Updated IO List for the last rev.-
Open-Source Professional-Grade Aquacontroller
- Thread starter GT_Engineering
- Start date
There's been some good questions about this project from other platforms I wanted to post for those of you following along at home:
"Is building on this platform right for me?"
-Good question. This is actually a pretty involved project. Compared to the Apex Neptune, you're not going to be just "plug-and-play". A certain degree of technical mastery is involved in the electrical wiring and software modification. I've lowered that significantly through posting this on the internet, but it's still not an informidable feat.
====
olgreag: "Looks awesome, although the wiring hurts me! Must resist urge to ship you some tie wraps and colour coded tape..."
Myself, Reddit
"Do you have any good resources for learning how to manage cables? Right now, I'm just trying to keep them from getting tangled. I'd really love it if they were *immaculate*"
User olgreag:
"There’s subreddit for it! /cableporn /CableManagement
There’s a bazillion cheap products out there for computer cable managements, pretty sure you could find some to suit your needs.
Having a few cable harness, colour coded and well identified will make your life 10 times simpler"
===
user Sokonomi, Reddit:
"Thats one hell of a tree though, what is all that."
Me:
"Poor design decisions"
=====
user JanB1, Reddit:
"I guess that's before the final clean-up?"
Me:
"it's a proof-of-concept. Noone has ever taken an industrial PAC and applied it to an aquarium for monitoring and control before. As budget permits, I'm going to get an enclosure and do it right (with the cable raceways and actual wire labels)."
===
user 1maRealboy:
"This is similar to what I am planning for monitoring two lizards and some tarantulas. Though my project is going to be a lot more siimpler then yours. Basically I am just looking to turn some lights on and monitor temperature and humidity. Eventually I am going to use a Raspberry Pi and a touchscreen to be my datalogger and HMI."
Me:
"That's really cool! The ReefPi is definitely going to be the way for small-scale entry-level hobbyists to go. This is going to be a bit more involved. I'd still love to help though, so don't be shy about sending PM's with questions. I've been in the Aquarium hobby 3y and Controls Engineering for 7!"
===
user packinpennies, Reddit:
"I've seen ads for those P1AM controllers but never touched one myself. I'm more familiar with Raspberry Pis than Arduinos. Using a Pi with ser2net to connect VTScada on my setup in fact."
me:
"How do you like the VTScada? Does it have an IOT bridge?"
packinpennies:
"I’ve liked it! Super nice that it just historizes everything by default with no extra configuration and the trending is nice. Lite version is free up to 50 IO tags so perfect for relatively low IO count like an aquarium.
It has an MQTT client driver and a JSON/XML driver designed for interfacing to IOT. I haven’t explored that end of it though to give you any feedback about how well it works but their documentation and support has been decent."
==
Reddit, user iknowtoolittle
"Sounds like a great project. Do you have any documentation for this project - a P&ID would be awesome.
I've been thinking about something similar for my betta tank but, I have no idea what 'instrumetation' is available to fishtank enthusiasts. Industrial probes for pH, chlorine, temp., and etc. are way out of my price range.
Also, do you have an automatic food dispenser?
Thanks"
me:
"There are commonly available measuring tools for Ca, Alk, Mg, pH, ORP, PAR, Temp, salinity, etc.
Industrial pH probes run about $70, Temp for about $30, but anything above that starts to get really expensive (~$600 for a PAR monitor)
I've got a Neptune Apex AFS right now but I'm really unimpressed by its durability. I'm looking for one that I can drive with a simple discrete output on the P1AM"
"Any particular pH probes you recommend?
The auto feeder I am planning to get is USB with a manual switch, then I'll open it up and solder 2 wires in parallel with the pushbutton and take to relay output. Something like this
https://www.amazon.com/Zacro-Automa...s=automatic+fish+feeder&qid=1586357406&sr=8-6"
"I've got the standard one that comes from Neptune Apex for their PM02 module. Really depends on the electrical connections you're making: pH probes require a special intermediary driver if you want them to hook directly into an analog voltage input."
=====
Reddit, lord_zuecher:
"your MQTT stuff you did...I see you have a broker set up but I don't really understand how that's set up. Does it always trigger an event if an int value changes at all (say from 1->2, or 2->1300), or do you have to set that a deadband value change on the broker side?"
"In this example, I was using a remote broker (emqx.io and/or shiftr.io make good free platforms) and then just triggering the message to be sent whenever the builtin switch changes states. Since you're subscribed to the channel, you get an echo back.
MQTT doesn't put any constraints on channel "types" like uint or float; they're all just strings. The good thing about MQTT is that you don't have to worry about the network locations of each node, just the location of the broker itself, who then forwards the messages to all subscribers.
