- Aquarium controllers are expensive
and they lock you into whatever hardware
that that vendor wants to support.
You know if you use a GHL controller
you're not gonna be able to control your Eco tech products.
If your using an Apex,
there's just another set of trade-offs.
What if there was an open source controller
that let you build exactly what you want,
exactly how you wanted it, there is!
Hi guys and girls, I'm Reef Man
and this is gonna be a quick overview of the Reef-Pi
and my experiences setting one up
to run a couple poison dart frog terrariums.
Now the first thing that I need to say is
that the Reef-Pi is not suitable for non technical users.
If you're not the kind of person who wants
to learn how solder a circuit or learn how crontabs work.
The Reef-Pi is probably not the best solution for you.
Now I am a programmer and I've done some tinkering
with Arduinos and your Raspberry Pi's and things in the past
and I still had a good amount
of trouble getting this all set up and configured.
But, you know, I did get it working and there are lots
of places that you can turn to
for help, if you get stuck like I did.
Now, the Reef-Pi is an open source aquarium controller
with its source code hosted on GitHub,
the link's down below so you can check it out
in the description.
Now, that means that you can go and read the source code,
you can make changes, you can add features
to the project, if you're so inclined to do so.
Now, it all runs on a Raspberry Pi
which is a little computer like this
and from there you can control various devices
as well as run a website that you can use
to log-in, check status control things like that.
As of today, the Reef-Pi can control power outlets,
it can control LED lights including ramping up and down
for sunrise and sunset, temperature, PH, dosing pumps,
auto top offs, and a whole bunch more.
Really, it provides nearly everything
that you'd want to control,
but this is where it gets a little bit more complicated.
Now, it's true, you can install Reef-Pi on a Raspberry Pi
and then just run it.
It'll work, but you're gonna have to build circuits yourself
to actually do much beyond that.
By itself, a Raspberry Pi actually can't even control
a power outlet, that you might turn on a light.
Now, there are pre-designed boards that can help
with this though, and I would highly recommend using one
to start your build.
BlueAcro makes a pretty awesome
and feature complete board
called the blueAcro Reef-Pi Pico Controller,
which is currently at Revision D or maybe E.
Now, this adds all the circuitry that your gonna need
for things like a power strip, PH to temperature port,
and a whole bunch more.
It's gonna save you a lot of time and effort!
There is a second choice you have as well,
the ML Reef-Pi Goby hat.
And this is very similar to the blueAcro board,
in that it contains a lot of the circuitry
that you'd otherwise gonna have to build yourself.
It is a bit less opinionated about what you might want to do
and control though and since I'm using my Reef-Pi
to run terrariums for Poison Dart Frogs and not a reef tank,
that's perfect for me.
I don't need to measure PH, but I would like to measure
maybe like five or six different tanks of temperature
and the Goby hat is just gonna be a lot more extensible
for that kind of use.
There are links to both those boards in the description
as well, check them out again and I would strongly recommend
using one as the starting point for your build.
Once you settle on one, you'll need to figure out
what else you're gonna need.
You know, For example, a power supply.
I chose a Mean Well 12 volt power supply
which means that I have to convert the 12 volt
into five volts to run the Raspberry Pi,
but I also have the 12 volts
which is required for some of the other things
on the Goby hat.
Then, you know, of course
you should enclose your build somehow.
And that's next on my build.
Right now, I've just got a 120 volts sitting there,
I'm gonna use this plastic box to control
or keep it all in and, you know, 120 volts
just sitting there is not super safe.
The Reef-Pi can control almost anything that you've got,
but you're gonna need to build some circuitry
to actually control it.
In my case, I wanted to build a controller
for the LED lights that came on my tanks.
Now, these tanks, these lights are made by a company
that I hadn't heard of, called Spectral Designs.
They make a lot of terrarium lights and they can be dimmed
using simple Pulse Width Modulation dimming.
Now, lucky for me, PWM dimming
is very much an industry standard,
so the Reef-Pi fully supports it.
All I had to do was find a way to use PWM
to dim the 12 volt power supply going into the lights
and of course, Mean Well, they make a power supply
that will do just that.
You're gonna run into a couple problems though.
For example, that power supply from Mean Well
that I bought takes a 10 volt PWM signal,
but the Reef-Pi only outputs a five volt signal,
so I had to build a little circuit to convert the voltage.
Not hard, but I ran into a lot of these little projects,
which is why I don't recommend the Reef-Pi
for people who don't want to take these kinds of things on
and work through the issues.
Again, there is a lot of help out there.
I'm a testament of that, I got stuck,
people helped me get it working, they'll help you as well.
Now, the Reef-Pi is really worth checking out.
It's a cool project and they have a huge thread on Reef2Reef
where you can ask questions, get help,
and them various add-onboard developers
are also very responsive if you have questions
using their board to control some random thing.
There's also a lot of help out there
for building circuits to control things.
I needed help specifically getting
that PWM dimming and the voltage differences set up
and even though I had all the parts,
I didn't know exactly how they went together.
So, you know, if you're interested go grab a Raspberry Pi
they're pretty cheap, start tinkering with it.
Remember, test what you build before you rely on it
for your aquariums to have animals in it!
So, thanks for watching!
If you got this far, you should hit that subscribe button.
And have a great day, bye!