Howto: Use a Linksys Router as Wireless Reef Controller - WRRC

I use a pressure sensor attached to a 30" tube with a weight on the end. Place the pressure sensore above the water line somewhere and drop the tube (with weight) into the storage tank. You can see the water level in my storage vessell which uses this technique. It means water never actually touches the pressure sensor diaphram. Pressure sensor was $5 off ebay plus this cct below

4-20.gif


From my web site www.rjconway.homeip.net if you select [water change] you can see the stability of the above cct and sensor. It does dip slightly when the morning sun shines directly onit for 1 hr however probably only efcets it by ~3%

I have recently purchased an industrial Rosemount pressure transmitter ($50) off ebay which I will direct connect to the bottom of the my storage drum. This will provide ultimate level measurement.

rob
 
Capacitative level sensors are also very useful. You will obviously need insulated conductors in any water type medium. The highly capacitative nature of water gives you a very large range to work with however.
 
I've been working on it in my spare time, and have been doing some of the hardware design. My biggest accomplishment was getting pH measurement prototyped. I took vernier pH probe amplifier to amp up the pH probe output into the 0-5v range of the DS2450 quad A/D. Then it was a matter of getting the formula correct to convert from mV to pH.
Click to expand...

Hi aka_BigRed,

old post but I hope your are still there...

I also coupled a Vernier-amp to a DS2450 but the result is about 1.20 volt output for pH=7. This also is true for a shortened input.
What I expected is about 2.5 volts for a neutral pH. The 1.2 is way too low for a accurate result.

What is your output-voltage at a neutral pH? The amp's wires for pin-1 and 3 and 4 are not connected in my setup. What did you do with these?

1= Sensor output (+/-10V)--------N/C
2= GND---------------------------Ground
3= Vres---------------------------N/C
4= AutoIDENT---------------------N/C
5= +5VDC------------------------+5V
6= output (0-5V)-----------------DS2450

Ed
 
Maybe I'm the only one still playing with this... But have a technical question...

With the current 'surge' in LED lighting... Anyone know of a way to drive LEDs (PWM for dimming?) off a USB/serial interface?
 
phidgets.com if you want to write some .net/java/c/etc code to drive them from a PC. They have a few USB --> LED products (the LED64 does 64 independently dimmable LEDS). They would be perfect for moonlights, etc.

If you are instead planning high output lighting to grow coral, then your othebest bet is to use a PIC or ATMEGA (etc) to do the pwm. You can either bit bang the serial/usb stuff or get a micro that has a uart and/or a usb inteface built in. I prefer BASCOM-AVR and the Atmega series fo micros. In this scenario you will need to build or buy the constant current drivers (buck pucks for example)... if you are not fully up to speed on LED drivers and high output LEDs, then this is not likely a good candidate for a firt time project.
 
I'll tout the Ardiuno (AVR programming made easy :-) again for LED stuff.... it has a couple pins that output PWM with zero effort which I imagine you could amplify to drive any number of LEDs.

Also...
I got my SheevaPlug "plug computer" a while back and have ported my backend software to run on it, so now the Sheeva sits plugged into the wall and an ethernet connection with a USB cable coming out running to the arduino controller.

Those little things are really cool- run Ubuntu out of the box, are small, and consume little energy. Worth looking into in lieu of a router I think. And especially if you're considering a mini-ITX setup.

What's the status of y'all's salinity and/or ph sensors? I've almost completed design of a custom board to clean up the cable and breadboard mess I've currently got going on, and would like to pursue some other measurement projects...
 
qprox sensors don't work underwater? Not sure what the intended use is here, unless to be partially submerged and read based on that?

What model air pressure transducer have you used to get .1" accuracy?

Thanks
 
Qprox (Qauntum research), bought by Atmel, made capacitive sensing products that could be used for non-contact sensing of fluid level through container walls or a plastic dipstick. I don't think they sensors are still availalbe, as QPROX has been purchased and the product technology leveraged into new arenas.

I don't have the pressure transducers in front of me now.. but there are a dozen manufacturers that produce suitable products. retail prices from digikey, etc will be in the $20-$100 per unit depending on accuracy and style. I would guess the retail price on the units I have was in the $40-$60 range. I got them on ebay for a few bucks each if memory serves.
 
Just an update with regards to 1wire slave devices. There has been a release of a new 1wire slave called BAE0910. Its a 1wire slave with 5 I/O. The interesting thing with this devcie is that you can run a program directly within the slave without the need for the host to interact with it.

Example: Temperature control, turn off heater and PWM for cooling fan speed.
ATO control the ATO pump and monitor the float switch. You can get it to run for an amount of time
As it has PWM you can control LED light brightness.
It has an internal counter (time) so that you can have timed programs.

This is the first device that can make decisions without requiring a host.

rob
 
That is completely sweet & should be posted to the DIY LED thread and the "how to dim a meanwell".

Stu
 
That is completely sweet & should be posted to the DIY LED thread and the "how to dim a meanwell".

Stu
 
bad inferno said:
Just an update with regards to 1wire slave devices. There has been a release of a new 1wire slave called BAE0910. Its a 1wire slave with 5 I/O. The interesting thing with this devcie is that you can run a program directly within the slave without the need for the host to interact with it.

Example: Temperature control, turn off heater and PWM for cooling fan speed.
ATO control the ATO pump and monitor the float switch. You can get it to run for an amount of time
As it has PWM you can control LED light brightness.
It has an internal counter (time) so that you can have timed programs.

This is the first device that can make decisions without requiring a host.

rob
Click to expand...

What are the outputs? Could the PWM ramp up/down an AC powerhead?
 
For LED, you could simply connect a potentiometer to ADC input and configure the device to vary the PWM duty based upon pot position...

Timer function: it has a RTC however only counts seconds. It would need the host to occassiconally syncronise the seconds to the server time, say once a day or when the host server started. Thus the device simply turns its outputs on / off throughout the day.

At this stage it only has 1 ADC 3 DO and a counter input. Hopefully a quick firmward update shortly will see 4 DO and 1 ADC input.

1wirerelay-2.jpg
 
Mastermind,

"What are the outputs? Could the PWM ramp up/down an AC powerhead? "

It could not control an AC power head but it COULD a DC one.
So it could control 4 individual DC powerheads.


The coolest thing I thought of with this was that the PWM output could directly control 4 Servo motors using only 1 control wire & two servo power wires.

What could be useful to our hobby with four position controlled servos???

Stu
 
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