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Unread 05/13/2010, 06:10 AM   #18
der_wille_zur_macht
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Join Date: Sep 2003
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MaLi View Post
My two cents: Ideally we should start building a modular one for all budgets and needs.
The base: Arduino, RTC (for time) and power pack. Rest is part of the imagination !
See the Hydra project I linked above - that's more or less our goal there. Build a "core" hardware and software library that let people construct a full-scale reef controller. Though it also has Ethernet hardware and a pH amp onboard, since it seems people who want a full-blown reef controller also want that stuff most or all of the time.

To reiterate, this project is *NOT* intended to be a full blown reef controller. It IS intended to control a few channels of LED drivers, and maybe some other stuff if you get creative (hence why I brought out an I2C header.) This definitely won't be all things to all people, and it probably won't be a very satisfying project for people who are well versed in this sort of thing and can do it themselves, because it'll seem overly simplistic. It's mainly intended for the people who have some basic tinkering/soldering experience but don't have a clue how to design and build a microcontroller - i.e. it's intended to make the entry point into the "microcontrollers for reef use" hobby a little more attainable.

Someone above picked up that I hinted at a $30 price point - to be clear, that's a very rough estimate based on parts cost. It'll be nice if it ends up being a cheap thing for people to build, but as someone else pointed out above, this isn't a cheap hobby, and price isn't the main driver here.

The design is made to plug in to the back of this display:

http://www.moderndevice.com/products/16x2-blue-lcd

There are tons of other 16x2 displays that are pin compatible, but I'm linking this one to help people visualize. The LCD will plug in to a pin header on the board, and the board has holes for standoffs that line up with the LCD's holes, so they can be screwed together. Basically, the bottom edge of the controller PCB will stick out below the LCD, and will have a row of buttons on it. The power jack and headers for programming (FTDI), I2C, and LED driver(s) will stick out the "sides" underneath the LCD.

I thought about modeling it in one of those 3d circuit rendering tools (i.e. fritzing) but I might as well just wait until the prototypes get here and I can build it for real.


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Inconveniencing marine life since 1992

"It is my personal belief that reef aquaria should be thriving communities of biodiversity, representative of their wild counterparts, and not merely collections of pretty specimens growing on tidy clean rock shelves covered in purple coralline algae." (Eric Borneman)
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