====
Reddit, going_mad:
No sump on the 90? Or is that a hob overflow?
No sump just because I don't have the room. Coralvue BH-100 skimmer and I keep a little canister of activated charcoal and purigen right next to that powerhead facing the front pane. There's a wavemaker on the left as well so flow is much higher on that side of the tank for the SPS.
===lameaceae
Out of curiosity, what do you shoot with and what program are you using for editing?
It's just a galaxy s10e with a basic lens and filter kit and then editing in Davinci Resolve. I've got an old instrument stand with a phone holster to hold it still. It's kind of a pain in the ass to take my phone out of its case to fit the lens kit so keep that in mind if you're shopping for a phone case and/or phone photography kit.
A few of my SPS frags are on magnets so I can move them to scrape the glass of microfauna before shooting.
Hmm, it seems on reef2reef the s10 can take some pretty nice photos! Does your lens kit have a solid orange colored lens?
Edit: I totally feel that about cases and lenses though, definitely not convenient
Edit2: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/h...ls-with-a-cellphone-android-or-iphone.231873/
The link might help using your phone if you’re interested in finding a manual camera app for androids. Shows a photo comparison from 2016 when the OP was using a manual camera app to adjust his white balance. That alone should change things up a bit, and with a single orange filter I imagine it would get rid of a lot of the blues/color shifts flooding the shadows/highlights
My SO uses the iPhone XR and it's definitely superior in terms of how the video looks on the screen, but ultimately I'd much rather just film it without any effects and then manually adjust in post-processing.
I'm a fan of the orange-colored filters (that attenuate the blue) because otherwise there's a ton of blue data compressed at the higher-end of the pixel intensity histogram and the filters distribute that a lot more evenly across the entire pixel value range. Davinci Resolve has a great tool for visualizing this, they call it their "parade scope". It helps you balance the colors - specifically, balance out the blue and red levels (the green levels seem to generally be pretty evenly spread across the range, I'm assuming this is a camera-side optimization that has something to do with the HDR feature.
Ultimately, I think the "lift" tool in Resolve is the most useful - it lifts the "zero point" of the pixels to the same lumen value and gives you enough balance to adjust Gain and Gamma. No idea what "offset" does though.
"Is building on this platform right for me?"
-Good question. This is actually a pretty involved project. Compared to the Apex Neptune, you're not going to be just "plug-and-play". A certain degree of technical mastery is involved in the electrical wiring and software modification. I've lowered that significantly through posting this on the internet, but it's still not an informidable feat.
====
olgreag: "Looks awesome, although the wiring hurts me! Must resist urge to ship you some tie wraps and colour coded tape..."
Myself, Reddit
"Do you have any good resources for learning how to manage cables? Right now, I'm just trying to keep them from getting tangled. I'd really love it if they were *immaculate*"
User olgreag:
"There’s subreddit for it! /cableporn /CableManagement
There’s a bazillion cheap products out there for computer cable managements, pretty sure you could find some to suit your needs.
Having a few cable harness, colour coded and well identified will make your life 10 times simpler"
===
user Sokonomi, Reddit:
"Thats one hell of a tree though, what is all that."
Me:
"Poor design decisions"
=====
user JanB1, Reddit:
"I guess that's before the final clean-up?"
Me:
"it's a proof-of-concept. Noone has ever taken an industrial PAC and applied it to an aquarium for monitoring and control before. As budget permits, I'm going to get an enclosure and do it right (with the cable raceways and actual wire labels)."
===
user 1maRealboy:
"This is similar to what I am planning for monitoring two lizards and some tarantulas. Though my project is going to be a lot more siimpler then yours. Basically I am just looking to turn some lights on and monitor temperature and humidity. Eventually I am going to use a Raspberry Pi and a touchscreen to be my datalogger and HMI."
Me:
"That's really cool! The ReefPi is definitely going to be the way for small-scale entry-level hobbyists to go. This is going to be a bit more involved. I'd still love to help though, so don't be shy about sending PM's with questions. I've been in the Aquarium hobby 3y and Controls Engineering for 7!"
===
user packinpennies, Reddit:
"I've seen ads for those P1AM controllers but never touched one myself. I'm more familiar with Raspberry Pis than Arduinos. Using a Pi with ser2net to connect VTScada on my setup in fact."
me:
"How do you like the VTScada? Does it have an IOT bridge?"
packinpennies:
"I’ve liked it! Super nice that it just historizes everything by default with no extra configuration and the trending is nice. Lite version is free up to 50 IO tags so perfect for relatively low IO count like an aquarium.
