Aquarium Monitor that monitors as much as possible.

[Mishri]

So I've been looking at various controllers and monitors and all of them either don't do enough monitoring, or they do so many other things and cost $800 it seems unnecessary.

Goal: I want to monitor PH/Salinity/ORP/Temperature-at minimum, ammonia, and water(level) as well would be good, it will store the data and send it to a iphone/android app or PC and display a graph over time of changes. -It should also push alerts to the phone if certain thresholds are reached.

I don't need any kind of controller functionality, strictly monitoring.. my lights have built in controllers, my pumps have built in controllers, I have no need to control anything else.


Is there an existing product that would do this? If not I suppose I'll be looking at making my own Arduino(or raspberry pi) version.. pricing things out for the probes and arduino it would still be about $200-$300 in materials.

On the other hand, if I make it user friendly, straight forward, connect it to a PC or Mac for initial setup onto the wireless home network.. install app and you are done. I might be able to sell them as well... I can also setup a server to store the data as long as the unit has an internet connection so you can see years of changes.

-IF this already exists I'd rather just buy it.. if not... looks like I might be getting my programming and electrical engineering buddies together for a little work.. (My brother actually makes similar products already, but for farming that report to apple/android devices, wouldn't be hard for him to whip one of these up.. he also has access to all sorts of probes and sensors that I might be able to find more uses for-Like he could easily monitor exactly how much is coming out of a dosing pump and put that in a report.. it's one of his company's patents)

Anyone else interested in just an aquarium monitor and not a controller?

-The biggest reason I think this will be useful is it can be straight forward, put in your wifi information, install the probes in your sump, install the app on your phone and you are done. I see a lot of people being confused by the controllers that do so many different things.

 

[Snarky Shark]

So I've been looking at various controllers and monitors and all of them either don't do enough monitoring, or they do so many other things and cost $800 it seems unnecessary.

Goal: I want to monitor PH/Salinity/ORP/Temperature-at minimum, ammonia, and water(level) as well would be good, it will store the data and send it to a iphone/android app or PC and display a graph over time of changes. -It should also push alerts to the phone if certain thresholds are reached.

I don't need any kind of controller functionality, strictly monitoring.. my lights have built in controllers, my pumps have built in controllers, I have no need to control anything else.


Is there an existing product that would do this? If not I suppose I'll be looking at making my own Arduino(or raspberry pi) version.. pricing things out for the probes and arduino it would still be about $200-$300 in materials.

On the other hand, if I make it user friendly, straight forward, connect it to a PC or Mac for initial setup onto the wireless home network.. install app and you are done. I might be able to sell them as well... I can also setup a server to store the data as long as the unit has an internet connection so you can see years of changes.

-IF this already exists I'd rather just buy it.. if not... looks like I might be getting my programming and electrical engineering buddies together for a little work.. (My brother actually makes similar products already, but for farming that report to apple/android devices, wouldn't be hard for him to whip one of these up.. he also has access to all sorts of probes and sensors that I might be able to find more uses for-Like he could easily monitor exactly how much is coming out of a dosing pump and put that in a report.. it's one of his company's patents)

Anyone else interested in just an aquarium monitor and not a controller?

-The biggest reason I think this will be useful is it can be straight forward, put in your wifi information, install the probes in your sump, install the app on your phone and you are done. I see a lot of people being confused by the controllers that do so many different things.

Seneye has a monitor that had most of those functions but not all. Take a look and see or sounds like the project has just begun.

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[Mishri]

yeah. The seneye reefmonitor looks like every 30 days you need to replace the ph and ammonia slide, but that isn't a big deal. It's price isn't bad, $200, but $500 if I want the functionality I'm looking for. and I've heard that the light monitoring doesn't really work to tell us anything useful. monitoring dosing pumps would be much better.. (the patent for that might be why we don't see that all over)... it also lacks the salinity monitor. It's price would be right if they had different options for probes..

-I already started the conversation with my 2 guys.. the reefer is excited. my brother who makes similar things doesn't seem too stoked yet, but I'll call him and get him on board, he doesn't keep aquariums.

 

[ktownhero]

You basically described an Apex but don't want to pay for it. What do you need to monitor Ammonia for?

 

[ktownhero]

-The biggest reason I think this will be useful is it can be straight forward, put in your wifi information, install the probes in your sump, install the app on your phone and you are done. I see a lot of people being confused by the controllers that do so many different things.

