Krazie's Nano Paradise

Would it need some sort of tray underneath the skimmer incase you forget to empty the cup to catch the spill over? I am looking at an used Aquamaxx HOB like your but not sure what is a reasonable price to offer?

OK thank, beside that company what others are you using? Digikey, Mouser, Jameco are the other companies that I am using but mostly components not power source.  Anyway how do you like your AquaMaxx HOB?

Oh, they usually good to me may be because I have an account with them a while back (I am retired now), I call them before placing an order, they usually let me know if the parts are in stock.

Thanks, I will be working on the light next, do you know that you can order ldd driver at this site.  I found this vendor is the cheapest. http://www.powergatellc.com/mean-well-ldd-h-power-supply.html

Just bought a JBJ nano28 for the wife last month on the black Friday and curious do you have to remove the stock filters tray to accommodate for the AquaMaxx HOB skimmer? Thank

My entire board with all components comes in less than $80 complete.

You haven't found the grail on the LDD's yet. I didn't pay 6 bucks for any of mine. The SCW converter is the most expensive part of my boards. My new ones will probably not use that part and opt for another style converter. Krazie

Ya, for what your talking about it almost makes sense to have a Pi talking to an Arduino that is controlling the hardware side of things. That way neither one is burdened with the tasks that the other one is best at.  Krazie


Edited by Krazie4Acans - December 15 2014 at 1:09pm

I use an Apex for my tanks so I can already control my board from my phone. That's why I didn't need the network interface on my current board. It was designed to work with other controllers or can be setup to be a stand alone LED controller (think Storm X or Typhoon).

My new Arduino based one adds network (wired and Wifi) as well as a full capability to be a full controller not just an LED controller. I'll have two boards, one with just LED connections and a second with all of the connections for probes, switches, relays etc to be a controller.

I personally prefer doing the coding so that I know the timing of critical tasks and how the controller is going to respond in each situation. Pi is easy but I just don't like wizard type interfaces like that. It's also very hard to integrate Pi into other projects because they don't expose the interface pins on the board. They want to give you computer type interfaces that require additional coding to get devices to work with it. Most fish equipment doesn't have USB or HDMI to connect to Pi. The stackable headers on the Arduino make for easy prototyping and adding/testing of new circuit designs. I didn't find that part of Pi very friendly. I haven't tried the Pi B+ model yet but don't expect that much has changed in this aspect.

I also took my board and connected it up to some G3 Radion pucks  and now can mimick the Radions colors and output with both the Radion pucks and the Lumia 5.2 pucks. While it's not as simple as just choosing a color from a menu, Fusion does make it pretty simple to set a graph that can then be copied and pasted.

Thanks for the compliment on the light. I have gotten lots of compliments on how clean they look and how silent they run. I have a few happy customers and that's more than I could ask from this first attempt. Krazie

I have seen (and maybe sampled) their new 100. Only slight difference from the 5.2's. It's starting to get harder to control and tune these things with so many channels.

I'm working on a newer version of my controller that is based on the Arduino Mega chip that does all channels (upto 16) and PWM 4096 steps. I'm not real big into the weather, sun movement effects as I am more worried about growth and color than effects and things that scare the fish. Also, unless you are running a very long tank, there is very little difference in light for a 4-6 foot section of the ocean during sunrise and sun set. It would be more about light angle and not so much spectrum that might be needed there. I haven't wanted (read that cared) about building a motorized rig to move my lights across the tank to simulate that. Krazie