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

[natebatey]

That looks like the IP of your gateway (router), and port 53 is a DNS request (you can confirm by running 'ipconfig' on your laptop, and it will show the same IP as the default gateway). So it's trying to get the IP of io.adafruit.com and failing. This looks like the rPi is being blocked by a firewall. What happens when you SSH onto the rPi and try and ping google.com or io.adafruit.com? I'm guessing you'll get the same error.

Ok, I will try the ping when I get home. Does it make sense that other io channels work fine it’s just the equipments that give the error? I’m guessing there is a different “call” method for the equipments because it’s a two-way communication? And just to clarify, it’s not really looking for an actual IP address for adafruit io per se, it’s looking for a “route” to go through to connect to it? Also, if what you are saying about a firewall blocking it is true then I assume that I can go into the router and set a rule to allow it to pass through? Thanks for your help!

 

[biznatch]

Ok, I will try the ping when I get home. Does it make sense that other io channels work fine it’s just the equipments that give the error? I’m guessing there is a different “call” method for the equipments because it’s a two-way communication? And just to clarify, it’s not really looking for an actual IP address for adafruit io per se, it’s looking for a “route” to go through to connect to it? Also, if what you are saying about a firewall blocking it is true then I assume that I can go into the router and set a rule to allow it to pass through? Thanks for your help!

Port 53 is for DNS calls, which is always the first step. It converts the human readable URL to the IP for the computer to use. It doesn't matter what API endpoint you're hitting, since the DNS call is to the domain itself. If there was an issue with the API/endpoint, the DNS call would succeed, but you would get an HTTP error (like a 404 not found) on port 443, not a network error on 53. 2 way communication would still make a DNS call on 53, then use that IP to connect on 443 and open a web socket for the return calls. But your error shows it's failing log before that.

 

[natebatey]

Port 53 is for DNS calls, which is always the first step. It converts the human readable URL to the IP for the computer to use. It doesn't matter what API endpoint you're hitting, since the DNS call is to the domain itself. If there was an issue with the API/endpoint, the DNS call would succeed, but you would get an HTTP error (like a 404 not found) on port 443, not a network error on 53. 2 way communication would still make a DNS call on 53, then use that IP to connect on 443 and open a web socket for the return calls. But your error shows it's failing log before that.

Hmm…. Well I checked the firewall on the router and it’s off. I also pinged io.adafruit.com and google.com from ssh into the pi and they both pinged fine with 0% packet loss. Clearly something is stopping reef-pi. If you have any other ideas I’d appreciate more help. Does the modem possibly have a firewall? It is a different modem than what I used before. Or maybe some other obscure setting on the modem. I still wonder why some of the channels go through fine but the equipments fail. I appreciate you help, thanks.

 

[biznatch]

Hmm…. Well I checked the firewall on the router and it’s off. I also pinged io.adafruit.com and google.com from ssh into the pi and they both pinged fine with 0% packet loss. Clearly something is stopping reef-pi. If you have any other ideas I’d appreciate more help. Does the modem possibly have a firewall? It is a different modem than what I used before. Or maybe some other obscure setting on the modem. I still wonder why some of the channels go through fine but the equipments fail. I appreciate you help, thanks.

If you can ping it from the rPi itself and get an IP/reponse, then it doesn't sound like a firewall blocking it, as that does a DNS lookup as part of the steps prior to sending out the ICMP calls. So I'm actually at a loss here. It's making the call to your gateway, so it's not like the BS home assistant pulled by hardcoding DNS calls to a 3rd party IP which might be blocked. I would attempt the tried and true 'turn it off and on again' to see if that clears any caching going on and restarts all processes, including reefpi.

