Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am normally a big fan of KISS, but just out of interest how easy is it for a non techie like me to use a pc or laptop in aquaponics?
I`m thinking water/air temperature measurements, controlling greenhouse air vents, pumps, solenoid valves etc.
Just thinking outside the box here.

It's much easier to program an arduino to do al those things, you can even add LCD's and host a basic web page that shows your sensor readings

Yeah, you could get an arduino, relay board, and temp sensors for pretty cheap.
From there you could get an ethernet shield to talk to your PC or with a little work hook it up to your PC serial port.

Raspberry pi's are becoming popular too.

Thanks for the replies everyone - I`m going to have to do a lot of reading up to understand how arduino and raspberry pis work

When you work it out can you post the simple version. This stuff loses me but I am interested in it.

I love technology, but for some things in life, I think they are better when simpler, and that includes growing things..

Yea, Im all for innovation and tech but I dont see it holding much value in the backyard aspect. After you cycle up and your system falls in to place it basically just ticks along. I rarely test my water parameters these days. I have a floating temp gauge and I check that nearing trout harvest time but thats about it.

Just my opinion.

For me such a system would be great - I have to go away for work very often for up to a week at a time and if I could see that the system was still cyclically pumping (eg just a simple water level read out) that would be great.

I would not entrust any technology to run my system, but for remote monitoring it would be great.

Surely the person feeding your fish could check the water level

If someone made a reliable device that monitored ph, temp ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates, it would be convenient. I think that it should come with a " Don't Panic" light on it, because people might try to constantly adjust their parameters. Ideally it should give an appropriate response to a change in condition. Ammonia is too high, hold off on feed, and look for dead fish. Ph is too low, add a buffer like shell grit. Temps are getting out of parameter for your fish, perhaps run pump only during the day, and aerate at night.

I think for people like myself that are away from their systems sometimes for weeks at a time it would be good if there was a cheap remote monitoring/some control system. I don't trust auto fish feeders but have been talking to one of my mates about setting up a raspberry based camera monitor through the existing wifi and being able to control fish feed release while monitoring the fish... this way no over feeding... also a low ph or high ammonia alert would be great and low water sensor...although I am installing an auto top up valve that I have bought with 2 x 200 blue barrel water reserve. I would prefer to be there myself but when that's not an option I could see some benefits... AP is already quite high tech considering pumps, backups, ph/chemical tests..
AND its just fun to build stuff, even if it is sometimes not necessary

Trouble is a high water level can mean your pump has stopped working and your fish are about to die of O2 starvation - so just checking 'there's enough water in there' is not enough. I have explained that if the water is totally still (i.e non draining back from the beds) that all is probably not well, though I'm not confident the fish sitter is discerning enough to notice in time.

Hence being able to see water level and watch it go up and down with each cycle confirms there is enough water in the system AND it is being pumped round the system.

Not in my case as my 2 airpumps will keep fish alive even if the pumps stop.. also if power goes out one air pump is one of those small DC ones that switch over by themselves and there is a 12v bilge pump that kicks in from a lead acid battery when power drops out...

To display anything more than the read outs, i.e. fvor the device to give advice and causes of problems would take massive programming.
Each variable would have to be set by the operator which would be too much work for people who didnt program the thing.

If only the non standard probes didnt cost hundreds of dollars each, i would be in the middle of setting up a system like this.

Eventually i will do an arduino one, but without ammonia/N's, calcium, iron, phosphates, etc, it isnt a huge help, only a time saver.