I am giggling (in a friendly way) about how you, like so many others, describe these things like they just magically work. "Just sign into wifi and done!" -- uh, no. If you want alerts away from home then some sort of persistent service needs to exist either by the vendor or by you, and no vendor would rely on the user to do it. And there's significant cost associated with maintaining a persistent service, like what Neptune does with ApexFusion (which they don't charge on ongoing fee for though). This also means that the controller must function as a local web server that communicates with the remote one. All of these things have significant development and ongoing maintenance costs.

 

[GimpyFin]

The Mindstream monitor does pretty much what you want. Well, I mean if it ever gets released... Supposed to be out later this year, monitors about 10 different parameters and sends/stores data in a cloud service accessible from any device with internet access. A little on the spendy side, but you just have testing discs that get replaced periodically.

https://www.mindstreamh2o.com/product

 

[Mishri]

You basically described an Apex but don't want to pay for it. What do you need to monitor Ammonia for?

If something dies it can cause an ammonia spike.. not likely in a system my size, but in smaller systems would be useful.

 

[Mishri]

I am giggling (in a friendly way) about how you, like so many others, describe these things like they just magically work. "Just sign into wifi and done!" -- uh, no. If you want alerts away from home then some sort of persistent service needs to exist either by the vendor or by you, and no vendor would rely on the user to do it. And there's significant cost associated with maintaining a persistent service, like what Neptune does with ApexFusion (which they don't charge on ongoing fee for though). This also means that the controller must function as a local web server that communicates with the remote one. All of these things have significant development and ongoing maintenance costs.

It's a server, need a static IP, design what would effectively be a website that the app would log into. Development and Hosting fees will be 0 as it's what my brother and I do for a living. (I'm a network engineer, computer science background, my bro is a software engineer and does everything from IT support to the hardware for their servers along with designing apps for ios and android and websites)... we are computer geeks for a living, I set these things up all the time And my brother and I have a reputation for quickly being able to design and implement things that teams usually take even longer to do... my bro designed an app in a week that his latest employer said he had a team working on for 2 months and it was nowhere near as good or far along.

you don't need a server to communicate to a remote one, as long as the device has internet service it can send the data to our server. In the event the server isn't reachable for whatever reason it will store the data locally till it can reach the server again. (up to a point, eventually it will run out of memory).. but if I just set it up for personal use for a few friends and myself it would be fairly simple and easy.

 

[Mishri]

The Mindstream monitor does pretty much what you want. Well, I mean if it ever gets released... Supposed to be out later this year, monitors about 10 different parameters and sends/stores data in a cloud service accessible from any device with internet access. A little on the spendy side, but you just have testing discs that get replaced periodically.

https://www.mindstreamh2o.com/product

That looks pretty good, doesn't monitor how much fluid is leaving your dosers, but with the rest of the tests I think that you would see something is whacky and investigate it anyway without a need to monitor the doser itself. I was leaning toward doing as much with probes as possible, make it as low maintenance and low cost as possible. but there are some tests you just can't do without something like a spectrometer... which puts it out of most people's budgets, so the colorimeter is the next best choice like they are using... and using all high end quality probes would cost up around $1,000, (like atlas) but people could be given the option of less expensive probes.

-If that were out now and was about $800 I'd pick it up for sure and ditch my plans... but.. if they are running into problems.. I might as well push mine out. I'll have a personal one ready in a couple of months to start testing and working on software/server/apps...

 

[trjones2]

I'm looking for something similar. My ignorance on what I should be monitoring is more of a problem for me than cost. I notice this thread is from several months ago. Any chance you have made a decision and purchased or built a monitor?

 

[Mishri]

I've talked to my bro about it, said it's basically exactly what he does already and he can make a prototype easily, but recommends using raspberry pi because it's much faster and more capable than arduino. The expensive parts are the probes and if I want to meter my additives that part can be very expensive, depending on how precise I need it to be.

My brother does the same thing with herbacides/pesticides/fertalizer/seeds.. it tracks, monitors, meters, sends out alerts via text or call or e-mail and it stores data remotely.. it makes graphs and maps... it's mostly for agriculture but has a few other applications... so.. he can do the same thing with a few more probes no problem.

All in all my DIY version would likely cost me more than an apex, but would do a lot more and I'd have full control to tweak the software for my needs. The problem is we don't want to sell it. Neither of us wants to deal with users- 99% of problems are user generated. So we scrapped the idea of commercializing it... but we'll likely still make it once we have time, probably this winter. Once it's up and running I'll update the thread with some screenshots/pics.

 

[trjones2]

Looks like I'm going to bite the bullet and buy the Apex. BRS video overview sold me on it.


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