Cali Kid Corals

Standardized smart home powered tank setups

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richiev

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To avoid hi-jacking @popper's power strip thread, I'm kicking off another one. I'm curious what smart home devices people are using for their tanks, and their experience. Copy-pasting my premise from the other thread:

I think almost certainly the future of aquarium controllers should be standardized smart devices with some control software orchestrating them. There's little reason these ridiculous $300 EB832 should exist. It's a $60 kasa smart outlet + some DC outlets. It's insane. All the monitoring and controls can be done with Home Assistant, same as any other thing in a smart house.

And yes, this is going to be my next side project, proving that out :).
Click to expand...

An aquarium controller is three things in my mind:
  1. hardware
    • various sensors
    • various outlets
  2. software
    1. connections to sensors, connections to outputs
    2. orchestration / programmability to say "when X happens, do Y"
  3. network -- reliable connections between the hardware & software
  4. an eco-system ensuring all those pieces integrate together well, in a light touch manner -- arguably the most important piece
Here are some examples on the hardware part, all of these are just the cost for the individual thing and not including the cost of a management device (eg an apex). I didn't dig deep for all these examples:
  • power strips:
    • kasa smart strip: $52 -- 6 AC outlets, individually controllable through software and buttons, individually schedulable, 3 usb ports, individual outlet power consumption data
    • eb832: $290 -- 8 AC outlets, 3 pump connections, 2 DC outputs, individual outlet power consumption data
  • leak sensors:
    • smart: basic ($40 each), high end ($60 each)
    • neptune leak kit: $155 (for two
  • temperature sensors:
    • smart thermometer: $29
    • neptune probe: $33
  • generally: there are smart home standards for most of the sensors we use, at least at the API level. It's a matter of someone building the probe if needed
Anyway, I have a ton of thoughts about this, but wanted to see what others are doing. Eg is anyone here doing anything cool with Home Assistant (I'm in the midst of converting my house to Home Assistant)?
 
#4 plus reliability and good customer service are why we pay many times more than the components cost for reefkeeping stuff, and what are preventing DIY methods from catching on. Electronics DIY is fun for the 1% of reefers for whom that is part of the hobby, the rest of us want things to work without a lot of drama or troubleshooting. And no soldering.

I would be completely happy using mass-market components and importable routines if it didn’t involve reinventing the wheel for everything with debugging and increased likelihood of tank crashes.
 
Honestly I think it all depends what you want your controller to do, and it gets a lot more complicated of an answer when you go from wanting to turn lights on and off into sending text message to know something is going wrong and I'm going to turn these things off to protect your investment.

My biggest desire of any piece of equipment in this hobby though is long term reliability, and it just seems like too many things fail within 1 year after warranty (often just a 1 year warranty at that!) and that always is hard to swallow. I mean I get if you go for the ultra cheap Chinese knock off pumps and the fail in a year, but if you pay for the $500 super pump you don't want the controller crapping out because they designed to not protect against humidity with a 50 cent silicone gasket or something.

I'm with John, give me something that works, I don't have to have a PhD in programming to figure out how to make work, and if something goes wrong someone is there to tell me the problem. However every time that problem happens outside of warranty period a little piece of my soul in the hobby died with it. Whether it's pump, lights, or fancy controller.

That said the only home device I really used for my tanks would be DJ Power Strips (if you can call those "home"), and couple 'smart' outlets for turning on "dumb" lights (i.e. no internal controller)
 
JVU said:
#4 plus reliability and good customer service are why we pay many times more than the components cost for reefkeeping stuff, and what are preventing DIY methods from catching on.
Click to expand...
100% agreed, and a big part of my job (biotech marketing) involves explaining this very thing over, and over, and over again.

Sure, you can DIY and kludge something together. Lots of scientists do (I know I did), and it's how new methods are made. But if you have a question, and the technology already exists, you're probably gonna spend a lot more time and/or money building, optimizing, and tweaking something that doesn't have standardized support and that you'll have to troubleshoot the second something goes wrong.

There's some things I like doing that for (say, cooking). Doing that for reefkeeping electronics is a hard 'no' from me, as much as it galls me (I say as I'm begrudgingly realizing I'll shortly be paying $200+ for a second EB832).
 
That's a great call out. That being said, is there anecdotal and/or empirical evidence that these devices have higher failure rates than the aquarium variations?

