Heat Sensor?..

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PirateMaxikinz

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Nov 23, 2013
14
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Bury St Edmunds
Hi, I work in a motor parts place and a college of mine bought a programmable circuit board called arduino.
with this he's been able to create a program to upgrade his analogue clocks to a digital display, showing speed, temp e.t.c..

Now this has lead me to ponder if this is possible for a fish tank?.. because an little alarm would be great to signal a low temp.. or a lack of current to alarm the failure of a filter.

Has anyone attempted this or similar?. i'd love to hear back

cheers!
 
I am not sure if they can measure current but temperature is not a problem. I have an arduino controlling some of my other projects. Analog in relay and PWM out.
 
yeah that's the Idea, but I was wondering if anyone had tinkled about looking at the the current, as you could program the circuit board to monitor both at one time, but if it's impossible I would stick to shop standard.
 
If you can find a waterproof accelerometer then you could rig it up in the output of the filter so it is constantly moving in the flow. If it senses that it's movement drops below a certain level then it could trigger an alarm.
 
I have an arduino controlling my tank.

It controls the lights, monitors the filter output, temperature, and water level, and can turn the filters on and off, as well as turn on a top off pump which can pump water from a 5 gallon bucket into the tank.

Arduinos are terrific, you can do almost anything with them as long as you know how.

I bought these off ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-pcs-LCD-D...363?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a7ea42373

They come from China, so you have to wait a month for them to come in the mail, but they're so damn cheap.

I left one intact and use it regularly, and then on the 2nd one I cut off the temperature probe, and measured the resistance to calibrate the sensor, and then used the temperature probe to hook up to the arduino. The sensor is very linear, so it was pretty easy. All you have to do is make a resistor bridge, and measure the voltage coming through the sensor. The 3rd one is going to go on a smaller tank that I plan on setting up later. These things were cheaper than buying raw temperature probes, and they've proven to be pretty accurate. Much more accurate than the internal sensor in my tank heater!

I'm also controlling my heater directly through the arduino. I was tired of fluctuating temperatures, and didn't want to buy a whole new heater just because my old one wasn't able to keep the temperature constant.

If you have any specific wiring questions, feel free to ask. I'm in the middle of re-doing a lot of stuff, but I intend on posting the details of my setup in another thread as an example of how to integrate arduinos in aquariums. I initially used it because I could use the arduino as a VERY cost effective LED driver.
 
Arduinos can measure current. The way I measure the current on my LED arrays is to put a 1 ohm 4 watt resistor in series with the LEDs, and then monitor the voltage of the resistor. 1 ohm makes it super easy because then 1 volt = 1 amp. I.e. if the voltage of the resistor is .5 volts, then there is 500mA flowing through it. It just gets tricky on where to place it in the circuit and what voltage reference to use with the arduino to get an accurate measurement.
 
ReefAngel.com is a really good resource for open source code for the Arduino. The Reef Angel controller is based on the Arduino platform. From the specs, the main board appears to be a Mega or at least prototyped from it. The ATMega256 chip set is the heart of the Mega, and can be purchased from China/Hong Kong with any of the Arduino bootloaders already installed.

Within the last month or two, I got into Arduino's. My first was a Leonardo that still hasn't arrived from China, but I paid $7.58 with free shipping. I also bought a Mega for $15ish (and has arrived). While waiting on them to arrive, I had been studying the programing so I got impatient and bought an Uno locally for $30 (Mega's were priced at $54). As I played around with them, my fascination grew so I bought a Duemillinove and a Mega Nano.

Yeah, it's an addiction. All I have to say for myself is Arduino's are still cheaper than drugs or loose women.
 
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