Mountains of sawdust (360g plywood, LED, Arduino build)

[kcress]

And not mine....

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Thanks for the kind words. I definitely consider myself a total hack compared to some of the spectacular builds on here, and really there are few truly original ideas in my build - most of this stuff I stole from other people, at least the concept.

The one thing I am kinda proud of is having built pretty much everything myself, from scratch, or at least repurposed things from other channels because they suited my needs better than aquarium-marketed components. Last night I was contemplating this and I tried to make a list of components in my system that I bought off the shelf through aquarium-hobby channels. Here's the list:

1) The two heaters

You could also count the return pump I guess, but arguably since Reeflo is just a hobby-targeted brand of Sequence, who sell the same pumps generically, it's not really hobby-specific, so I didn't count it.

 

[kcress]

Hey DWZM what heater did you use. I have to get one for the sump ASAP.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I'm using two Eheim Jager 200w heaters.

I have them running on their internal thermostats right now but plan on eventually switching them to something else (a cheap Ranco or something DIY'd).

 

[kcress]

Thanks. I simply must retire my 15 year old Ebo Jager.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I've heard people preach that heaters should be "consumable" in that you'd replace them on a regular schedule. I'm not sure if I distrust them that much but... 15 years, yikes!

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

She may come in handy if you ever need someone to keep water moving and oxygenated during an emergency.

:lol:

She's adorable DWIZM.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Quick update - temp tank came down on Friday, all livestock is in the 360g. It's like déjà vu all over again, seeing fish and corals in the beast. Very exciting, since this time around, more of the "cool" functions are actually working.

I am trying to get some photos but struggling. I am not a good tank photographer to start with, and with a white background and LEDs, the color rendering and contrast are just insane to deal with from a camera's point of view.

 

[kcress]

Good to hear! Neat.

On the camera.. Stick it in manual mode. Set the aperture in the middle of it's range then shoot a shot at each available shutter speed. One will likely do the trick. Then just use that setting from then on.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I do need to experiment like that, but I am wondering if it is just a fundamental issue with the ccd in my camera, since any setting i have tried so far still results in saturation/contrast issues, regardless of hitting the correct exposure. If I get contrast right, the colors are all way off. If I get the colors right, the contrast is so way off the high end of the scale you can barely tell you are looking at a fish tank - it looks like you pointed the camera at the sun.

Things were so much simpler with B&W...

 

[Misled]

Hey Dwizm, do you have photoshop???? What camera??

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

No photoshop. I'm a cheapskate and fan of open source so I use GIMP.

It's an older Canon EOS Rebel SLR, don't remember the model offhand.

Definitely open to pointers if you have any.

 

[Misled]

I use Photoshop Elements. I picked it up on sale a few years back at Staples for 69 bucks. Not quite the full version, but it gives you the ability to adjust white balance, exposure, shadowing, tint, saturation, contrast and details in raw. It should allow you to work with the lighting problems you're having. I think normal price is about a hundred bucks. I'm quite cheap too!!!!!

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

GIMP has most of that capability. I just need to buck up and play with it for a while and I'm sure I can get it looking good. It's just confounding me how different this tank is to photograph, and I'm guessing it's mostly because of the white interior (which acts like a huge reflector).

 

[BennyFrank]

The only way I've found to get correct white balance, when photographing LEDs, is to shoot in RAW format and then manually adjust WB in post processing. Not sure if gimp can convert RAW files yet though.

Edit: ooops just saw that was mentioned above. Tank looks great, btw.

 

[kcress]

Drain the tank and paint the inside a proper flat black! We demand good pictures..



Or.

Set the shutter and aperture settings as mentioned before to get you the brightness you deem reasonable. You say this will knock the colors out of whack. That will be the white balance going haywire due to LED lighting.

Fix the white balance however your camera directions state you should. You typically do this by always putting up a piece of white paper in the light your subjects are illuminated with while hitting some WB button somewhere and taking a full frame picture of the white sheet. The camera has to see ALLLL white.

In your case you're lucky because all you need to do is zoom some area of uniform white. This will be your white wall in the tank. Use that as the white balance sheet. It will need to be all white.

Most higher-end cameras like yours will allow you to save that white balance frame somewhere so you can call it up whenever you want. Then you just use call it back whenever you're making shots of your tank.

 

[Misled]

I looked over the gimp software and it doesn't say it can use raw files. If it doesn't and you are trying to edit a jpeg or tiff or the like, that may well be why you can't do much with it. When you take a pic in raw, the camera stores about 5 times as much info than in the other formats. This gives you more info to work off of when adjusting things like wb, exposure and brightness.

 

[terahz]

Try this: set the camera to shoot in RAW. Mode dial to Manual with aperture of about f8 and shutter speed fast enough so that livestock looks ok (1/60th min). Then fix the color in http://www.digikam.org/. If 1/60 with f8 is too dark, start bringing down the aperture.

 

[felixfish]

Awesome thread! Jumping along for the ride!

 

[marsnakeman]

This is the tank is amazing and want to try something similair in the future.