It is a Aquarium monitoring system. It has a circuit board part, with some sensors (pH, Flux, Water Level and temperature) and the HomeAssistant part, that will show the values and control some equipment connected.
It has a lot of improvements to make. Any suggestions are welcome. I’m not a graphic designer, so all graphics are from internet. Also, I’m quite new on HA programming.
This project is being transferred to GitHub,because it’s being too big to maintain here.
Update about the project.
I’ve been very busy and could not work on it, the flux sensor was not working.
After some tests, I found out that the regulator or the divider I was using was blocking the signals from the sensor to the board. I put them because the board works on 3.3V and the sensor returns 4.7V.
After some digging, I decided to wire the sensor directly to the pin. This made the magic. Seems the board has some PULLUPS resistors inside it.
This looks very cool and similar to something im working on. One worry that I would have is the use of an echo sensor for the water level. I use one too in my project as a guage to see how full my ATO resevoir is but i wouldnt trust it for monitoring the level on the tank. whats your experience?
Also how are you measuring the analog voltages from the Probes? The ADC on the ESP32’s is not really much use for this, the resolution is low and just generally unstable, I ended up going for an external ADS1115
If you want to take a look at my project here is the link, maybe you find something that helps you out! www.marine-assistant.com
I’m having some issues with flux sensor, it shows no flux and when I touch the board, the flow spikes, even with the sensor disconnected from the board. There must be some short circuit or some kind of interference. I’ll try another pin.
PH Sensor is always wrong. I’ve calibrated it twice, but everytime I put on “real” aquarium water it show a worng voltage. I think I’ll calibrate with a quimichal PH test.
Add an OLED display to show the information without need of cellphone or computer.
I have little time to deal with the project. So it’s development is slow…
I’m having little time to dedicate to this project, but it is not stopped.
Some sensors stopped working or started measuring wrong values, like the dallas or the sonic sensor.
For the dallas one, I think I have nothing to do with, it may be a faulty one or some of those cheap and not reliable, but the sonic, one of them was rusty on some points (humidity from aquarium, I was aware it could happen, but not so soon). So I’ve bought a JSN-SR04T to test. This model is water proof (those used on cars). It’s very different, since the circuit board is apart, and I need to test.
I also changed the board for a ESP32-C3 super mini, because I needed the BLE to serve as a BLE proxy to my HA instance (I have some plant sensors nearby and the signal is not strong enouth to reach the HA server). The ESP32 is more porwerfull and has more memory, but I think the ESP8266 is more stable.
My displays stopped working (I don’t think they are faulty, need to investigate), both. I think the display is important, since it will show the values even if there’s no connection to HA. But beside this, I bought a little display with a ESP32-C3 (all together) that will connect to HA (through Wi-fi) and show any information I want. I pretend to glue it on the aquarium glass, and since it has touch screen, I can also adjust ilumination and so on.
I also changed the connectors for some magnetized. Those jacks I was using were very dificult to solder. So I found some magnetized connectors (not cheap) and they are awsome.
I’ll update the first post with some code I have, but the size limit does not me allow. It’s being very big… will think about it.
I’ll have to reformulate this topic. It’s been very big and the system does not accepts all code I have. I’try to create a github will be better.
PROJECT UPDATE:
As I said, I’ve been passing through some troubles with the project, with some sensors not responding, or even some sensors having values without them plugged in. I still don´t know the exactly reason, but the wires/hardware used must be making this behavior.
So, I decided to search for some solutions and IA helped me to improve the hardware with some protections. I have already burnt an ESP besauce of a short cirucuit on the sensor wires. So I decided to implement protections for it and changed the project once more.
And for the bad hardware I decided to implement everythig on a PCB that will order on Internet (I cant do it at home, don’t even have a laser printer). So, Gemini helped me to implement those protections, and I must place the order this week. All other components are on the way.
