Aquarium Control System

Hi all,

I am sick of the timer plugs and cabels under my tank. The timer plugs keep loosing the correct time and if the power is cut they have to be setup again. Some plugs just stop working after a few weeks. I know you can buy control systems but as far as i know they are expensive and have limited functions.

Im an engineer by trade and have an idea for a control system which once setup will not need much/any monitoring by the user. It will not lose the correct time even in the event of a power cut. The system could also power your filter and/or heater and/or power head and/or co2 solenoid. It may be also possible to have a wave maker function. I need some imput from more experanced fish keepers.

1. How many timer plugs do you have?
2. What do you have pluged into your timer plugs?
3. Are you using a control system?
4. How many ligiting bulbs are you using?
5. How many watts are your bulbs?

Any help on this would be most appreciated.

Stephen.

P.S I may have some more questions tomorrow.

Im going to build one of these systems over the next few weeks for testing. Im hoping it will be a more cost effective and customizable option then the current controllers available. I will be testing some cool features like auto topup/water change, Asynchronous pulse generator for wave making, timer functions for lights and co2 solenoids, will also be testing gsm reminders, your tank will text you with a reminder to do a water change or tell you how many hours your light bulbs or solenoids have been on over a preset time period 3,6,9,12 months handy if your like me and cant remember how old your light bulbs are! These features are just for testing at the moment.

If there is any more functions that you would use please make suggestions any comments will be very welcome.

Stephen.

Hi Stephen,

sounds like a hell of a project, best of luck with it!

purely out of personal curiosity, I would be interested in seeing some details on the kind of system you plan to use, controllers, logic required, switching and monitoring systems etc. Engineering background myself, quite a bit of experience with control and monitoring systems specifically designed for environmental test and control, and have some friends who deal with PCB prototyping etc, so may be able to help out with the project too
Do you plan to use discrete feedback systems or are you going the whole hog with a micro-controller?
Obviously, I understand if you don’t want to share any of the details. Well aware that a beast of a controller system with these features would have commercial value

Cheers,

Bill.

BillG wrote:

Hi Stephen,

sounds like a hell of a project, best of luck with it!

purely out of personal curiosity, I would be interested in seeing some details on the kind of system you plan to use, controllers, logic required, switching and monitoring systems etc. Engineering background myself, quite a bit of experience with control and monitoring systems specifically designed for environmental test and control, and have some friends who deal with PCB prototyping etc, so may be able to help out with the project too
Do you plan to use discrete feedback systems or are you going the whole hog with a micro-controller?
Obviously, I understand if you don’t want to share any of the details. Well aware that a beast of a controller system with these features would have commercial value

Cheers,

Bill.

Hey Bill,

Thanks for the comments. You will forgive me if i dont go into too much detail here but micro-control looks like the way foward at the moment. Timers, pulse generators and switching at 230v will be relatively easy, environmental monitoring (PH and temp) may not be viable rite now with version 1 but its early days with this project. At this stage im worried about the finished units size and safety with all that water around!

Thanks again and i will be in touch about PCB prototyping.

Stephen.

Hey Stephen

Best of luck with this project, have been spending some time thinking of a system along the same lines( also sick and tired of timers and cables)keep everybody posted, maybe a few pics without giving too much away

Regards

Chris

It's all do-able (but with loads of soldering and programming if you want to do it on shoe-string........but that is the fun bit), and why not do it?

The wave-maker and lighting would be pretty easy stuff to control from a PC (although the older parallel and serial port systems gave much better facilities to simply do-it-yourself).

Once you have the interface, then it would be easier to have a software program to do the wave-maker on-off and variable rate: a lot more freedom than a dedicated hardware timer.

For the interfaces for water quality testing (eg ammonia, pH, RedOx, Conductivity, temperature are all being pretty easy to do electronically, with ammonia being a little trickier), that would give a great opportunity to do continual monitoring but with a store of the data to analyse at future dates to see how things change. That can then lead to some research in the future.

If you can continuously monitor, then you can automatically dose (if your programming is correct).

If I hadn't have had a continual monitoring and control system over 30 years ago, then I would not have had the knowledge about water that I have today. It was a god send.
Being an electronics engineer, aminframe programmer and a chemist helped as well over the years.

Best of luck, and keep us posted. My recommendation would be to start it easy but allow a flexibility to add-on.

ian

Thanks guys,

I will keep you posted on the build and testing. I think most of us want to get rid of the crap timer plugs so I will start off with just reliable timer functions. Wave makeing should not be a problem with the hardware i have in mind. Not sure if the GSM thing is worth looking into?

Stephen.

I got an Arduino mega to play with recently for some midi control/s of the organ at home. Relatively easy to program (compared to a Vax!).
Quite a few people seem to have used them for aquarium control. The most complex thing seems to be the rtc. (I have a feeling a Rasberry Pi might be easier for this. ?).
The relays etc are relatively easy. Dimming T5's can be problematic. (For those with T8 bulbs, I can recomend the Philips hf dimming ballasts, with 0-10v control inputs.)

Be warned: some of the specialised sensors that aquarists like can need some interesting signal conditioning on the analogue side, for those who wish to play around!!!

I may have a go at automating the lights further, depending on how the organ pans out, although the 3 Argos digital timers work fine for now.

Looks like i will be going down the PLC road with this controller. The more i do research the more i come to realize that it wont have much commercial value. Most people will just continue using timer plugs.

Stephen.

I didn't realise you were thinking about this as a commercial venture.

It is now difficult to compete with large production number LSI units unless such units do not exist (and then you would be in a pioneering realms).

igmillichip wrote:

I didn't realise you were thinking about this as a commercial venture.

