As an avid aquarist I have multiple aquariums at home at any given moment. Most range between 10-20 gallons of water and could be salt/marine or fresh water tanks. Of course, this many aquariums is not for the faint-hearted. I constantly run into problems with maintenance, remembering to add chemicals at certain times and monitoring my water parameters.
I then looked at purchasing an aquarium controller, leading to shock at discovering the price for a controller is usually $500+. Manufacturers are able to charge high prices as buying a controller generally means the value of the aquarium’s contents is over $1000. In the hobby, reliability and consistency is key, as small changes in water parameters can be disasterous.
I decided to build my own controller, using an ESP32 to control the peristaltic pumps and read/write from a firebase database. I taught myself the fundamentals of EE, learning to make PCBS and solving control issues, as well as learning Javascript and functional HTML.
While I cannot share all the design details as I want to manufacture and produce the product, here are some images from the development I went through
This was the initial layout of the motors, coupled with my first iteration of the PCB.
Second iteration, adjusting to make the motors more accessible
Learning to build PCBS, design circuits and doing layouts to maximise GPIO pin usage on an OTS ESP32
Adding internal bracing, external features for tank interaction
This was all the hardware development to allow me to control 6+ motors with the ESP32, running from a 12V 1A input.
Then I began working on the database structure and building an App to enable easy control
janekdesilva 