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Comment by claude saunders on December 11, 2011 at 10:47am

Hey, I'm so glad someone pointed me to this group (thanks Vlad!). My fulltime job is a controls software engineer, so I thought I would try and combine that with my home aquaponics system. And maybe somehow turn that into a second career if larger scale aquaponics production takes off.

At any rate, I'm going the PLC route, and using an open-source SCADA system called EPICS (www.aps.anl.gov/epics) that can talk to PLCs (among other things). Cost-wise, this is a used laptop on ebay ($125), a used Koyo DirectNet 06 PLC on ebay ($145) with some digital/relay/analog-IO in it. The main cost will just be sensors and actuators (and labor!!). This group is giving me some good pointers to sensors. For power control, I was going to try a Furman MP-15, which is a remote relay-controllable 110V outlet.

Comment by Rik Kretzinger on November 29, 2011 at 5:36pm

This look interesting.  Reading the reviews on it and a visit to their web site,  talks about additional sensors for testing elements in the future. 

 

TFH Magazine customersupport@tfh.com to rjkretzinger

show details 11:09 AM (5 hours ago)

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Comment by Manross on November 25, 2011 at 11:41pm

OK, so I have had a few requests for more information on RelayMan.

Here is a picture of it, should be available starting in January 2012.

This board will come with 64 inputs and 16 relays (outputs).

The board gets connected to a laptop or pc via usb.
You can create your own logic to monitor and compare inputs and turn outputs on or off through a series of pull downs and prompts.

 

We are currently building a 1/16th scale model for using RelayMan to control the heating and cooling of a fish tank and the water in the grow beds.

 

I will post more as time goes on.

Jeff

Comment by Rik Kretzinger on October 13, 2011 at 9:53am

This is a good addition to sensors for automation of aquaponic systems.  Got to order one and start to play with it.

NEW PRODUCT – 8″ eTape Liquid Level Sensor + extras

from adafruit industries blog by adafruit

2 people liked this

NEW PRODUCT – 8″ eTape Liquid Level Sensor + extras. The eTape Liquid Level Sensor is a solid-state sensor with a resistive output that varies with the level of the fluid. It does away with clunky mechanical floats, and easily interfaces with electronic control systems. The eTape sensor’s envelope is compressed by the hydrostatic pressure of the fluid in which it is immersed. This results in a change in resistance that corresponds to the distance from the top of the sensor to the surface of the fluid. The sensor’s resistive output is inversely proportional to the height of the liquid: the lower the liquid level, the higher the output resistance; the higher the liquid level, the lower the output resistance.

This is a very unique sensor, we haven’t seen anything else that is affordable and accurate for measuring liquid level. This sensor seems like it would be a handy addition to an hydroponics, aquarium, fountain or pool controller, or perhaps measuring a rain tube. This particular sensor is the 8″ model, we also include a 3-pin connector and 470 ohm resistor. The connector is so you don’t have to solder directly to the delicate pins: instead, just solder to the connector and plug it onto the sensor.

Since the sensor is resistive, it is easy to read it using a microcontroller/Arduino ADC pin. Check the tutorials tab for a quick-start pointer.

• Sensor Length: 10.65″ (297 mm)
• Width: 1.0″ (25.4mm)
• Thickness: 0.015″ (0.208 mm)
• Resistance Gradient: 55Ω / inch (22Ω / cm), ± 15%
• Active Sensor Length: 12.6″ (320.7 mm)
• Substrate: Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)
• Sensor Output: 700Ω empty, 85Ω full, ± 15%
• Actuation Depth: Nominal 1 inch (25.4 mm)
• Resolution: 1/32 inch (0.794 mm)
• Temperature Range: 15°F – 140°F (-9°C – 60°C)

Comment by Rik Kretzinger on August 15, 2011 at 10:50am

The future is a little closer:

Arduino water sprinkler control

TJ writes -

I made a sprinker system controller using arduino and your RTClib (thanks!). It has telnet features using a wiznet module to remotely control it and configure water schedules. I’ve also open sourced the code on github for anyone who’s interested.

Comment by Rik Kretzinger on June 11, 2011 at 11:32am

Catching up on my BLOG reading and ran across this from "Arduino your Environment" blog by Steve Spence.

 

Dissolved Oxygen Sensor

from Arduino Your Environment by Steve Spence

Looking for a way to detect dissolved oxygen levels? If you raise fish, this and a ph sensor are two important things to monitor (and of course, temperature), and an Arduino is the ideal platform to build upon. The Sensorex DO1200 ($139) outputs a <1mv - 54 mv signal indicating DO levels. Use
analogReference(INTERNAL1V1) to set the top of the input range to 1.1v.

Connect it to one of your analog pins. Very simple to read, just like a potentiometer.

Subscribe to Green Trust Sustainability & Renewable Energy by E...

This is totally do able for auqaponic systems now.  I had been looking for a probe and how to connect up to an arduino.  Now it will take some work to figure out the sketch to run the arduino.

Comment by Homefire on May 1, 2011 at 6:09am

Hi,

 

I'm proud of John R. for his accomplishments in monitoring-controlling my Greenhouse in Bloomington, IN from his place in W. Lafayette, IN.  He put a Linux box in my house with a multiprocessor box with sensors in the green house and did a web tunneling thing which description i'll leave to him. 

 

We got our first data yesterday.  It is really an eye opener.  I expected to see more humidity inside than out.  And i see that i had little clue about the actual thermal behavior of a green house.  I based my views on my experience in Texas but they had swamp coolers running even at night and propane gas heat was relatively cheap in the 70's with oil refineries just down the road.  I think Texas' weather is more consistent than Indiana too.  I now think my notion of keeping just above freezing in winter was just a pipe dream, except to keep the worms alive.  Even if i did hold at 40F , plants' soil chemistry doesn't work below  45ish and not well below 60ish.

 

Outside humidity, temp sensor:

Happiness,

Homefire

 

Comment by John R on March 9, 2011 at 9:57pm

Hi Terri,

 

Its really good to see you and so many others joining this group.  Your experience will be really useful and I appreciate the information about the mango software - it looks really promising.

 

I'm floored at the day job for the next four weeks and am struggling just to get my own ap system up.  I'm really looking forward to getting back at these projects since I have everything but time.

 

Good luck with your info. gathering and welcome!

 

Comment by Terri Mikkola on March 9, 2011 at 11:59am

Hi all, I'm new to aquaponics and I'm  still at the info. gathering phase.

My background is in water and wastewater treatment operations and I have used plc based process control systems for operating large scale water and wastewater facilities. I have a high level understanding of the various type of control loops used for monitoring and controlling process performance, i.e. dissolved oxygen, pH, solids & NH3/NOX concentrations; flowrates and other parameters.

 

I found this open source SCADA  platform that might work as the HMI called Mango - http://mango.serotoninsoftware.com/home.jsp. 

 

I know commercial  hardware/software is costly. I think it's great that there are hardware/software programmers interested in developing low cost systems!!!!

 

Comment by tim eden on February 14, 2011 at 3:07pm

thank you . I checked it. problem solved.

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