Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey Todorus
Don't listen to the nay sayers, Automate away.
I started with pump control and monitoring level of tank and grow beds using simple float switches I bought off ebay.
Monitored grow bed upper and lower limit to check beds were filling and draining in a regular fashion and a low level on the tank. Found the float switches get clogged up easily and was going to move to an ultrasonic level sensor.
Will keep watching your posts.

Assuming you're not running a commercial operation, was this really necessary, or just an excuse to experiment with cool gear

My auto siphons haven't skipped a beat in 3 years, with the only monitoring being a quick eyeball check every 3 months or so Sounds like by adding float switches you've over complicated something which could be so simple and adding an extra layer of fail points/vunerabilities

Jono you may be able to do it with php itself, but I seem to remember that I was having trouble getting php to work with my serial port. It could well have just been me though.
Since my post I have changed track a little in that I am trying to use a simple json interface instead of serial. So you end up with something like xively but without sending your data to a 3rd party. I have been playing with meteor which looks like it will make it a bit easier to overcome some of the problems I was facing.

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Also I may have found a pH sensor set up that will cost around $25aud for microcontrollers. I will let people know how it goes once I have tested it.

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HI

If you want to automate, good for you

To answer your question, I'd like to know:

The temperature of the fish tank
The depth of the fish tank water
A web cam link to the fish tank
Air temperature
Status of the pump
email alerting

All published to a local/internet webserver so I can look
at if from my iphone/android/tablet/laptop


I haven't built anything having just discovered the site last week
but this weekend I'll either go out in my boat or attack the IBC
I have lying around at home

rsevs - any update on the pH sensor and where you got it from?

I saw one on Little Bird, but it was $60+ and they say the membrane lasts up to a year.

FuzzyMonkey, my pH probe should have been here weeks ago. I am currently in contact with the supplier about it not arriving yet.

If you want to try out what I found for yourself, I ordered and received these breakout boards for pH.

https://www.sparkyswidgets.com/

I then ordered the probes themselves from ebay.

The other thing I found last night that could be worth a look is these:

http://www.seneye.com/

I'm finding out that the time I have for this stuff is really in the negative numbers, but I decided to have a go at creating a server in Python this week. I chose Python as it will be much, much easier to deploy to a machine for those with less experience in setting up servers. I've had no experience with Python, but I've got a TDD based workflow going with the Django webserver framework. I can somewhat use my experience as a Ruby on Rails dev.

Progress can be followed on GitHub (https://github.com/todorus/dionysos), but I'll advertise updates here when it really starts to get useable as a server.



You're talking about a live feed? I'll have to look into that, if there's a standard for webcams and their feeds. If anybody would already happen to know something about this stuff, please post a link or an explanation.

I reckon something that charts all the things we monitor water for, with regular interval tests - ph, hardness, ammonia, nitrite, nitrates, salinity, temp. Knowing these at 5 or 10 minute intervals along with historical data would be pretty useful IMO.

Something that could automate feeding - with floating pellets, then after a certain amount of time scoop up remaining pellets.

A pump gauge to tell me when my pump is losing efficacy, indicating its time for a clean.

"Battered" like a fillet of fish or "battered" by the LA police?

either way...

Pesky Luddite!

Personally I'd like a website where you can have a link to feed your fish and make it so your the only one who has access. That way when you're away from home you can feed your fish without having to rely on a kid next door with 50 friends who all want to feed the fish .

I think there's money in this idea. I'd call the site "FishSaver.com"

And I'm also laying claim to the idea for the first network enabled fish feeder (assuming no one beat me to it) - and I probably need to integrate a camera into that so you can watch them eat so that idea is mine as well (unless of course, well, you know).

lol - cheers guys

Yes, still working on it, only progress is a little erratic. Let me clear a few things up by explaining how I'm designing the server. As a programmer I try to make things abstract as this will let them serve a more general purpose. In the case of designing a server to monitor an aquaponics setup rigged with sensors, I'm actually designing a server that monitors any setup rigged with sensors.

configure
The server can be configured to listen to input at certain endpoints (specificly structured urls). These endpoints can be created by giving orders to the server. This way the server will know what kind of data an endpoint will receive: integers, numbers, text or images and will start listening for them. It will timestamp every received input and store it to the database.

listen
The server is dumb by design. The server isn't aware of the unit or physical quantity. As far as it's concerned, these are labels to display along with the measured values for the user to interpret. This way, anything that can be expressed in text, integers, numbers or images can be measured. Time interval is regulated by the sensor. The server will log data as it receives it. If you send it data every 5 minutes, it has data for every 5 minutes.

act
The server will also be able to act upon data. Triggers can be created which have conditions and actions. The definition for these is still undecided, but I'm thinking about conditions bieng "measurement < x" and "measurement > x" and actions to be a request sent to an endpoint (of the sensor). If this should be more complex, like "measurement > x for t amount of time", let me know.

ease of use
I'm planning on creating a webinterface for people to easily configure and monitor their server. No need to have a lot of experience with API's and endpoints. Create a datapoint and let the interface generate the code for your Arduino to supply it with measurements. This is less than straightforward though. Does anyone know of any interfaces that are userfriendly that I may have a look at?

Take a look at grovestreams.com. It does everything you are taking about and could be a good template for you to work from. There are screenshots in my Arduino Controller thread.

I would love to have a Grovestreams clone that I can run on Google App Engine.

It's cool to want to automate AP right off the bat, really! But for me, I do Linux in a data center all day long, and as Charlie and others mentioned, getting out to feed the fish by hand is therapy to say the least - there's something calming about it. Too much of a good thing and all that - automation that is.

However, once I've paid my dues to AP and learnt everything by hand, I can see automating just a few things. Even now I'd like a temperature sensor in the water so I just have to lookup from my window and check it. But that's one more thing to clean, sensors.

First, pay your dues, learn everything manually and appreciate the tasks. Then, automate away.

Who knows, like some, you may find it's just better to do it the "ole fashioned way". LOL

Good luck, and above all, LEARN, SHARE, AND HAVE FUN WITH BYAPs.

:-)