ONE PROBLEM BEING ADDRESSED –H2O SCALE August 21, 2022
Posted by rik94566 in agponics.com, aquaponic devices, aquaponic issues, aquaponic systems, aquaponics, auqaponics automation, DIY aquaponics.Tags: aquaponic water issues, aquaponics, DIY aquaponics, indoor aquaponics, rik kretzinger, water quality
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As the water situation becomes much more extreme in Northern California water quality changes depending upon the source of water supply. Water hardness has changed many, many times over the last 5 years and I have had to be more careful with pH and hardness when doing water changes or water additions in the fish tanks and monitoring much more and I still end up with this. So I have now developed a plan on what needs to take place and starting to put the plan into action and will be talking about the efforts now as well as other interesting things I am tracking and working at getting put into place in my grow area. Once I have cleaned up the scale issues I can move on to misting systems and use of some more advanced technology to get me to the next level in my efforts.
Been looking for a better way – DS18B20 October 15, 2019
Posted by rik94566 in 1-wire, agponics.com, aquaponic devices, aquaponics electronics, arduino, auqaponics automation, Balcony aquaponics, Balcony Garden, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, DS18B20, ds18b20, Electronic Componets, internet of farming, Internet-of-Farming, IoT aquaponics, rik kretzinger, rik.diy.IOT, rik94566, sensor, Stainless Steel Temp Probe, Temperature Probe.Tags: agponics, aquaponics, DIY aquaponics, DS18B20, DS18B20 aquaponics, Internet-of-Farming, rik, rik94566, sensor
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I was doing some research on a totally different subject and this popped up.
Why this one?
Well easy answer – I have been making my own 4.7 pull-up resistor connectors for sometime now. Problem for me is that they take a lot of time and are very bulky and hard to work with. For a little more cost a dollar or so I get a board that will allow easy connections to many (so I think) DS18B20 sensors using one resistor. The order came and now I can start testing my idea. Having a solution this turn key will save a lot of time and perform better, time will tell now.
I will be posting how the testing goes and what will be needed to get top performance out of this module.
Miniature Test Leads – which ones work best for my projects July 20, 2019
Posted by rik94566 in adafruit, agponics.com, aquaponic automation, aquaponic systems, DIY aquaponics, indoor aquaponics, Instructables, internet of farming, Internet-of-Farming, IoT aquaponics, rik kretzinger, rik.diy.IOT, rik94566.Tags: aquapnic devices, aquaponic system parts, aquaponics, DIY aquaponics, Internet-of-Farming, jameco electronics, rik, rik94566, sensor
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I wanted to move away from alligator clips because they were much large when working with small gauge wire. They did not work for me in very small areas. So was looking for a better solution. Found this miniature test leads at Jameco Electronics when I was picking up an order, they were a good solution for me.
When first using these miniature test leads they worked very well. But after a little time using these leads and problems surfaced. The problem was that they were cheaply made. The connection of the wire and the metal insert probe would break off without much stress placed on them. One or two is understandable, but 5 out of 10 was not the experience I was looking for.
When doing a search for a new product on the Adafruit site I found these test leads
These leads are a little larger than the Jameco test leads, but still were small enough for my use. Construction and connections were of high quality and work perfectly and held up with repeated use. So these are my new go to test leads for my development efforts. They will be seen in a number of up coming Instructables that I am working on and all my testing of sensors and connectors.
WATER LEVEL INDICATOR – AQUAPONICS quest for a useful one September 13, 2018
Posted by rik94566 in adafruit, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, Balcony Garden, DIY aquaponics, Instructables, internet of farming, IoT aquaponics, rik kretzinger, rik94566, sensor, Uncategorized.Tags: aquaponics, DIY aquaponics, rik, ultrasonic sensor
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THE PROBLEM IN AQUAPONICS for me —
Up to this point I have wanted to have a simple, but effective water level indicator sensor for the water level in the Balcony Garden fish tank component of the build – that works!
Aquaponic Sensor Set for Balcony Garden — see section on ultrasonic sensor
I spent a lot of time working with and trying to stabilize a ultrasonic solution.
First off these sensors are not waterproof ( the waterproof version is around $85.00 US Waterproof version). The non-waterproof versions run around $5.00 US. So this would seem the best way to go and work to make it work by using some waterproofing strategies. Hard to do when working in an aquaponic environment.
Next they are very hard to mount in a way that they can be useful to determining water level in a tank. There are a lot of instructables talking about this aspect for these sensors and even more youtube articles, but most if not all are just demos and breadboard applications. No real useful solutions that really can be implemented in a scalable way.
Final issue is that I have yet to be able to stabilize these sensors and have wasted a lot of time trying to get them to be reliable in a usable way.
SOLUTION – find a better method or be able to purchase one that actually gets the job done in a simple and affordable and scalable way.
BALCONY GARDEN – diy aquaponic system — Published in MAKE MAGAZINE this issue September 21, 2015
Posted by rik94566 in auqaponics automation, Balcony Garden, DIY aquaponics, internet of farming, rik94566.Tags: aquaponics, arduino, DIY aquaponics, make magazine, rik, rik kretzinger
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First article published in Make Magazine vol. 47
DIY aquaponic Balcony Garden — my copy came today!
Make sure and read it!
Temboo — aquaponic “HELLO WORLD” equivalent June 1, 2015
Posted by rik94566 in agponics.com, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, aquaponics electronics, Balcony aquaponics, internet of farming, Internet-of-Farming, rik94566.Tags: agponics, aquaponics, automation, balcony aquaponics, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, rik kretzinger, sensor, Temboo
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With the help of Temboo – my aquaponic Balcony Unit generated its first TEXT Message:
MESSAGE IS:
aquaponic Balcony Unit grow bed now filling.
