Please help with my senior project

[mikestepaniak]

Hello everyone. I am working on my senior project and i have decided to make a tank controller. I am looking for some feed back from actual hobbyist on what you think would make the perfect controller. Thanks for your support,
Mike

 

[Rbishop]

To control what specifically?

 

[mikestepaniak]

To control what specifically?

What would you like. I will have a cellphone app that could be used so you would not even have to be home. I am figuring pumps, temp and light but is there anything else? How interested would anyone be in a camera to stream live feed?

 

[Brian Feeder of Fish]

Sounds like fun. Do you actually have a tank?
I assume you will have sensors for all these things in addition to controllers. Controlling CO2 would probably be good too. A camera feed might be nice too, more for fun than anything else. A remote automatic water change system might be interesting if you could work it out. Dosing for additives like fertilizer, or activating food droppers. I will note that there are systems for controlling some of these things like lights and such.

Brian

 

[mikestepaniak]

Sounds like fun. Do you actually have a tank?
I assume you will have sensors for all these things in addition to controllers. Controlling CO2 would probably be good too. A camera feed might be nice too, more for fun than anything else. A remote automatic water change system might be interesting if you could work it out. Dosing for additives like fertilizer, or activating food droppers. I will note that there are systems for controlling some of these things like lights and such.

Brian

I do have a 55 g freshwater and one of my teammates has a 70 g salt. It all started as an auto top off so we have that down. I will look into the co2 and dosing.

 

[thacarter546]

There's been a few raspberry pi based projects that have taken this on. Automated dosers, automated timers are really easy, I would love to see one with a heater controller built in. Remote access can be done via an app, but its super glitchy. I tried this with my carputer as a remote and got about the same results. Side note the windows carputer is getting swapped for an android or raspberry pi mini pc soon in that car running android in one of my other cars and its easier to interface with on a small screen.

An underwater camera would be a cool gimmick.

 

[Brian Feeder of Fish]

Don't know if you've seen this, but I stumbled upon it today:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/2...ch-interface-aquarium-controller-arduino.html
If you if want some inspiration, or just to see what others have said. Its over a hundred pages, so I haven't read through it, but I imagine it and/or the guys who did it might be helpful.

Brian