DIY computer based water quality monitoring system?

[hannibal_lector]

I have a bunch of old pc's etc... that are all in good working order but I don't need them for anything, too slow for gaming and I already have nicer ones throught the house.

I know ameture electronics kits that can utilize the serial\parellel ports for all sorts of things and figured it might be possible to solder together a few bits and have a controller mediate between the computer and an array of sensors. Say water-level, temp, ph etc...and just throw someone elses logging software to keep track.

I know people have used x-10.org's stuff for computer automated timing of lights and powerheads etc but havent heard specifically of stuff like this, seems like a decent way to save money and get more accurate results than the chemical test kits.

[greenmaji]

From what Ive read..this is part of the hobby that requires some hard core programing.. and controller moduels for this purpose in particular.. its WAY over my head..

[BillyZ]

it will take a bit of programming. i don't know if there's any open source projects around for it or not, but that doesn't mean you couldn't start one!

you would need to find probes for which you can get the raw signal information for. Once you have that information then you'll know what to program for. Take a look around the web and see if someone else has something out there to start from.

[greenmaji]

reefcentral's DIY section has alot of people doing this.. you might want to check it out..

[czcz]

Here's the WRRC, which is based on OpenWRT. In case you've not run *nix before, don't be intimidated as OpenWRT's wiki is good and the bash is easy to understand. We bounced some ideas around in the planted forum here, and there's links to neat but pricey toys in the thread. If you're FW minded and start this and decide to contribute to the WRRC, I know there's a few of us who may get off our ___es to help

[Todd2]

Yea, I'd check out Reef Central's DIY forum. They have a sub forum dedicated to making a controller.

On the otherhand if you're into computers and stuff you could turn one into a smoothwall box (linux firewall www.smoothwall.org) or make one a file/web server or something.

[Jaymz_Eric]

www.seaquariums.com down here in flatwoods ky, did an in wall 4000 gallon saltwater tank with 2 black tipped sharks, live sand, 6 UV sterilizers, 6 foot tall protein skimmer and the its computer controlled, it monitors food, water level/ temp, ph levels, salinity, all kinds of things, if any of these parameters become out of synch, the computer automatically fix's the problems, and if it can't it sends a message to the john the owner of seaquariums on his email and personal beeper!!!! check out the site, its aweome, they had to scube dive in the tank to place the live sand and coral, very cool