AndyL Posted September 23, 2013 Report Share Posted September 23, 2013 Ok, gonna ask... Any geeky IC and programming types around who want to play with a new projects? My young apprentice fish-keeper, has a penchant for buttons and LCD displays... Thankfully I went dual redundant on the heaters - as he managed to set the controller to run the tank up to 168f (heaters internal limit was 85f, and the LCD blinking its backlight to catch my attention that things were out-of-range worked well) So... I'm pondering a complete revision to the aquarium controller. Wondering if there's interest to play along / help with the project, I'm not particularly good with some of the programming side - and the analog circuitry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyL Posted September 24, 2013 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2013 <insert crickets> Ok, well maybe with more details more interest... Begged/bribed and got myself a new more gooder pH circuit thanks to a buddy yesterday. Still using the basic circuit that's used on every other controller http://blea.ch/wiki/images/2/24/PH-sch.jpg but I'm dumping this 2x9v or 18v feed. We're going to switch it up and get into a OPA2349. Should be much more suitable to salt and fresh aquariums - will have the full 4-9pH range; unfortunately that means we loose a bit of precision (not that it really matters - 4.015 and 4.030 just aren't that far apart - does anyone really worry about the 1000th and 10,000th decimal point on the pH scale?) and no extra power sources... Might eyeball an adjustment on that ranging yet. Pretty sure I'm settling in on a Teensy 3.0 to drive it - Starting to round up the parts... pH probe I'm using - http://www.ebay.ca/itm/181130326061 rT SSRs http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Lot-of-10-X-Solid-State-Relay-SSR-24-480V-AC-25A-/370412362386?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item563e4c1a92&_uhb=1 SD card slot - http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/sd_adaptor.html SD card adapter http://dx.com/p/sd-to-microsd-transflash-card-converter-module-27001 Now... uSD card slot might confuse some... Taking advantage of a recent hack to add a web front end... http://hackaday.com/2013/08/12/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd-cards/ So a <40$ web server basically. Nice part is its physically separate from the control side - Teensy saves data to "sd card" that SDcard serves as a web-server front end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jokersnightmare Posted September 29, 2013 Report Share Posted September 29, 2013 Are you just toying with the idea of a PH monitoring system or everything being controlled by a micro? I have thought of driving my freshwater setup with a micro for a while but don't have the knowhow of how to do it yet. Being an electronics engineer student at NAIT we're just getting into interrupts and stuff but we deal mainly with TI products and not arduinos. The MSP430 launchpad may actually be able to satisfy your needs for sligtly cheaper and if you're familiar with C, then it could be easier to program. They don't charge for shipping and the value line starts at $10US. Anyways, I am definitely interested in seeing the outcome of your project and am willing to give any insight I can along the way. Good Luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyL Posted September 29, 2013 Author Report Share Posted September 29, 2013 Going typical full bore control like the reef controllers, have a new set of ssr's coming for control purposes. Basically heater, lights, co2 solenoid bit of power head control, moon phases via led/pwm dimming- probably going to do some high power LED drivers for future lighting upgrades. None is radically different - the teensy is somewhat arduino compatible (other than voltage/pinout ) even can use the arduino development ide so code almost crosses over... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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