 

[natebatey]

If you can ping it from the rPi itself and get an IP/reponse, then it doesn't sound like a firewall blocking it, as that does a DNS lookup as part of the steps prior to sending out the ICMP calls. So I'm actually at a loss here. It's making the call to your gateway, so it's not like the BS home assistant pulled by hardcoding DNS calls to a 3rd party IP which might be blocked. I would attempt the tried and true 'turn it off and on again' to see if that clears any caching going on and restarts all processes, including reefpi.

ok, thanks anyway. I've tried that also. I saw a message on the io.adafruit site that said they had made some changes to the api and wondered if that was causing an issue, but if no one else has experienced it then it's probably just something on my end.

 

[Simonv92]

Hi all! today during some maintenance I've disconnected the sump temp probe.
After that the heater kicks on without any control. There's a way to disable the temperature control when the sensor goes bad? Thank you!

 

[iamdan]

Hi all! today during some maintenance I've disconnected the sump temp probe.
After that the heater kicks on without any control. There's a way to disable the temperature control when the sensor goes bad? Thank you!

In reef-pi itself I don’t think it’s possible however for my use case I have reef-pi connected into home assistant so you could create an automation for it there

 

[Broady2067]

How have you connect it to home assistant.

 

[BenB]

Hi all! today during some maintenance I've disconnected the sump temp probe.
After that the heater kicks on without any control. There's a way to disable the temperature control when the sensor goes bad? Thank you!

When you disconnect the sensor the temperature signal will most likely drop to zero degrees celsius. What you can do is under the temp tab create a new item. Select the sensor. Under control you can add a macro (first create a macro to turn off the heater) then use the chiller function, put it to 1 degree celsius, and select the macro. You can test is when disconnecting the sensor.

 

[iamdan]

How have you connect it to home assistant.

GitHub - tdragon/reef-pi-hass-custom: Reef Pi integration for Home Assistant

Reef Pi integration for Home Assistant. Contribute to tdragon/reef-pi-hass-custom development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Simonv92]

When you disconnect the sensor the temperature signal will most likely drop to zero degrees celsius. What you can do is under the temp tab create a new item. Select the sensor. Under control you can add a macro (first create a macro to turn off the heater) then use the chiller function, put it to 1 degree celsius, and select the macro. You can test is when disconnecting the sensor.

Thank you @BenB! that's exactly what I want! If someone would like to replicate this setup if you set the macro as reversible it will re-enabe the temp control automatically when you reconnect the sensor.
I'll also connect my Reef-Pi to home assistant but I want to use it only as "monitoring" device, I would like to have all the important control running only on Reef-Pi without relying on the operation of the HA server..

 

[biznatch]

Thank you @BenB! that's exactly what I want! If someone would like to replicate this setup if you set the macro as reversible it will re-enabe the temp control automatically when you reconnect the sensor.
I'll also connect my Reef-Pi to home assistant but I want to use it only as "monitoring" device, I would like to have all the important control running only on Reef-Pi without relying on the operation of the HA server..

The connection to reefpi is done by the HACS integration. All that does is connect to the reef-pi API. Everything is still done by reef-pi, this just gives external access to monitor/control through HA.

FYI though, enabling this does appear to cause the PH sensor to randomly report almost 0 throughout the day. At this point I've stopped using the HA integration and just use the reefpi UI for everything.

 

[iamdan]

Thank you @BenB! that's exactly what I want! If someone would like to replicate this setup if you set the macro as reversible it will re-enabe the temp control automatically when you reconnect the sensor.
I'll also connect my Reef-Pi to home assistant but I want to use it only as "monitoring" device, I would like to have all the important control running only on Reef-Pi without relying on the operation of the HA server..

When connecting to HA you don’t lose the ability to control from reef-pi directly you can still use one of the other

 

[iamdan]

The connection to reefpi is done by the HACS integration. All that does is connect to the reef-pi API. Everything is still done by reef-pi, this just gives external access to monitor/control through HA.

FYI though, enabling this does appear to cause the PH sensor to randomly report almost 0 throughout the day. At this point I've stopped using the HA integration and just use the reefpi UI for everything.

