds optional when control is not being used - contributed by @richievos
• Cron job validation through backend instead of ui - fix spurious cron schedule validation errors in the ui. Acceptable cron syntax like "*/3" was being rejected by UI validation. Given cron expression is rich and we have backend based validation, we decided to not do the cron syntax validation in ui and just use the backend. This is more sustainable and does not reduce the awesome cron capabilities

Release builds are available at usual location:

Release Analog sensor reading transformation · reef-pi/reef-pi

[feat] Users can now specify a transform expression to be applied on raw sensor reading (e.g. to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit) Doser subsystem will now emit metrics and doser charts will reflect...

github.com

reef-pi 4.0 or above users should be able to upgrade their installs directly through the UI. If you can please test and let us know if you have any feedback.

 

[Sral]

Hi @Ranjib , just updated from 5.2 to 5.3 and somehow the log Tab is gone. I could swear it was there before ... is there some setting to make that visible that I have missed ?

 

[Ranjib]

Hi @Ranjib , just updated from 5.2 to 5.3 and somehow the log Tab is gone. I could swear it was there before ... is there some setting to make that visible that I have missed ?

That is expected . We have removed it , as I mentioned in the release announcement. That log section was confusing , since it was only showing ui error that are transient and only for the specific browser session. The actual controller error log is under configuration section . Was there something useful for you in it ? We had to mostly for ui development

 

[Sral]

That is expected . We have removed it , as I mentioned in the release announcement. That log section was confusing , since it was only showing ui error that are transient and only for the specific browser session. The actual controller error log is under configuration section . Was there something useful for you in it ? We had to mostly for ui development

Ah, sry, should have read that more carefully XD

I looked up the UI errors that pop up, but I'm not fast enough to read+understand. Recently I had one that complained about an item ID1 ... took me a while to figure out that it was the temperature sensor that I deleted, but that was still "displayed" in the dashboard.
Maybe you can add those in the errors Tab in a future release, but give them their own section or hide them in a dropdown.

 

[dmsc2fs]

reef-pi 4.0 or above users should be able to upgrade their installs directly through the UI. If you can please test and let us know if you have any feedback.

Have any guides been posted no how to upgrade through the UI? Under Admin it says "Upgrade Reef-Pi to version" but the input box is empty and I'm not sure what would be place in it?

 

[Sral]

Just enter the desired version number

Have any guides been posted no how to upgrade through the UI? Under Admin it says "Upgrade Reef-Pi to version" but the input box is empty and I'm not sure what would be place in it?

Just enter the desired version number and hit the update button, then click ok. For me that was "5.3" (without quotation marks). It takes while to update though and it doesn't tell you when it's done.

At some point I rebooted (not sure if that's needed) afterwards it still displayed version 5.2 in the bottom of the page.
I hit update again twice and waited longer. Had a few reboots in between as well while I was testing other stuff and now it shows version 5.3

@Ranjib I would appreciate if that process would be a little more explained to the user, I felt a bit lost to whether it was doing something, or whether and when exactly I had to reboot ^^