Howdy Folks.
I'm going to put this all into a video tommorow but a little late now but thought i'd share something i have just finished building.
I have a 400 odd litre planted tank, its very high and water changes were becoming a pain. I decided (seeing as i work in IT) i should try and create a almost fully automated tank.
This is my current setup with some screenshots from my aquarium dashboard.
I put in a water in and water out feed from the mains water supply and into the outside drain. This goes through 2 Carbon block filters through a solenoid value and into the sump.
The Solenoid is controlled by a SmartATO topup sensor. (mainly as its an optical monitor and building one would have cost me more)
the water out is connected to to a small pump.
Both of these in turn connect to to a relay box, connected to the Raspberry PI.
Also connected to the PI is a flow sensor on the water in which tots up how much water goes in, and a temp sensor.
With all this in place i've built a number of services and a database on the PI which allows me to set when i want to do a water change and how much needs to be changed.
The Service runs on the hour and if a water change is due, both relays are switched on so water can move in and out, it also monitors the flow sensor to ensure there is no over fill issues.
The service runs both relays in such a way that no water should be removed while its re-filling. (i setup a 10% water change at the weekend which run very slowly over an hour)
while this goes on an additional service monitors the health of the tank by checking again for overfilling, and for any major temperture swings which trigger an alert to my phone. (as does the compleition of the water change)
All of this information feeds back into the database which is displayed live on a website.
I can manually kick off water changes which is greate, as this can be monitored from a remote location.
I have a few additional sensors yet to go in for monitoring any leaks, the sump water level and light levels with the potential for PH monitoring.
Now for some pictures and screenshots.
Video will come tommorow if i have time!
I'm going to put this all into a video tommorow but a little late now but thought i'd share something i have just finished building.
I have a 400 odd litre planted tank, its very high and water changes were becoming a pain. I decided (seeing as i work in IT) i should try and create a almost fully automated tank.
This is my current setup with some screenshots from my aquarium dashboard.
I put in a water in and water out feed from the mains water supply and into the outside drain. This goes through 2 Carbon block filters through a solenoid value and into the sump.
The Solenoid is controlled by a SmartATO topup sensor. (mainly as its an optical monitor and building one would have cost me more)
the water out is connected to to a small pump.
Both of these in turn connect to to a relay box, connected to the Raspberry PI.
Also connected to the PI is a flow sensor on the water in which tots up how much water goes in, and a temp sensor.
With all this in place i've built a number of services and a database on the PI which allows me to set when i want to do a water change and how much needs to be changed.
The Service runs on the hour and if a water change is due, both relays are switched on so water can move in and out, it also monitors the flow sensor to ensure there is no over fill issues.
The service runs both relays in such a way that no water should be removed while its re-filling. (i setup a 10% water change at the weekend which run very slowly over an hour)
while this goes on an additional service monitors the health of the tank by checking again for overfilling, and for any major temperture swings which trigger an alert to my phone. (as does the compleition of the water change)
All of this information feeds back into the database which is displayed live on a website.
I can manually kick off water changes which is greate, as this can be monitored from a remote location.
I have a few additional sensors yet to go in for monitoring any leaks, the sump water level and light levels with the potential for PH monitoring.
Now for some pictures and screenshots.
Video will come tommorow if i have time!