Remote Aquarium Monitor and Control System

Project Description: This control system is ideally suited for users who wish to monitor and control their aquarium while away from home. Because this system may be controlled via the Internet, the user can easily monitor and control their aquarium from anywhere in the world.

User Interface Variety of statuses and command functions Below is a table of commands and statuses. Control Feed Fish Raise & Lower Desired Water Temperature Light On/Off Filtration System On/Off Set/Reset Food Count Monitoring Fish food remaining doses Water Temperature Lights On/Off Filtration System On/Off Web Cam Streamed Image

Temperature trended graph

System Architecture The system shall consist of three main sub systems 1) Aquarium Sensors and Control System 2) PC Server 3) vb The Aquarium Sensors and Control System will consist of controller that interfaces serially with the server PC, and numerous sensors and relays to control and monitor the system. Aquarium Sensors and Control System The current water temperature will be measured by a pt100 connected to adc of the port of controller and stored as an 8 bit variable in memory. Relays will control On/Off status and control of the pump using pin 0, the light on pin 1, and the heater on pin 2 of port board. Controller will interface with the PC through com port 1 communicating at 9600 Baud , 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit and will be hardware controlled. The serial communication protocol will consist of one byte commands received by the controller

serial port and a 2 Byte Response sent back to the PC.

Aqua Serial Com unications Protocal m

Com ands (Receive) m Execute Feed Light Toggle Pum Power Toggle p Get Status Set Tem peture Set food count and reset position of feeder Status (Send) Light On=1 Off=0 Pum On=1 Off=0 p Heater On=1 Off=0 Feedings Left Tem perature Byte 1 11100001 11100010 11100100 11100101 11100011 11100111 Byte 1 Bit 0 Bit 1 Bit 2 Bits 3-7 Unscaled Value uses all 8 bits Unscaled Tem perate # of Feedings Byte 2 Byte 2

The controller reads a temperature reading every second and compares it to the desired temperature stored in internal memory. If the tanks water temperature drops below the target temperature and an additional 2 degree tolerance then the heating element will activate until the water temperature is raised to 2 degrees over the desired level and shut off. The feeder uses a dc motor, to rotate a plastic disk until a hole passes under a compartment with a food pellet that falls down into the tank. Our design will use only 30 of them to provide one full month of daily feedings. Our system will officially only support food pellets but other foods will be experimented with. When the hits the set food count and reset position command is received the feeding system moves back to a starting position The server PC will run a communications relay program that will relay data between the serial port and a TCP/IP port and also gather temperature data every 5 minutes and send it using email. The data going to will be the same protocol as used from the serial port and in TCP/IP packets. . The remote applet will offer the user monitoring and control of tank temperature, light, feeder, pump and feedings left. The status will be continually polled for on port of the server PC once a connection with the servlet is established and the security code is exchanged.

User Web Interface prototype

System Control Diagram stepper motor SIDE VIEW Food compartments

feeder opening Food Dispenser (Side View)

stepper motor

Food compartments

TOP VIEW

Food Dispenser (Top View)

VI. Analytical Component: The temperature sensor is a thermistor, varying in resistance at different temperatures. This must be connected as part of a voltage divider circuit to provide a variable voltage between 0 and 5 V for the ADC input to the HC-12. Once this voltage range is obtained, the sensor must be calibrated by measuring the voltage at various temperatures. Temperatures in between may be interpolated. In addition, the design of the feeder component requires development of an algorithm controlling the stepper motor. Routing and managing multiple layers of communications will be a challenge as well.

VII. Cost Estimate:

Costs marked N/A indicate the item does not need to be purchased.

VIII. Anticipated Difficulties: The most complex aspects of this project include the development of the feeding device, in addition to the interfacing between the Internet and the PC, and between the PC and the HC-12. The calibration of the temperature sensor will also take some work. However, these issues should not pose any serious problems as we have experience with stepper control (which is needed for the feeding device) and in two-way web-PC communication.

IX. Project Milestone Chart:

Project Milestone Preliminary research and proposal Design presentation Control the relays with HC-12 Calibrate temperature sensor Stream web cam footage Feeder control device Local control software functional PC and HC-12 communication Interface control software with web interface Hardware testing Software testing Project Presentation and Paper Scheduled Completion Current Status

9/15/02Complete 9/17/02 Complete 9/24/02 9/24/02 9/24/02 10/1/02 10/8/02 10/15/02 10/15/02 10/22/02 10/22/02 10/29/02