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Technology is complicated — May 8, 2015

Posted by rik94566 in Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, Electronic Componets, indoor aquaponics, IoT aquaponics, Temperature Probe.
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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 —

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!

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.
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IMG_1365Since 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:

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS — arduberry February 12, 2014

Posted by rik94566 in agponics.com, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, aquaponics electronics, arduino, DIY aquaponics, indoor aquaponics, indoor growing, IoT aquaponics, Raspberry PI.
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I have been reading about this product now for a while and finally thanks to J.C. Naumowicz got the link to check it out.

arduberry

Here is the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/john-cole/arduberry-unite-raspberry-pi-and-arduino?ref=email

This solution takes care of a number of issues that are hard to solve with arduino or raspberry pi on there own.  The two together are truly better together  than as individual solutions.

Enjoy and support this effort if it is something you think will be a better solution for us all.

TOWER TUBES — NOW FOR SALE September 12, 2013

Posted by rik94566 in agponics.com, DIY aquaponics, indoor aquaponics, indoor growing, Internet-of-Farming, IoT aquaponics, plumbing, PRODUCTS, Tower Tubes.
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I have just updated the “THINGS FOR SALE” page with the pricing for the Tower Tubes.

Check it out and follow the instructions listed on the page and I will get busy delivering your tubes to you.

towersales

IoT – aquaponics May 15, 2013

Posted by rik94566 in agponics.com, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, IoT aquaponics, Links.
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The future of aquaponis has arrived and it is call IoT —  Internet of Things. or IoT-aquaponics.

Why do I think this, well view this data:

IoT-infograft2013

Here is a good YouTube on how this has developed over the past five years or so. (click on picture)

5000 days

Building a power supply brick — DS18B20 External Power February 9, 2012

Posted by rik94566 in 1-wire, arduino, DIY aquaponics, DS18B20, One-wire, sensor, Stainless Steel Temp Probe, Temperature Probe.
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In order to learn how to get external power to work with my DS18B20’s I needed some way to be able to do quick connections between all the parts and different configurations.  So I determined the best thing to do is was to  build a power supply brick.  This way I will have it built and can use it in my other sensor work and on future projects.  This will allow me to quickly hook things up with out having to re-invent a way to get power to the projects, just pull out my brick connect up and  I am ready to go.

Here are the parts and tools I used:

Brick pad - drill bit - N size jack - plastic - terminal

Putting it together:

Need to connect up the wires:

Of course ” TEST EVERYTHING” —-

DS18B20 — external power supply December 15, 2011

Posted by rik94566 in 1-wire, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, arduino, CEA, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, DS18B20, HEX code, indoor aquaponics, indoor gardens, indoor growing, One-wire, probe index, sensor, Sensor Hub, Stainless Steel Temp Probe, Temperature Probe.
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Before I can connect everything up and work with my DS18B20 probes using external power supply I need to get one.  The one that I have selected is this one:

5V power supply

DS18B20 HEX code — move it to the sketch October 27, 2011

Posted by rik94566 in 1-wire, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, arduino, CEA, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, DS18B20, HEX code, indoor aquaponics, indoor gardens, indoor growing, One-wire, probe index, sensor, Sensor Hub, Stainless Steel Temp Probe, Temperature Probe.
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Now that I have the HEX code for each temp probe it is time to move it to the working sketch.  I will be pulling the sketch from the one used at the hacktronics site.

http://www.hacktronics.com/Tutorials/arduino-1-wire-tutorial.html

Here is the code I pulled.  I will work through it to make the changes I will need to make it fit my application.

Areas to be changed

Here is how I will change the HEX code part of the sketch:

DeviceAddress P-011 = { 0x28, 0xF4, 0x6B, 0x31, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00, 0xF2 };
DeviceAddress P-012 = { 0x28, 0xD8, 0x79, 0x31, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00, 0xC6 };
//DeviceAddress P-0XX = { 0xXX, 0xXX, 0xXX, 0xXX, 0xXX, 0xXX, 0xXX, 0xXX };

I will only start by testing out 2 probes

I will make these changes as well:

  // start serial port
Serial.begin(9600);
// Start up the library
sensors.begin();
// set the resolution to 10 bit (good enough?)
sensors.setResolution(P-011, 10);
sensors.setResolution(P-012, 10);
//sensors.setResolution(P-0XX, 10);

and change here also:

Serial.print(“Probe 011 temperature is: “);
printTemperature(P-o11);
Serial.print(“\n\r”);
Serial.print(“Probe 012 temperature is: “);
printTemperature(P-012);
Serial.print(“\n\r”);
// Serial.print(“Probe 0XXtemperature is: “);
//printTemperature(P-0XX);
// Serial.print(“\n\r\n\r”);
}

DS18B20 HEX code — where to keep it all October 18, 2011

Posted by rik94566 in 1-wire, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, arduino, CEA, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, DS18B20, HEX code, indoor aquaponics, manymoon, One-wire, probe index, sensor, Sensor Hub, Stainless Steel Temp Probe, Temperature Probe.
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At the present time I am working with over 35 temp probes and that number will be growing as I add more aquaponic systems.  Since I have been engraving each probe with a specific probe number it was easy to associate the HEX code with the probe number.  The question became  —  where to keep this information.  I established an index of all my probe information.  When I first started I kept the index in google notebook and that gave me a lot of flexibility in looking at the index and interacting with it.  I could get to the index from just about any number of devises.  Since google has determined that they will no longer support notebook and will move all the information contained in google notebook to google doc format, that was not going to work for me any longer.  I had to find a different format for my probe index.  I had read about and started using a new product called Manymoon ( they have a free version).  It is a simple task management cloud product with a lot of functionality.  I needed a product like this any way as I needed away to help me track and stay on task with the projects that I have underway presently.

Here is what my index looks like:

Probe Index

I can expand the individual probe information and add any amount of additional information about the probe in the detail section and attatch links – documents – files to the reference.  Great stuff.

Here is what it looks like:

Probe Detail Section

This solution works great for me.  If you are only working with a small number of probes, you might not need this level of detail.  But if you are going to work with a lot of probes you will need to address this issue and find a solution that will be easy to use and find probe information quickly.

DS18B20 HEX code — time to pull it off October 13, 2011

Posted by rik94566 in 1-wire, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, arduino, CEA, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, DS18B20, HEX code, indoor aquaponics, One-wire, sensor, Sensor Hub, Stainless Steel Temp Probe, Temperature Probe.
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6 comments

To accomplish this task 4 things are needed:

DS18B20 temp probe

4.7Kohm resistor

your arduino

sketch that will do the actual work for you.

WIRE USING A 3-WIRE CONFIGURATION:

3-wire configuration

I will be using the Sketch that I pulled down from hacktronics website —  you can get there also.

http://www.hacktronics.com/Tutorials/arduino-1-wire-tutorial.html

HEX code sketch details

Here is what the sketch will look when it is run:

THE LAST THING TO DO IS:

write the HEX code down somewhere so you do not forget it and make sure you know which probe the HEX code goes with.