jstarne1
Ez Robot community I wanted to introduce my latest application of this system. Some members hear already know I keep two salt water aquariums one coral which unfortunately died off and my predator tank. Sea life needs delicate balance maintained in their little ecosystem. Things like light spectrum , temperature, ph balance , current of water , nitrate and ammonia levels and calcium levels. These things take a practiced hand to maintain. I am building a new system and using ez b to monitor salinity, nitrates and ammonia, temp , water current flow and the ph. The ADC ports are useful for these and EZ board can control the current and switching to a backup power supply ( a apc for computers inside the cabinet to keep ezb and pumps powered). Also the ezb can turn on and off night , morning , day , and evening lighting settings. With a custom injection device im designing ezb can provide nutrients , calcium and even medicine if levels are out of wack. I started the build today and I am very excited!
Oh yea I got lots of attention in the call center when I brought squeegee in.. The idea of doing these kinds of projects are scary. The hobbyist may not have confidence in what they can do given the right tools. As the progress goes on the aquarium coworkers ask how its going and love to see pictures and videos.
You can get them to start on the boxbot and whet their appetite for more. Squeegee has a lot of mods (cutting, sanding, lots of fitting). All it takes is getting the first hurdle done then the creative juices will come and take over the tougher ones. This is a fun project to follow.
Ok a little more progress. My roomate helped by wiring the switches while I was away at my moms for dinner..
Im thinking I will mount ezb close to the front where the open vents are to get a tad bit better reception. Also cooling will be installed. I will probably do one 120mm and a couple 40mm near ezb heatsinks.
Heres the blue lights lit and the one green switch. The blue is incredibly bright.Im thinking I will line the relays up over on the right side. I csn easily get 5 mounted and maybe 7 relays if they are side by side with no space. Ofcourse if I really needed theres no harm in having another row. I believe 7 is plenty because the leds and other devices can be controlled by one of the switching trsnsistors.
That rackmount idea looks good. I might do the same for my rackmount i have,it looks same as yours. cases like make great place to place EZB and more i used some PH probes and underwater temperature probes for my tanks and for my GECKO cage LOOKING at networking all the cages and tanks together I found A WIFI board that can take a network connector with just a few parts
Update! I was sent home early today so I stopped by the hardware store to pickup parts to start mounting up the relays. The area under the servos has a sheet of plastic to prevent shorting to ground and there is a reasonable amount of space between each. I will need to pick up lots of heat shrink tube and crimp connects tommorow from harbor frieght. I will cover the wires and crimp on connectors all the way to the tip to reduce the amount of exposed wire. Im using dc relays to switch on and off 110v household ac to the various lights and pumps.
I drilled out holes for machine screws in a straight line for relay mounts.
I put machine screws in the holes and superglue them in place. This way as I am working to wire each relay the machine screws will stay in place.
#10 washers and wingnuts tighten into place to secure the relays.
Now that we have a nice row of relays the next step is mounting EZ Board in the location best for reception and cooling. Ezb will not be powering anything directly only enough to operate switching transistors to trip relays. The only equipment it will power are the night time leds, twinkle leds and storm leds.I would use mosfets to turn on the relays,first i see you are using high current coils on the relays Second on using mosfets you dont need a kickback doide on the relay,few other item about using mosfets instead of transisors less heat ,easy to use then transistors,and lower current drive MOSTLY nobody uses transistors any more best way instead of relays if switching AC lines is SSR or reed switch,relays are bad because of RFI across the contacts, Switching DC no RFI problems but higher current SIMPLE SSR is a traic,cap and optocoupler with a led control ,also its well isolated
here is a simple SSR using a very common MOC3011 optocoupler and can drive straight from digital output moc3011 circuits I guess its too late for this project,so best idea is use a mosfet
Yup I already said im using switching transistors to trip the relays. I believe each one is rated for 3 amps . Thats probably 5 times what the relay would draw.