Technology is complicated — May 8, 2015
Posted by rik94566 in Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, Electronic Componets, indoor aquaponics, IoT aquaponics, Temperature Probe.Tags: agponics, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, arduino, arduino sketch, automation, DIY aquaponics, indoors aquaponics, microcontroller, rik kretzinger, Temboo, YUN
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I say this because I will be displaying my aquaponic – IoT – Balcony Unit at Maker Faire next week in San Mateo. To accomplish the IoT part of the build I have to use technology that allows for internet communication thus IoT! Well there are many options available to accomplish this task – some not so easy and others not enough features to be effective for this project.
So my choice in this case is the Arduino YUN —
I made this choice because I had one (but had not used it as yet) and the fact that documentation on it is easy to find. The other fact is that Temboo www.temboo.com uses the YUN as one of its options for their solution to the Internet of Things and I am working with them on this open source project so many others will be able to get up and running in short order and have simpler options to add additional capability based on the persons needs and I will not have to supply the customer support for any aspect of the code other than give everyone a stating point.
WELL – that is where things got interesting.
Had to work through getting the YUN on the network of choice. Not a big deal but it took some time and many attempts to get it dialed in because the Arduino instructions tell you to go to arduino.local to find the individual unit. Well this only works about 60% of the time. So the solution is to use the IP address of 192.168.24.1 now I could configure the thing to my liking. Once configured it would not show up in the Arduino IDE at all. Major issue for me as I had no idea if the unit configured or not. I finally when on to my wireless router to see if the board was being recognized. Had to dig out all the USER ID and PASSWORD info and then work through all the menus to determine what in fact was connected to the router. There is was — YEA
Now I had to research out why it was not listed as a port option in my Arduino IDE. Well after some time and deep research I found that Arduino IDE only works some times for the YUN on wireless. So the uploading from Arudino IDE to the board is not an option as most of the YouTube videos demonstrate quite well. This becomes an issue because I found out that as configured the YUN does not have enough on board memory, so a SD card is needed.
Using an SD card with the YUN requires that the card be format using the YUN. To do that you need to know that the YUN is connected to the internet and working properly which is very hard to know if it is or not.
So once you know the YUN is connected and you have it connected through cable to your computer you need a file called ” YunDiskSpaceExpander” found on the Arduino site. Once uploaded you access it through the Serial Monitor of the Arduino IDE. If all goes well you answer a bunch of cryptic questions and bingo the thing kicks off. Once do you have a formated YUN SD enabled board.
Now I am ready for the real fun stuff to generate code to be used through Temboo so I will have “Streaming Data” and text messaging in short order – lets hope!
The good news in all of this is that I will be documenting all of this for the instructions to the Balcony unit for all to use and save anyone interested in building one or gets a kit from me that will be up and running in short order.
See you all at Maker Faire next Saturday if you make it there!
TOWER SYSTEM – set-up at Maker Faire 2014 May 22, 2014
Posted by rik94566 in adafruit, agponics.com, arduino, DIY aquaponics, DS18B20, Electronic Componets, indoor aquaponics, indoor gardens, indoor growing, Internet-of-Farming, IoT aquaponics, One-wire, Raspberry PI, Tower System, Tower Tubes.Tags: agponics, aquaponics, automation, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, indoor aquaponics, IoT, Maker Faire, microcontroller, rik kretzinger, sensor
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EDITOR’S CHOICE – not once – but 3 times @ Maker Faire – WOW May 21, 2014
Posted by rik94566 in agponics.com, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, aquaponics electronics, arduino, DIY aquaponics, indoor aquaponics, indoor gardens, indoor growing, Internet-of-Farming, IoT aquaponics, Raspberry PI, sensor, Tower System.Tags: aquaponic automation, aquaponics, automation, DIY aquaponics, indoor aquaponics, microcontroller, rik kretzinger
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Very few displays achieve 3 EDITOR CHOICE AWARDS —
RADIAL FLOW FILTER – just completed April 2, 2014
Posted by rik94566 in agponics.com, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, aquaponics electronics, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, Electronic Componets, indoor aquaponics, Internet-of-Farming, IoT aquaponics, PRODUCTS, radial flow filter, Tower System.Tags: aquaponic automation, automation, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, indoors aquaponics, IoT, microcontroller, rik kretzinger
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Since first conceiving of the Tower unit as a concept I knew they needed to be operated differently than DWC and Media bed in how you deal with the solids from the fish. Media beds — it has not been that big a deal for me because my rule is that any tank size smaller than 350 I filter the water and break-up the solids and then put back into solution by pumping back into the grow beds. This way I lose no nutrients that the fish produce. Has worked well for over 3 years now. In the testing that I have done with the towers I found that solids need to be dealt with or things will plug up. I still will be reintroducing the broken up solids back into the system put it will take place downstream of the bio-filter component and re-injected into the new buffer tank that stabilizes fish tank water volume and height. This all came out of research I was doing on how best to handle solids in aquaponics. As designed this radial flow filter can handle up to and maybe a bit more than a 1000 gallons of fish tank water. The only thing left to figure out on this radial flow filter now is where I will be locating the outlet for the clean water. That will be dependent on fish tank water level. Should have fish tank completed this coming weekend and make the determination on this aspect of the build.
I put together a youtube slide show if you want to see more detail of the radial flow filter:
Aquaponic DIY Automation Blog 