I am unwilling to buy AliExpress power strips or other diy versions, but a Kasa strip is CE certified so from a "don't burn your house down" standpoint it's at least as safe as the aquarium versions. From a "don't kill your livestock" standpoint, the biggest gap is it's wireless controlled if you're remote turning it on and off. However the scheduling is even more self contained than an Apex equivalent. The Kasa having scheduling on device versus a secondary device needing connectivity.

Additionally the huge price disparity makes them disposable by comparison. If something seems funky, buy a new one. You could literally buy a new one every year for 5 years and be at the same price range, having full warranty coverage for that entire time period.

Towards the other devices, I feel the comparison to industrial uses are good, but different. A medical grade peristaltic pump is far more reliable than the ones we buy. However is a "reef" water leak sensor more reliable than a "don't flood your house" one? pH probe from BRS worse than the Apex version?

I do buy the idea, but I'm not sure if I believe it clearly applies in this case, when comparing manufactured systems to reef manufactured solutions. Compared to diy eb832s fixed by someone buying parts online and hand soldering I can 100% agree to.
 
The part I didn't get into yet is the software side. I again buy into that being important and needing to be reliable and connectable. What's not clear to me is the baseline between the two.

For instance, with something like Home Assistant, or potentially to a lesser degree Google home / Apple home, you can setup all sorts of routines. My feeding routine is all powered by Google home. "Hey Google, fish feeding time" turns off my pumps and skimmer, waits 10 minutes, turns on my pumps, waits 5 minutes, turns on my skimmer. It's all in the app.

Similarly my refugium lights are managed with simple timers turning it on and off. On my Kasa strip that being stored on the Kasa so it doesn't need any other devices to work.

In Google home, apple home, ... I can see all my devices, see how much power things are pulling, get notifications when things go offline (monitored from outside my house so emails even if my internet dies), see my house temp, see my web cams, even setup custom dashboard views.

If you go into Home Assistant, you can setup more sophisticated routines. If your sump pump isn't registering fire an alert. If your water sensor triggers, fire. If your sump power usage stays high for minutes, fire. If it didn't turn off after longer, flip the outlet off. Made up examples, but all simple/standard.

My theory is it's not that it's more difficult to set it up, it's just not what people do so it's not as well known. However I've still really got to test it out.

My high level thought though is this could be pretty trivially made simple and clean. Someone just needs to create the device/software. My hope is to buy some Matter/Thread devices as they come out, and try and build something. Then you could manage everything just by pairing it to any of the various smart home devices, but control it through an aquarium optimized view. "Hey Google, what's my pH?" just as accessible as pulling up the custom dashboard, because it's all built through standards instead of walled off ecosystems.

/Soap box
 
I’m excited to see your progress. I think your approach is the future. I just wanted to point out the less-than-engineering aspects that usually prevent cool DIY projects from becoming more than that.
 
JVU said:
I’m excited to see your progress. I think your approach is the future. I just wanted to point out the less-than-engineering aspects that usually prevent cool DIY projects from becoming more than that.
Click to expand...
most def agree with the last part, and hopeful for the first part :)
 
I have been using kasa wifi smart power strips since the beginning of my reefing in Aug 2021 and use one on almost all my tanks. I've only had one fail from spilling a bunch of water on it. I also use tp mini smart outlets when I don't need a full strip. They work great, have scheduling built in and the timer feature is handy (be able to turn my skimmer off when dosing things and set a timer for it to turn itself back on in 4 hrs). I have never had it turn something off on me that is on with no scheduling set (like my return pump). I have found that if I want to have it disregard a programmed schedule, I have to actually delete the scheduling rather than toggling that scheduled event off as I have had it on multiple occasions still execute the scheduled action even if it was toggles to not execute. On power outages when power comes back on, all outlets go to the on position and schedule sync and resume without user input.

I also boughy a Yeiryi wifi pH, salinity and temp monitor and have found the pH and temp reading to be accurate and reliable so far. Salinity probe seems way off buy I didn't try too hard to get a good reading from it as I didn't care for that readout and know most salinity probes on the market don't work at all. (The temp sensor is metal so I coated it with a thin layer of silicone to avoid corrosion and it still reads fine). It also uses a standard BNC connection for the pH probe so you can upgrade to a higher quality pH probe too.
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I don't think I would trust it to run a Calcium Reactor but for being able to see my tank pH on my phone is very nice and lets me know when I need to change my CO2 absorption media.

