Installed 3.50-34, relays deactivated

Beta testing Venus OS beta testing
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The code has been running so well at other sites, I loaded it into a site that has a relay board on the raspberry pi. All appeared to go well. I was reading battery charge state and voltages. But this tower has a camera and a thermistor to measure battery temperature, at 5C the first relay is supposed to pull in and turn on the battery heater, the 2nd relay is used to control power to a camera on the tower. I noticed that after loading the beta the camera was no longer accessible. I checked Relay #2 it indicated it was on, I cycled it but got no changes. I went to the site thinking that something had happened with the PoE injector or one of the RJ connectors was not making proper contact.,
One accessing the equipment it appeared that power was not reaching the PoE injector, I shorted across the relay contacts and the camera came alive. Again I checked but there was no response from the relay. I tested the temperature relay and got the same results.

I returned the device to VenusOS 3.42, the camera came alive and the panel indicated it was turned on as it should have been.

The camera is no big deal but the relay for the battery heater is.
Is there other testing I can do to gather information on this?

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Hi @kp4djt , we haven’t made any changes to raspberrypis and control recently - I’m not sure what changed here.

You’ll have to dive in and see how / via what process those relays are controlled.

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Interesting, the only way I got control of the relays was to go back to VenusOS 3.42. When I set it up, I just went into the “relay” area and setup relay #1 to be temperature controlled. Turn on at 5C and off at 8C. Relay #2 controls the power to the camera. I am not sure what I can do to trouble shoot it, is there a log or some other file I can pull and send? We can live without the camera until spring, but the temperature control for battery heat is prime importance, moving into winter.
I want to make sure 3.50 will not block the relays. But I really like it and want to move as much as possible to it.

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Hi again @kp4djt , we have double checked the functionality on a normal GX device (not a raspberrypi) and all works OK.

In our test, when configured like below screenshot, and having a potmeter on the temperature input, it closed both its relays below 5C and reopened it again once above 8C.

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I’m not so sure what to do or advise you next; one thing you could do is check, when running Venus OS v3.50, is if those relays work on the pi, or not.

Our involvement with support on a Pi is limited, as I hope you understand.

ps. I see a typo in the screenshot, Deativation instead of Deactivation - thats a nice catch and we’ll make sure to have that fixed before release!

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Matthijs,
Thank you for the quick response see my comments below:

| Matthijs Vader mpvader Victron Staff
23 October |

  • | - |

Hi again @kp4djt , we have double checked the functionality on a normal GX device (not a raspberrypi) and all works OK.

OK, I am going to see if I can set one up here at my home, and also maybe I just need to put in a clean install
I will try that.

In our test, when configured like below screenshot, and having a potmeter on the temperature input, it closed both its relays below 5C and reopened it again once above 8C.

I’m not so sure what to do or advise you next; one thing you could do is check, when running Venus OS v3.50, is if those relays work on the pi, or not.

That is what I did, I installed V3.50 on the RPi at the solar powered site with heated batteries. I caught it when
I saw that the camera on the tower lost connection I looked and saw that the camera was off line and not
powered up, traced back to relay not closing. I went in and gave it and open command and closed it again but it
did not work. I rebooted the RPi, but still the relay stayed off even though the screen said it was on.

Our involvement with support on a Pi is limited, as I hope you understand.

I quite well understand, for us the use of the Pi is a space thing. We want the box that holds all of this as
small as possible (the smaller the less attractive to vandals) so anything we can reduce size on we work
at that

ps. I see a typo in the screenshot, Deativation instead of Deactivation - thats a nice catch and we’ll make sure to have that fixed before release!

Glad you saw it. I had not noticed it myself, was concentrated on getting the relay to work or get info
to you, brain sees what it wants to see.

Again thank you very much.

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Matthijs:
I finally returned from a job trip, all of the medical labs want their gear PM’d for inspections… But they all want
it at the same time…

Anyhow I ordered the relay board I am already using at a solar powered microwave site, it arrived while I was
out on the road. I installed it on a RPi 3b+ (same as we use in the remote solar installations) and I do not see
the relays.

One the device that it working I am using the kwindrem/GuiMods to enable to relays. I had understood that
many of those options were going to be integrated into the VenusOS beta code. Here is a screen shot of
the relay screen out at the working site:

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image.png545×341 11.9 KB

Here is a pix of the relay setup screen:

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image.png517×315 23.2 KB

We are using one of the bluetooth temp sensors to control relay 1 and relay 2 controls a camera at this point.
We plan to add other items to it.

Was hoping that this would be integrated into the new beta,

The relay board I am using I was directed to by others on the Victron communities, here it is:
https://wiki.keyestudio.com/KS0212_keyestudio_RPI_4-channel_Relay_Shield

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I would certainly like to get the beta code running on the microwave sites, it provides information in a much
easier format to deal with. And when I do demo’s the new screens are very impressive for promoting solar
power for remote sites for the Emergency Comms folks. Much more so than the old screens which were great
for what we are doing but when you link to the web page the small screen display on a large screen does not
help either.

I can guinea pig if so needed. I have a test setup I can run code on.

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Mathijs,
I was looking at the new relay screen, it looks similar to the one on the old code with the GUiMods installed:

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Here is the GUiMods screen:

image
image545×341 11.9 KB

Perhaps I am not doing something correctly in setting up the firmware? As I do not even see the screen you have shown me here. Also has the author of GUiMods has indicated that most of what he has done is or will be in the new beta, I do wonder if I have missed some setup somewhere for the relays.

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also this relay board is watching pinList = [4, 22, 6, 26] for action. There are 4 relays on the board, each controlled by one of those pins.

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Hi @kp4djt ,

To know what the plans of the author of guimods are you’ll have to ask him. ( or search here on Community, its come up before ).

We are planning relay control in gui-v2 natively. But I don’t have a timeline.

Meanwhile you could use classic ui and guimods for setting up and controlling the relays.

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Gudday Mathijs,
See comments below:

| Matthijs Vader mpvader Victron Staff
24 November |

  • | - |

Hi @kp4djt ,

To know what the plans of the author of guimods are you’ll have to ask him. ( or search here on Community, its come up before ).

He has already indicated that he will not be adding to it, that V2 already takes care of most of what he
has done.

We are planning relay control in gui-v2 natively. But I don’t have a timeline.

If you need a tester, I am ready and willing. I have a test machine for just such things.

Meanwhile you could use classic ui and guimods for setting up and controlling the relays.

That is presently what I am doing but the V2 is SOO much nicer for so many reasons, and
for presentations it produces a very large screen.

Again if you need testing on it I am ready and willing.

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Hi again, thanks I’ll keep that in mind.

What we need now is to implement it first.

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Well as you implement code feel free to ask me to test it as I would be most happy to. Great new UI, I like
to use it for demo’s and to show folks how nice it is to monitor a future solar powered site.

Keep up the good work,

Best Regards