New Pioreactor plugin: pioled_display_plugin

Community
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Hello! I’m happy to announce a new plugin + hardware attachment for your Pioreactor: the pioled_display_plugin!

You can attach an Adafruit PiOLED display to your Pioreactor and have your Pioreactor’s important stats available at a glance:

Note you’ll also need a Right Angle Female Header.

side-by-side photo of a Pioreactor with the a display attached. The display reads information about the state of the Pioreactor.
side-by-side photo of a Pioreactor with the a display attached. The display reads information about the state of the Pioreactor.1920×1104 181 KB

And install our plugin, available in your UI:

3114×1658 513 KB

1 Like
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Thanks for the update to the plugin, with my suggestion to report back the pioreactor’s IP address. Can I add the init.py from the plugin to rc.local, so that it runs at startup? Do I need to tweak that file, so that it defaults “on” if I can load it that way?

I can’t connect to the pioreactor using the hostname on our college wifi, so need to use the IP address, which is of course a dynamic address and periodically changes.

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Hi @drsingleton!

With the latest update, the display (with the IP) should start automatically when the Pioreactor is powered up. That’s accomplished by these two lines. If you power-cycle your Pioreactor, is the display not starting (maybe wait a minute, too)?

If not, and your able to SSH in, I wonder what the output the following produces:

sudo systemctl status pioreactor_startup_run@pioled_display.service
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Thanks, I will try that out tomorrow and report back. When I first played with the PiOLED display, I installed the stats.py from the adafruit HOWTO. When I then added your plugin, I quickly found that they didn’t play well together and ended up starting off with a fresh install to clean everything out.

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Oh I see! That displays the IP!

Yea, probably only a single “thing” can be controlling the display, hence why the plugin and stats.py won’t work well together.

I like having the IP displayed. If you find you want to see other information on the display, let me know too!

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@CamDavidsonPilon, I verified that it displays the IP on startup. Previously, the pioreactor growth stats were toggled on/off through the UI, however I don’t see that anymore under “Activities” after updating to the current version of the plugin. Can that be toggled from the command line?

Unrelated to this, I am playing with the media pumps I got from you a few weeks ago. Ran the pioreactor as a turbidometer using my phone to connect while on the other side of campus for the day. I switched the target nOD every 30 minutes or so. Works great!

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Yea, I removed having to start it from the UI. I thought it was a better user-experience to always have it on, and stays on even between experiments (similar to how normal displays work: always on).

You can still turn it off with

sudo systemctl stop pioreactor_startup_run@pioled_display.service

Is that something you expect to do often?

Ran the pioreactor as a turbidometer using my phone to connect while on the other side of campus for the day.

haha great!

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There was a bug: starting a new experiment from the UI would stop the display. I’ve fixed that bug in the latest release of the plugin. You’ll need to uninstall-reinstall to get the latest version!