For Alk monitoring I bought a kH guardian as I have read they are reliable and mainly because it's the cheapest automated alk testing device on the market.

My main wave makers are Nero so they get controlled via the AI app

Lights are Radions or Red Sea so they have their own apps.

All other testing (calc, mg, phosphate and nitrate) is done manually with Hanna checkers and via regular ICP tests.

Salinity is checked manually with a milwaukee digital and I have a refractometer if I feel like it's off (which I have not had to reference yet).

The last thing I need for my preference is a wifi doser (currently just use kamoer x1 bluetooth dosers)

Things that would be convenient is a low water level sensor for my ATO res and kalk res that can send notification to my phone when they need to be refilled.

I don't find it a hassle to have to go to different apps to do different things. And with the money I saved I can easily support regular ICP tests which gives me much more info on my tank than any all in one integrated eco system would imo.
 
Last edited:
richiev said:
That's a great call out. That being said, is there anecdotal and/or empirical evidence that these devices have higher failure rates than the aquarium variations?
Click to expand...
I dunno really, I do know there is a higher failure rate for any device near an aquarium then away from one just because of the humidity involved in the hobby. I can also say with good confidence some higher end aquarium equipment (and I'll be nice and not mention names) that I've taken apart basically have has a plastic shell with a bare circuit board stuffed inside without any level of coating on it, so yeah... it kind of is already a ticking time bomb (if you will) for failure. My last big tank (before it went kaput) part of the design for the stand was to physically isolate all electrical stuff away from any part of the air around the tank and/or sump.
 
Great Thread, this is perfect timing for me as I am in the process of setting up my new tank and was thinking of upgrading equipment this time around. After previous malfunctions from power, heaters, ato's, I picked up a Kasa Smart Strip from amazon which I hope will at least alert me if anything like that happens again.

Not entirely sure what going price is but Amazon has them on sale!
Kasa Smart Strip From Amazon
 
richiev said:
To avoid hi-jacking @popper's power strip thread, I'm kicking off another one. I'm curious what smart home devices people are using for their tanks, and their experience. Copy-pasting my premise from the other thread:



An aquarium controller is three things in my mind:
  1. hardware
    • various sensors
    • various outlets
  2. software
    1. connections to sensors, connections to outputs
    2. orchestration / programmability to say "when X happens, do Y"
  3. network -- reliable connections between the hardware & software
  4. an eco-system ensuring all those pieces integrate together well, in a light touch manner -- arguably the most important piece
Here are some examples on the hardware part, all of these are just the cost for the individual thing and not including the cost of a management device (eg an apex). I didn't dig deep for all these examples:
  • power strips:
    • kasa smart strip: $52 -- 6 AC outlets, individually controllable through software and buttons, individually schedulable, 3 usb ports, individual outlet power consumption data
    • eb832: $290 -- 8 AC outlets, 3 pump connections, 2 DC outputs, individual outlet power consumption data
  • leak sensors:
    • smart: basic ($40 each), high end ($60 each)
    • neptune leak kit: $155 (for two
  • temperature sensors:
    • smart thermometer: $29
    • neptune probe: $33
  • generally: there are smart home standards for most of the sensors we use, at least at the API level. It's a matter of someone building the probe if needed
Anyway, I have a ton of thoughts about this, but wanted to see what others are doing. Eg is anyone here doing anything cool with Home Assistant (I'm in the midst of converting my house to Home Assistant)?
Click to expand...
Great idea!
 
Hella_Salty650 said:
Great Thread, this is perfect timing for me as I am in the process of setting up my new tank and was thinking of upgrading equipment this time around. After previous malfunctions from power, heaters, ato's, I picked up a Kasa Smart Strip from amazon which I hope will at least alert me if anything like that happens again.

Not entirely sure what going price is but Amazon has them on sale!
Kasa Smart Strip From Amazon
Click to expand...
These are actually the most expensive I have seen them! Usually under $40! I love my kasa. I have them on everything in my home.
 
Cross-referencing threads, I got my first DIY Smart-Home sensor connected to Matter and therefore accessible in Google Home / Apple Homekit / ... together. I put initial details in
the DIY Smart Sensors w/ Matter (starting with TDS) thread.

My eventual goal is figure out how to get all this loaded up into reef-pi, and I think there'd be a lot of doors opening up to put together smart aquariums through commodity parts in the future.
 
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