Gauging interest.... ReefDuino

[_Adrian_]

Originally Posted by shiftline

I have been playing with a similar idea using the design form a guy on another form. Are you thinking about selling pre built or just sparking up a project?

Robo-Tank ?

Mine will be built, no assembly required.
Once everything is finalized i will order the 3/8's black acrylic for the housing and will have them machined. The front and the rear will be sealed using a large O-Ring in machined groove.
I will have a site up in a few weeks as well as a support / user forum.

[Lampshade]

I built my own a few years ago. Wow, it was a programming adventure finding different ways to measure everything i wanted. The things i found most useful where mostly stuff that default controllers don't generally come with.

I really enjoyed being able to track my PH/Temp/Etc from a webpage. I used a Google pages website locked to my account, this would be harder to do now since i'm pretty sure Google scrapped their pages. I also used pachube, now Xively for all data logging. When you're board waiting at the dentist office it's amazing how much you'll look into that day 3 weeks ago when your tank got hotter.

Also, temp probes are dirt cheap, i had 4 and averaged the temps across them and checked if within limits of the others to check for bad probes. I had lots of heat shutoff's and didn't want my tank reacting to a failed temp probe.

The thing i liked the most was color indexing. I'm old school and still use Halides, you can track color shift very easily now so it's well worth looking into.

Alerts are fairly easy to set up through a twitter feed, i had any alarms sent to my twitter. Any measured value outside of range, sump overflow sensor, sump level sensor, herbie level sensor, and a few others i'm probably missing.

I also liked variable day light, most of you fancy LED people have this built in now. I calculated sunrise/sunset times on the gold coast, this gave me short days in summer(their winter) and long days in winter, which helps with heating issues.

The only issue I've ever had with this system is my power supply. Get a decent regulated power supply, especially if you're using mechanical relays. I learned this after frying my first arduino.

[shiftline]

What type of price range are you shooting for?

[_Adrian_]

Originally Posted by shiftline

What type of price range are you shooting for?

I'm trying to keep the base system ( Display Unit and Breakout box ) under 400-500 mark.

Its going to be a challenge for sure as the price of subminiature IP67 / IP68 connectors aren't cheap ( ~$24 a pop )

[_Adrian_]

Originally Posted by Lampshade

I built my own a few years ago. Wow, it was a programming adventure finding different ways to measure everything i wanted. The things i found most useful where mostly stuff that default controllers don't generally come with.

I really enjoyed being able to track my PH/Temp/Etc from a webpage. I used a Google pages website locked to my account, this would be harder to do now since i'm pretty sure Google scrapped their pages. I also used pachube, now Xively for all data logging. When you're board waiting at the dentist office it's amazing how much you'll look into that day 3 weeks ago when your tank got hotter.

Also, temp probes are dirt cheap, i had 4 and averaged the temps across them and checked if within limits of the others to check for bad probes. I had lots of heat shutoff's and didn't want my tank reacting to a failed temp probe.

The thing i liked the most was color indexing. I'm old school and still use Halides, you can track color shift very easily now so it's well worth looking into.

Alerts are fairly easy to set up through a twitter feed, i had any alarms sent to my twitter. Any measured value outside of range, sump overflow sensor, sump level sensor, herbie level sensor, and a few others i'm probably missing.

I also liked variable day light, most of you fancy LED people have this built in now. I calculated sunrise/sunset times on the gold coast, this gave me short days in summer(their winter) and long days in winter, which helps with heating issues.

The only issue I've ever had with this system is my power supply. Get a decent regulated power supply, especially if you're using mechanical relays. I learned this after frying my first arduino.

Most of the Heavy draw items like the power bars will have their own supplies for the relays. The relays will be in turn triggered by a FET which is triggered by the PCA9685. going this route is great as there are 62 address combos that you can choose for your smartbar, LED driver or whatever output device your using.
Also forgot to mention that since DC pumps are hitting the market there will be a 4CH DC pump controller on the horizon as well.

The hardware to me is the easy part!
The software on the other hand... lets just say im a bit rusty LOL

[_Adrian_]

Originally Posted by Lampshade

Also, temp probes are dirt cheap, i had 4 and averaged the temps across them and checked if within limits of the others to check for bad probes. I had lots of heat shutoff's and didn't want my tank reacting to a failed temp probe.

As far as the temp probes go I'm planning on using the DS18B20 based units as the 1 wire serial bus is simple and the accuracy for the price is hard to beat ( 5 pieces with a 2m cable run for about $10 ). Also because of the single wire bus you can have as many sensors as you want for redundancy and it all boils down to how much room are you going to spare in the case.

[_Adrian_]

Lots of views... only a few people with actual Input.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by _Adrian_

Lots of views... only a few people with actual Input.

I'm not a controller person, so I have no input. For me, the only type of "controller" I'm interested in is more of a "monitor" that alerts me via text or email when things are wacky. What kind of input are you looking for?

[_Adrian_]

Originally Posted by Myka

I'm not a controller person, so I have no input. For me, the only type of "controller" I'm interested in is more of a "monitor" that alerts me via text or email when things are wacky. What kind of input are you looking for?

This can do that and more as well as it will have a webserver that you can check your readings in real time.

Because its going to be based on more of a "Node 2 Node" i don't want to bloat the system as per say.

I'm looking for input from people on the hardware side of things as the software and other items can be coded in as the software progresses.
What I mean by that is hardware such as peristaltic dosing pumps as many people add in reef supplements and minerals, feeders in case your an avid traveler and the likes.

Like I said earlier this is constructive input...
with this you can mix and match any of the modules and just load the code and your up and running.

[claynelson]

a few years ago a friend and i started and had a controller running but myself being the hardware guy and him firmware and another software and being spread across canada it kind of fell to the side. i can lend my talents to the circuits design and construction. pm me if interested.