It has an MQTT client driver and a JSON/XML driver designed for interfacing to IOT. I haven’t explored that end of it though to give you any feedback about how well it works but their documentation and support has been decent."
==
Reddit, user iknowtoolittle
"Sounds like a great project. Do you have any documentation for this project - a P&ID would be awesome.
I've been thinking about something similar for my betta tank but, I have no idea what 'instrumetation' is available to fishtank enthusiasts. Industrial probes for pH, chlorine, temp., and etc. are way out of my price range.
Also, do you have an automatic food dispenser?
Thanks"
me:
"There are commonly available measuring tools for Ca, Alk, Mg, pH, ORP, PAR, Temp, salinity, etc.
Industrial pH probes run about $70, Temp for about $30, but anything above that starts to get really expensive (~$600 for a PAR monitor)
I've got a Neptune Apex AFS right now but I'm really unimpressed by its durability. I'm looking for one that I can drive with a simple discrete output on the P1AM"
"Any particular pH probes you recommend?
The auto feeder I am planning to get is USB with a manual switch, then I'll open it up and solder 2 wires in parallel with the pushbutton and take to relay output. Something like this
https://www.amazon.com/Zacro-Automa...s=automatic+fish+feeder&qid=1586357406&sr=8-6"
"I've got the standard one that comes from Neptune Apex for their PM02 module. Really depends on the electrical connections you're making: pH probes require a special intermediary driver if you want them to hook directly into an analog voltage input."
=====
Reddit, lord_zuecher:
"your MQTT stuff you did...I see you have a broker set up but I don't really understand how that's set up. Does it always trigger an event if an int value changes at all (say from 1->2, or 2->1300), or do you have to set that a deadband value change on the broker side?"
"In this example, I was using a remote broker (emqx.io and/or shiftr.io make good free platforms) and then just triggering the message to be sent whenever the builtin switch changes states. Since you're subscribed to the channel, you get an echo back.
MQTT doesn't put any constraints on channel "types" like uint or float; they're all just strings. The good thing about MQTT is that you don't have to worry about the network locations of each node, just the location of the broker itself, who then forwards the messages to all subscribers.
====
Reddit, going_mad:
No sump on the 90? Or is that a hob overflow?
No sump just because I don't have the room. Coralvue BH-100 skimmer and I keep a little canister of activated charcoal and purigen right next to that powerhead facing the front pane. There's a wavemaker on the left as well so flow is much higher on that side of the tank for the SPS.
===lameaceae
Out of curiosity, what do you shoot with and what program are you using for editing?
It's just a galaxy s10e with a basic lens and filter kit and then editing in Davinci Resolve. I've got an old instrument stand with a phone holster to hold it still. It's kind of a pain in the ass to take my phone out of its case to fit the lens kit so keep that in mind if you're shopping for a phone case and/or phone photography kit.
A few of my SPS frags are on magnets so I can move them to scrape the glass of microfauna before shooting.
Hmm, it seems on reef2reef the s10 can take some pretty nice photos! Does your lens kit have a solid orange colored lens?
Edit: I totally feel that about cases and lenses though, definitely not convenient
Edit2: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/h...ls-with-a-cellphone-android-or-iphone.231873/
The link might help using your phone if you’re interested in finding a manual camera app for androids. Shows a photo comparison from 2016 when the OP was using a manual camera app to adjust his white balance. That alone should change things up a bit, and with a single orange filter I imagine it would get rid of a lot of the blues/color shifts flooding the shadows/highlights
My SO uses the iPhone XR and it's definitely superior in terms of how the video looks on the screen, but ultimately I'd much rather just film it without any effects and then manually adjust in post-processing.
I'm a fan of the orange-colored filters (that attenuate the blue) because otherwise there's a ton of blue data compressed at the higher-end of the pixel intensity histogram and the filters distribute that a lot more evenly across the entire pixel value range. Davinci Resolve has a great tool for visualizing this, they call it their "parade scope". It helps you balance the colors - specifically, balance out the blue and red levels (the green levels seem to generally be pretty evenly spread across the range, I'm assuming this is a camera-side optimization that has something to do with the HDR feature.
Ultimately, I think the "lift" tool in Resolve is the most useful - it lifts the "zero point" of the pixels to the same lumen value and gives you enough balance to adjust Gain and Gamma. No idea what "offset" does though.
Did some UI work. Check it.
I likey! Always been a fan of black or dark backgrounds!
Ctrl + Alt + i for the win
Sorry to hear about the personal life problems. Never fun.
Well, see, here's the quandry: my girlfriend is a reefer too, so it's kind of hard to be TOO sad about it.
Still not a fun situation and you only have more money for reefing if the ex doesn't get half plus alimony...
You must be a lot of fun at parties
