Smart plug raspberry pi based tank controller

joshdmoore

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My wife and I have had terrariums with frogs for a long time, but last year she got me my first nano-reef tank setup; I had been wanting a saltwater tank my whole life. I am a software engineer and I had been working on a pi project to monitor a few sensors and control some smart plugs for home automation projects. With my new reef tank in hand, I quickly started testing my controller on my reef tank. I now have this controller running our reef tank, frog tank and I have some friends using them to monitor and control outdoor ponds.

I know there are a lot of raspberry pi reef tank controllers out there, but mine takes a little simpler electronics approach. I am a software guy and while I know a fair share about electronics I really wanted to keep the soldering part simple. I am not very good at that part :(. I also wanted to use smart home components to help make things a little less tethered. I use smart plugs and smart strips to control the functions I need to, such as turning on/off lights, pumps, etc. I currently only monitor air temp, air humidity, and water temp. I might add more sensors in the future, but I find this is generally enough if I do my regular tank maintenance.

Again I know there are lots of pi reef projects out there so I am simply making this post to see it there is any interest in a bit different approach. Most of my software is open source, all expect for some of the UI components and could be open source if there is any interest in this approach.

If there is interest I can post the components needed and make the code available.

I will post some pictures to give an idea of what I have built.

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Noah's Shark

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I would be very appreciative if you posted the components and code as I have been toying with this idea for a while now. I'm also thinking of tying a Raspberry Pi into my (under construction) algae reactor.
 

Bigtrout

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Reef-pi has a driver for the TP link smart outlets, and can do much much more!

Im using it in a freshwater planted. I control 8 outlets, 4 pwm channels for lighting, a PH probe, 3 temp sensors controlling 2 heaters and my return pump runs on a macro to turn it off during feeding.

Check it out!!
 

Badfish2too

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Id be interested in the pi zero suction cup mount stl! Not for anything tank related, it would work great for a pentest device I made

p.s. I dig the ui
 
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joshdmoore

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Yes I can post the code since their is some interest, I wasn't sure if there would be since reef-pi already exists.

I will also post my case on thingiverse.
 
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joshdmoore

joshdmoore

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Reef-pi has a driver for the TP link smart outlets, and can do much much more!

Im using it in a freshwater planted. I control 8 outlets, 4 pwm channels for lighting, a PH probe, 3 temp sensors controlling 2 heaters and my return pump runs on a macro to turn it off during feeding.

Check it out!!

I have checked out reef-pi. It is really cool and does have way more functionality than I currently have. I was looking to create something that was just a little simpler to create and operate with less technical knowledge needed by the end user.

if you are very technical and need endless features reef-pi is very great project.
 
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joshdmoore

joshdmoore

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Id be interested in the pi zero suction cup mount stl! Not for anything tank related, it would work great for a pentest device I made

p.s. I dig the ui

Here is my suction cup zero mount.


Thanks about the UI. I built it with Paperdashboard pro from creative Tim, I already had a license. One of the things that I have to do before I can open source the front end is migrate to their open source version. It should be doable because I don't think I used vary many of the proprietary components.
 
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joshdmoore

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Here is the build list. I am working on putting together a full build readme, but I wanted to get the hardware posted so anyone wanting to order parts can. I should have the initial version of the build instructions done within the next few days.

  • Raspberry pi zero w
  • SHT-20 or SHT-30 temperature/humidity sensor
  • DS18B20 1-Wire temperature sensor
  • (1) 4.7k ohm resistor
  • micro sd card - (we recommend a 16 gig)
  • 3d printed case or some other case.
I currently have integration in with TP Link smart plug and smart strip. I should be able to add demo in the next few weeks. I really recommend the TPlink smart strip.
 
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joshdmoore

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Your UI is quite nice and I like the simplicity in design. Perhaps you would consider lending your coding expertise to the Reef-Pi UI improvement? :)

suction cup mount is super neat as well. Well done mate :)

Yeah I did not start out trying to recreate something that existed. I started this project out as something else but then did all my beta testing on aquariums. I found reef-pi when I was searching to see if something like this existed after I had been testing for a while. I would not mind combining efforts, currently we are using totally different technologies. I am using python and vue, while reef-pi uses go and react. I'm not an expert in either of those but I do have to use them on an upcoming project so? ;Bookworm

I will look more into what can be done to combine efforts.
 

cnidus

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I’m more of a python guy myself and front ends confuse the hell out of me, so nothing but respect for those that do it properly ;)
 
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joshdmoore

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Also I had a plan of hopefully putting together and selling DIY kits if anyone is interested. I'm currently having a really hard time getting both SHT-30 sensors and raspberry pi's in bulk. Dang coronas!! :rolleyes: I will keep trying to order parts if anyone is interested.
 

Ranjib

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Very nice setup. Thank you for sharing. We are also considering adding humidity sensor support in reef-pi. Thank you for sharing .
 
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joshdmoore

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Very nice setup. Thank you for sharing. We are also considering adding humidity sensor support in reef-pi. Thank you for sharing .

Thank you, I am working on getting the code out where people can see it. It's in a private GitHub repo right now. I have to remove a few more things before I can make it public.

The sht-20 and sht-30 work very well and are fairly easy to communicate with.
 
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joshdmoore

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Ok, I was able to opensouce the backend and the configuration. I use ansible to configure everything. I am still working the readme and I just did a big refactor so I am still working a few issue.

There are only 2 branches you should worry about right now, beta and dev. I commit to beta most of the time so it will be a little unstable and might break your tank monitor. Dev should be a little more stable and I really try not to commit any breaking changes currently.

Master will be the main branch but I don't even know if I'm to .1 yet so I do not merge there much.

If you need anything specific please message me. I will continue to work to open source everything.

my-tank
 
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A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

  • I currently have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 64 37.0%
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  • I have not had feather dusters, but I hope to in the future.

    Votes: 24 13.9%
  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 26 15.0%
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