It is now difficult to compete with large production number LSI units unless such units do not exist (and then you would be in a pioneering realms).

At first it was just a little project to keep me busy and out of trouble! But after speeking to someone from my LFS the thought did cross my mind about its commercial applications. Not many fish keepers use controllers especially freshwater. The advantage of the system i have in mine would be its customization and expansion. You could start off with the basic unit and if need be could add on temperature control/monitor PH monitor etcetera. But dont think the market is big enough in Ireland. Also the price of the hardware may be prohibitive at this point but i am in talks with someone from rockwell automation about a micro810 for testing.

Stephen.

When up against mass produced gadgets (probably using cheap labour to assembly etc), it is difficult to get such a project going when aiming it at a general consumer market.

It would take me, say, several hours to solder up a digital pH meter from scratch......but at around 30 euro a pop from an LFS, it would not be worth my time to do that.

The same thing being making a timer from a 555 IC etc.......at 6 euro from Woodies, a 24hr programmable timer simply beats anything one could make for the same price and in a time allowing for minimum wage etc (and still make a profit).

There was a time when I used to build all my own music synthesisers and amps....although expensive to build and time consuming, it still worked out cheaper than, say, the cheapest available keyboards (which were often almost the same price as new car !). But since a large scale special chips became available around about 1980ish, it made more sense to simply buy the keyboards off the shelf. (oh the days of making polyphonic multiplex system that was still a bit crap ).

Where, however, a system such as the one you propose might come into play as a contender would be to drive large-scale operations.......but with a flexibility to make it multi-use: eg fish-keeping, plant growing nurseries (legal ones I mean), laboratories.

Design a system that has multiple algorithm and interfaces to accept a multitude of probes by different manufacturers (fabrication of a pH electrode probe would not be a cheap affair....so leave that to the companies that already make the glass tube).

But really, the biggest breakthrough would be in a reliable, reasonably accurate system that measures things electronically that are not normally measured electronically (or by other non-wet lab means).

That, though, is no easy task.

ian

Hey Ian,

Thanks for your comments. The flexibility of this system to cater to small aquariums all the way upto large applications such as LSF's for auto water changes and so on. I am also working on a program for cleaning, filtering and monitoring rain water for the likes of a water butt. The applications for PLC's are endless. I love all this stuff even if there are is no commercial value

I will knock one up with the micro810 or maybe a Siemiens logo plc for testing and my own tank. If anyone is using one of the commercial aquarium controllers please drop me a PM would love to have a chat.

Thanks
Stephen.

Hey all,

Just a quick update on this. Had some unforeseen circumstances at home so had to put it on hold for awhile but im back on track now! I built a little test system yesterday and have it running my 100l tank now. Im using a AB micro810 PLC. At the moment it is controlling my lights, co2 solenoid, powerhead and my filter. The powerhead and filter are always on. I was using 2 timer plugs and 4 plugs but now just using one plug to power the plc rig! Looks very tidy. Going to let it run for a few weeks before i start with sensors.

Stephen.

Hi Stephen,

glad to see you got to make a start on the project fair play to you. Sounds like a good start!
Definitely interested to see how you get on with it in the next few weeks. Keep us updated please. Also appreciate if you can keep us posted on and developments with the sensors etc.

Cheers,

Bill.

JohnH wrote:

Stephen,how are things?
I missed your earlier postings on the subject of a controller but am intrigued.
I have just had power returned after the third cut in a week and have (once again) had to go around re-setting all the timer switches (which is a right pain in the bottom).
Any fear of a better description for an ageing no-nothing idiot?
John

Hey john,

Im using a PLC "programmable logic controller" to control when my lights and co2 comes on. The PLC i am using has 4 outputs which i can connect my lights, co2, powerhead, filter or anything that requires less then 8 amps to operate. The program (which i write) will then turn on or off the outputs according to the program. The PLC also has inputs which i can connect sensors. The sensors monitor PH or temperture etc which in turn can control when the co2 output comes on and go's off thus controlling your PH. Its get kinda complicated when adding inputs but thats the fun part!

Hope that helps. If you got anymore questions just ask i will do my best to answer them.

this definately sounds an interesting project to a non engineer but looking forward to see how it develops

Thanks lads. I will keep you posted. Its working very well and i dont foresee any problems with the current setup. I will try to get some pix up at the weekend.

Stephen.

JohnH wrote:

Stephen - the first question from me...
Can the components be bought from - say Maplin's?

John

Hey john,

Dont think you can buy plc's form maplin's, but they can be got online. If you were think of doing this yourself you would need some electrical panel building experance and be familiar with PLC programming.

Stephen.

Here is a good description of what a PLC dose and can be used for.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller

Stephen.

Hi John,

you will not get the PLC in Maplin, though you may be able to source any other requitred discreet devices from them along with sensors. THe only place in Ireland i am aware of that definitely carry the Rockwell PLC range is Hanley Automation in Swords, they are the main distributor in Ireland. HTey may be available commercially through other companies in Ireland but I know Radionics dont carry them either, so they would be hard ot acquire.

Cheers,

Bill.

If anyone wants to build one of these systems i have no problem helping with the programming and wiring. I can also get a PLC no problem. It cost me in and around 100 euro for the hardware and a few hours programming and wiring. Job done!

Stephen.

JohnH wrote:

Thanks Stephen and Bill - maybe I'll settle for the spider's web of wires and the constant re-setting the timers each power cut (we've had three this week [so far]).
John

Johnh maybe you should look into getting some of these
www.zigor.com/uk/index.php/en/aboutus/news/198-bigpower

Hey all,

Here is a pic of my little test rig. It looks a little messy at the mo but its just for testing. I have a waterproof enclosure ordered which i will mount under my tank.