Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I personally don't enjoy using whole, real computers instead of microcontrollers for such standalone purposes because they're power hungry and noisy ... but mainly the power hungry part.

But it sure gives you a big processing power edge as well as ease of programming, as well as a nice display unit (monitor). But I tend to stay away anyway and use microcontrollers.

And another personal thing - I prefer linux to windows. This is the subject of silly wars actually but they won't happen here so I decided to voice my personal opinion. As far as stability is concerned, I ran my linux computer for a month at 100% CPU usage (solving at the Al Zimmermann's programming contest) and I never had to reboot it. (It did shut down for a short while during the two or three power failures that month though).

Gokul you're right, the thermistor needs lineraization. I think Steve hit it on the head. The curve is just about like a banana. I don't know how to write an equation to represent that curve so I am planning on just using an array of offsets maybe about every 5 degrees F and using some simple math to get the final value. I know it won't be perfect but I don't think it's that important. I should be able to hold .1C accuracy.

I'll post in my system thread when I finish but it won't be until December or so I imagine.
Gotta get that solar heater built first. It's way hot here right now but come November/December my fish won't be happy if I don't do something.

Interesting ideas about the arduino and a whole bunch of other jargon I don't understand. Was anyone successful in actually compiling a system that records data (temp, CO2, O2, pH, etc.), activate the components (heaters, pumps, feeders, etc.) according to the data or time, and then having all that compiled into a readable format (excel, numbers, pretty pictures)?