There’s an option now to disable the HA integration ph reading via the reef-pi integration > configure - I disabled that and pull in the ph readings via MQTT and it avoids that problem

 

[Thestooge1]

I've read on this thread about the "Composite" PWM Profile. It is usable? In this way we can solve all our complex to use the same channel during the day but also as moonlight...

@Simonv92
Reading through this thread, it seems that you have pretty much gotten the Blurays to work, correct?
I have 3 of the Bluray Pros, but 2 of them have dead airlinks (their ethernet ports were plugged into a switch and they instantly died).
I just finished changing my pool controls over to a raspberry pi running Nodejs-poolcontroller, so I bought a couple of these MOSFET hats to try to build a controller for these lights.
Home, Industrial & Building Automation I/O HATS for Raspberry Pi (sequentmicrosystems.com)
Each hat can handle "Four High Current Loads, 12A/24VDC, Four High Voltage Loads, 2A/240VDC, and PWM at 1kHz on all outputs."

I've worked with switching as well as relays quite a bit, but this is my first project using MOSFET.
I am planning on using Home Assistant as the front end as that's I'm currently running to tie all my home automation together.

Do you have any suggestions before I get started? Thanks so much for documenting all you have. Any suggestions are super appreciated!!!

 

[Simonv92]

@Simonv92
Reading through this thread, it seems that you have pretty much gotten the Blurays to work, correct?
I have 3 of the Bluray Pros, but 2 of them have dead airlinks (their ethernet ports were plugged into a switch and they instantly died).
I just finished changing my pool controls over to a raspberry pi running Nodejs-poolcontroller, so I bought a couple of these MOSFET hats to try to build a controller for these lights.
Home, Industrial & Building Automation I/O HATS for Raspberry Pi (sequentmicrosystems.com)
Each hat can handle "Four High Current Loads, 12A/24VDC, Four High Voltage Loads, 2A/240VDC, and PWM at 1kHz on all outputs."

I've worked with switching as well as relays quite a bit, but this is my first project using MOSFET.
I am planning on using Home Assistant as the front end as that's I'm currently running to tie all my home automation together.

Do you have any suggestions before I get started? Thanks so much for documenting all you have. Any suggestions are super appreciated!!!

Hi, sorry for the late reply but I was out for holidays.
Yes, I've managed to make it work with Reef-Pi but with a lot of work.
GNC uses a strange way to connect all the Leds on the board. Usually every led series has the + in common and the drivers works on the negative side.
On the Bluray the common is on the negative side. So we have to use a positive side led driver.
The only, rather simple (and probably the same one used on the AirLink - as I managed to do some schemastic drawback) is the LM3409HV.
So I've built from scratch a board with 3 of these drivers with the right current settings for each channel. And I tell you that was not an easy task...
My suggestion is to just control the power state of the lamp with Reef-Pi and use the Air-Link to control the lamp.. If you need I can share the schematic of the board I've made... Hope this help
Simone

 

[Thestooge1]

Hi, sorry for the late reply but I was out for holidays.
Yes, I've managed to make it work with Reef-Pi but with a lot of work.
GNC uses a strange way to connect all the Leds on the board. Usually every led series has the + in common and the drivers works on the negative side.
On the Bluray the common is on the negative side. So we have to use a positive side led driver.
The only, rather simple (and probably the same one used on the AirLink - as I managed to do some schemastic drawback) is the LM3409HV.
So I've built from scratch a board with 3 of these drivers with the right current settings for each channel. And I tell you that was not an easy task...
My suggestion is to just control the power state of the lamp with Reef-Pi and use the Air-Link to control the lamp.. If you need I can share the schematic of the board I've made... Hope this help
Simone

Thank you for the reply... I hope holiday was amazing and involved a beach!

