Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ok, you'all finished the job....I really love embedded linux systems and program lots...so I purchased a rasperry pi, breakoutboard, TI sensor and all the bits to set up a controller to monitor the temperature in my aquaponics system and send a message over my wireless network.

I'm planning on setting up the breadboard to the Pi and using a digital temperature gauge ($14) used in this howto
http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-11-ds18b20-temperature-sensing/ds18b20

Should be pretty easy to send that info to my home network via wireless using cron

I have my pi set up with one DS18B20 temperature sensor and will be wiring another waterproof one so I can report on air and water temperature in my fish tank.
I've set it up with a cron job to automatically send the information to cosm.com every 5 minutes for reporting/graphing



Live Feed
https://cosm.com/feeds/131116


Now I need to get it set up inside a waterproof container with a bulkhead for power and the temperature sensor....

I'm with rsevs3, the command line is where it's at. It's probably going to be the least familiar, but get past that and it's the most powerful, the most useful, and I'd venture to say the simplest.

Leave the LAMP stuff untill you've got a hang of the command line, you might find you don't need it to achieve what you want to do.

VNC is easy enough, but why not just hook a screen up to it while you're developing? VNC's not really an end-goal in my opinion. If you want to be serving up images/video, a web page has to be the way to do it.

My advice would be to start small, get the hang of the command line (learning how to install new packages with apt-get install is a good place to start), pick a tutorial on how to do something straightforward (reading the values from a temperature probe like mdavid has done sound like a good one) and work from there.

You're reading up on python libraries, but unless I'm mistaken, you haven't learnt to code python yet. Learn to walk before you run!

(The above assumes you want to get a deep understanding, but that's not the only way to do things! In much the same way as you can buy an off-the-shelp AP system there are disk images and things you can install and run on the pi that would get you up and running much faster. Look into the guides for setting xbmc up on the pi as an example. There's a camera module for the pi being launched soon; Until then some of the webcam posts might give you ideas: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/tag/webcam hopefully there's a beginners how-to in there somewhere...)

*Apply generous doses of 'imho' all over this post. It's all just my opinion and how I would approach it, other people's opinions might be the polar oposite and are equally valid! *

ssh/command line vs LAMP stack/webserver vs VNC?

these are not the same things.

SSH and VNC are similar in that they are ways to manage the server, You need one of them to be the administrator.

1) I prefer SSH/shell because it is fast and SSH is encrypted/security.

2) VNC by itself will allow you to access a gui like Xwindows. Given your resource limitations, I wouldnt use a gui and xwindows is a far cry from the user friendly interface that microsoft windows is. When i am forced to use xwindows or vnc the frist thing i do is open a terminal to the shell.

3) LAMP is linux, apache, mysql, php. This is basically a web server with a database backend. This will be your application and the way you automatically collect and report information. But you do not administer your server using LAMP.

brian

forgot to mention that a standard VNC install is not encrypted. If you really find you are more effective using xwindows and want remote gui access, i would use nomachine instead of just VNC. basically it tunnels a plain vnc connection through SSH for security.

brian

I completeley agree.

That said, just because vnc is for administering a box doesn't mean you can't use it to monitor a web cam over.

Same goes for ssh; this guy: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2504 uses ffmpeg and motion to generate still pictures, then scp (close enough to ssh to count) to copy the files off for viewing on his windows box.

Finally, just because a lamp stack is useful for displaying content doesn't mean it's not also useful for administering a server, cpanel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPanel being the prime example.

So yes, ssh and vnc are designed for adminstration and the lamp stack for showing content. But there is, as ever, more than one way to skin a cat.

Hi,

I believe CPanel is proprietary - i.e. it costs money.

I normally use Webmin (http://www.webmin.com/) - which is free - for my Linux servers.


Regards,

Mon

Having used VNC on the RPi, i would not want to do it regularly

Everything in linux revolves around the command line. Sure there are GUI's for everything, but they are just generating the commands for you.

Name me an operating system that's different...

There isnt one, but linux does not try to 'protect' the user from having to use a command line interface unlike windows.

It's even worse now on Windows 8 - you are now not suppose to use the desktop or start menu!

Thanks guys for all your help and advice. I think I will start off with the command line option. As a first project maybe I'll try reading the temperature of the Pi it's self. I'll also keep it simple and just use the TV and keyboard for now.

I'm still waiting for a response from Nuts & Volts magazine about their May 2013 data logger article and author. I've asked for permission to post that article here so we can talk about it. I don't know how all the copywrite ins and outs go, what is or not permissible.

The weather has finally turned a corner so I'm spending most of my time trying to get ready for a greenhouse on top of the old basement. But I can get in a couple of hours in the mornings before I start the day.

I found a couple of links I will be consulting during the project;

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... mp#p323821
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 26&t=34994
http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/qu ... re-using-c
http://codereview.stackexchange.com/que ... spberry-pi
http://blogs.bu.edu/mhirsch/2012/12/ras ... re-of-cpu/
http://www.piborg.com/bakedpi
https://pronto185.com/blog/2013/02/14/r ... mperature/
http://learn.adafruit.com/downloads/pdf ... o-cosm.pdf

Again thanks !!

Yeah... but that's for all the people that are not supposed to use their phone.. as a phone...

Hello,

first off the people suggesting you would put cpanel or webmin on a raspberry pi are just being argumentative, and no, they arent sufficient ways to manage a server. They are good for a resellers to delegate a few administrative type tasks to sub-resellers without giving them any real power.


Bob,

skimming those links it looks like they are just grabbing the temperature of the raspberry pi from the kernel. I guess that is helpful if you are just looking to understand how to manage and use information. But when you query a usb or serial temperature sensor you are most likely going to be querying the software that comes with the device.


brian

Sorry - I wasn't suggesting that Webmin should used on the RPi (in this case) - just pointing out that it was a free alternative to CPanel.