DIY Reef Controller ( Help would be great)

Okay so you know what i hate seeing all these reef controllers for hundreds of dollars to control basic things such as temp, ph and the lighting so i think im taking the plung into the Arduino world and see if i can DIY this thing.

Goals you ask ? well i want to start with an Arduino mega with an LCD display to control the LEDS basic starting point then add heater control for the temp and other functions but main point is start with the basics.

Now where 3reefers come in!! Has anyone out there started this and has the Arduino Codes made already!!??

 

The Reef Angel is an Arduino based, open-source controller. I would check out their forums.

 

Give me 2 weeks. I've had an arduino lying around for months, and I'm about to order a rapidled kit so I will be building the controller. It will do light dimming and ATO at first. And no need for a mega really, mine will use a serial lcd so it will only use 1 pin. And I will be modifing another guys sketch which I will link to and credit him.

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well i did reaserch and found that the mega is better because others found that the smaller ones run out of memory space. would you have a link to what your build ? This is great! maybe we can do this build together??!

 

Arduino codes:Arduino playground - DevelopmentTools

and this forum i been looking at:Arduino Forum - Aquarium Reef Controller, stage 1, the LCD shield,

seems a little complicated but i think i can figure it out, i just dont know how to make my own codes

 

take a look at Curt's development libraries as well as Roberto's simple libraries on github to see how they handled lights/temps/ph with the ReefAngel. Should be enough to get you going:

http://www.github.com/curtbinder
http://www.github.com/reefangel

 

i was looking for parts on ebay and i saw the serial LCD you where talking about which takes up much less ports and some have the click switches for moving up and down the main display which is great... what arduino do you have??

 

I have the uno. Sparkfun has serial lcds and they already have the libraries written for them which is why I'm going that route. Yeah it would be nice to get a group here to work on this together and get a nice diy controller going.

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yeah i have a github.com account as of yesterday but im not so sure how to take the codes and added to my list..and for the reefangel you need a license i think

 

Insanespain we really do need to get a group going, i know basic skills and maybe a little more but when it comes to the codes and stuff i have no idea so more heads would help a lot as for the uno i want to control LEDS, ATO, temp, and maybe ph so i dont know if the uno is enough for all that