Of my 3 airlinks, only 1 is functional as the other 2 were plugged into an ethernet switch via the rj45 port and no longer power. I looked and they each use 2 types of P-channel MOSFETs for the three LED channels blue, white, red/UV. Two of these are model FQD7P06, and one is ATP114. I imagine that the white and blue channels use the FQDs since there are so many more LEDs than red/UV, but thats just a guess. Regardless they are all P-channel, so they use that + side driver as you stated.

Because I have 3 of these Bluray lights and will need 3 channels each, I purchased (2) 8-channel mosfet hats. They are N-channel and each have Four High Current Loads @ 12A/24VDC (I'm told by the manufacturer that I can go up to 48V on these as well), and Four High Voltage Loads @ 4A/240VDC.
I have asked GNC for the datasheets on these lights, but haven't received any. So, my plan is to take each channel on the working airlink and record the min level voltage and current for each channel set to 10%, then record the maximum voltage and current for each channel at 100%. Then I can take my mosfets and replicate those voltage and current min/max with PWM.
Since I'm using N-channel mosfets, I'll have to put the lights (load) between the drain and the + power supply instead of the P-channel configuration, but if I can replicate the voltage and current on each channel,... and I have a huge SHOULD because I've read your experience so far... that SHOULD produce the same brightness results as when using the Airlink.
I would have built this even if all Airlinks worked because the functionality of (and connecting to) the airlink system is completely horrible.
Anything you can share would be greatly appreciated and I will be happy to as well!
Thanks so much!

 

[ryangonzalezrz]

Hello everyone, I'm trying to set up the light control for my homemade lamp, where I use 3 W LEDs in series of 3 connected to a 12 V source. The connection board diagram for the reef-pi is as shown in the photo, but the LED doesn't turn off completely, always remaining very weak and doesn't reach the maximum power it should reach if it weren't on the board next to the MOSFET. I'm using the P55NF06L MOSFET and a 1k 1/4 resistor to connect the GND to the MOSFET gate. Does it work like that or did I do something wrong? I tried to follow the tutorial in the topic "reef-pi Guide 5: Light Controller". I don't know what happens because even connected without the resistor directly to the MOSFET, it seems that the lighting varies, it doesn't stay fixed.

the image below is the LED connected directly to the board with the MOSFET and resistor:

The image below is the LED connected directly to the front, without going through the MOSFET or the resistor.:

the image below is the led with the reef-pi configuration at 0%:

Can anyone help me how to set up a controller for my light fixture?

 

[BenB]

Hello everyone, I'm trying to set up the light control for my homemade lamp, where I use 3 W LEDs in series of 3 connected to a 12 V source. The connection board diagram for the reef-pi is as shown in the photo, but the LED doesn't turn off completely, always remaining very weak and doesn't reach the maximum power it should reach if it weren't on the board next to the MOSFET. I'm using the P55NF06L MOSFET and a 1k 1/4 resistor to connect the GND to the MOSFET gate. Does it work like that or did I do something wrong? I tried to follow the tutorial in the topic "reef-pi Guide 5: Light Controller". I don't know what happens because even connected without the resistor directly to the MOSFET, it seems that the lighting varies, it doesn't stay fixed.

the image below is the LED connected directly to the board with the MOSFET and resistor:

The image below is the LED connected directly to the front, without going through the MOSFET or the resistor.:

the image below is the led with the reef-pi configuration at 0%:

Can anyone help me how to set up a controller for my light fixture?

Hi, I am using these:

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nl.aliexpress.com

With 12v you should be able to connect max 3x 3w leds.

 

[ryangonzalezrz]

Hi, I am using these:

Loading…

nl.aliexpress.com

With 12v you should be able to connect max 3x 3w leds.

Should it be possible to connect 3 3W LEDs to each piece of this? Well, my project will have 9 3W blue LEDs, but connected in 3 series of 3 LEDs. Wouldn't it be interesting to have 1 piece of this for each section of 3 LEDs? I would like to control the total set of colors of the same LED with the same control. That's why I tried to control it with the MOSFET, because then I would connect all the LEDs of the same color to the MOSFET.