Doser calibration button not doing anything

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Greg Ewanchuk

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Hello, I've setup a 12v doser on a DC jack which seems to work fine when I setup a schedule but when I go into calibrate and click "run" nothing happens. I've tried this with the doser enabled and disabled. I've rebooted reef pi which didn't help. Running version 5.2. Am I missing something?
Thanks in advance!
 
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Greg Ewanchuk said:
Hello, I've setup a 12v doser on a DC jack which seems to work fine when I setup a schedule but when I go into calibrate and click "run" nothing happens. I've tried this with the doser enabled and disabled. I've rebooted reef pi which didn't help. Running version 5.2. Am I missing something?
Thanks in advance!
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Hi @Greg Ewanchuk sorry I'm not sure why that would be the case. Did you set the speed to 1-100? Here's a link explaining how to calibrate, it's on page 13. It's possible there was a bug in version 5.2, maybe it's worth updating to the latest version. If you go this route it might be good to use a 2nd SD card and install the latest version, then test it to see if it works.

 
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Thanks Rob, ya speed was set to 80. I also don't have an "edit" button. Do I need to create virtual outlets for them? (adafruit manual suggests this but it seems it only for pump direction)
I have been thinking about changing from Reef Pi to the Robotank software. Is everything stable and working well? Maybe this is the way to go instead up updating ReefPi.
 
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Greg Ewanchuk said:
Thanks Rob, ya speed was set to 80. I also don't have an "edit" button. Do I need to create virtual outlets for them? (adafruit manual suggests this but it seems it only for pump direction)
I have been thinking about changing from Reef Pi to the Robotank software. Is everything stable and working well? Maybe this is the way to go instead up updating ReefPi.
Click to expand...
I don't think you need virtual outlets for them but possible. If I remember correctly there was some bugs in 5.2, I think one was dosing related, that could be why.

If you test my app I recommend using a 2nd SD card so you don't lose reef-pi and your setup, this way you can easily go back if my app gives you issues. My app isn't perfect yet but many are using it without issues, it depends what you try to do. I think it's worth trying. What do you use reef-pi for?
 
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Greg Ewanchuk said:
So I'm using temp control, equipment timers, PH monitoring, email alerts and now I'm trying to add some diy 12v dosers.
I'll give it a shot.
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Sounds good, let me know how it goes. When you setup your email alerts you'll need to reboot the controller after setting the password before it will work, anytime you make changes to the email settings a reboot is required until the next update comes.
 
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Thanks Rob, got it installed and had a brief run through. Couple questions:
- the ac outlets I have in manual mode don't stay in manual mode and turn off when I go into the power bar settings. Any idea how I can fix that?
- what email address do I use in the "from email address field"? I tried it with my own hotmail email address and password but it didn't work.
- settting up a custom rule for temperature control and my heater doesn't show in the ac outlet list. I set the outlet up as a heater and it seems that the rules only pulls the ac outlet type. I used AC outlet type for now but I can't find a rule to turn it off.
Appreciate any help.
 
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Greg Ewanchuk said:
Thanks Rob, got it installed and had a brief run through. Couple questions:
- the ac outlets I have in manual mode don't stay in manual mode and turn off when I go into the power bar settings. Any idea how I can fix that?
- what email address do I use in the "from email address field"? I tried it with my own hotmail email address and password but it didn't work.
- settting up a custom rule for temperature control and my heater doesn't show in the ac outlet list. I set the outlet up as a heater and it seems that the rules only pulls the ac outlet type. I used AC outlet type for now but I can't find a rule to turn it off.
Appreciate any help.
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Oh no, that's not a good start. Are you seeing the red dot on the outlet icons? When you click on the outlet icons on the main dashboard the outlet page opens, is that when they are turning off? Try clicking the outlet on/off a few times to cycle it until you see the red dot, then reboot the controller and see if it remains.

I assume this is the same email address you use in reef-pi? If so I'm surprised it's not working. The "from address" is the email you want to use to send the emails. Did you look in the spam or junk folders to see if it went there? I will email you an email address to use to see if that works.

Currently the heater and auto feeder option for the outlets doesn't do anything, I should be removing those until the heater and feeder settings are added. Setting the outlet as an outlet like you did is good. You need to create two custom rules for the heater, the first would be something like "If Tank Temperature is less than 25.2 for 10 seconds turn on outlet 2 (heater)" and the 2nd rule would be "If Tank Temperature is greater than 25.5 for 10 seconds turn off outlet 2 (heater)"
 
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Rob F said:
Oh no, that's not a good start. Are you seeing the red dot on the outlet icons? When you click on the outlet icons on the main dashboard the outlet page opens, is that when they are turning off? Try clicking the outlet on/off a few times to cycle it until you see the red dot, then reboot the controller and see if it remains.
Click to expand...

Yes, I can enable the red dot, then go into the outlet configuration page and setup one of the other outlets and when I come back to the main dashboard the red dot will be gone and sometimes the outlet will be off.

On a related note I just tested simulating a power outage and the outlets didn't go back to the state they were before the outage. (I didn't have the red dot enabled on this test but the). Some went off that were previously on and one came on that was previously off (this outlet was controlled on a schedule).
 
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Greg Ewanchuk said:
Yes, I can enable the red dot, then go into the outlet configuration page and setup one of the other outlets and when I come back to the main dashboard the red dot will be gone and sometimes the outlet will be off.

On a related note I just tested simulating a power outage and the outlets didn't go back to the state they were before the outage. (I didn't have the red dot enabled on this test but the). Some went off that were previously on and one came on that was previously off (this outlet was controlled on a schedule).
Click to expand...
Ah, thanks, you discovered a bug or oversite. If you go to configure ports screen, click the DB9, update any port and save, all the outlets come out of manual mode which makes sense as this sets defaults for all outlet options, I'll get that fixed.

I also discovered another set of bugs with manual mode. Sometimes I need to change the outlet status 2 or 3 times before it goes into manual mode. For now if you set something in manual mode cycle the outlet a few times to insure it turned on. As I've been playing I discovered rarely when I put an outlet in manual mode it will get the red dot, when I go back to the main dashboard it'll still have the red dot but another outlet I didn't put in manual mode will also get a red dot. This is only visual, the backend isn't changing, refreshing the dashboard will clear the dot. So for now also a good idea to refresh the browser after setting something in manual mode to insure the icons are updated correctly.

As for the outlets not resuming the state they were in after a reboot it could be a couple things. For all your custom rules try and set the stability timer for the sensor to at least 10 seconds so all variables have sensor data in them so the rule doesn't falsely trigger, 1 second isn't enough as it could take longer to read the temp sensor.

For the outlet with the schedule, is it only being controlled via a schedule? Verify the Raspberry Pi time zone is set correctly for your area. The time shown on the interface is coming from the backend however someone recently discovered their time zone wasn't set correctly and schedules were using the wrong time zone, not the time the interface was showing. Here's how you do that.
  • Open the SSH terminal and connect your Pi
  • Run sudo raspi-config in the SSH terminal which will open a blue screen.
  • Use the arrow keys on keyboard to go down to 5. Localization Options press enter
  • Go down to Timezone and press enter and a list of all the timezones will appear, change if needed and reboot the controller after.
 
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