Raspberry Pi / Arduino current alarm idea

[Glitched]

Hi all,

Although I'm about a year or so off from setting up a reef tank again (going to move in the next year, need a bigger home for the family), I'm starting to pick up and make stuff for my next setup.

Now after reading a few post lately of what people are doing with Raspberry Pi / Arduino for monitoring and maintaining the tank, I thought I'd put up an idea I've started to play with just in case someone has already done it, or if not, it could help fuel ideas for others all ready making stuff.

My plan is to setup inline ammeter on each heater, return pump or other needed equipment, and have the controller set to give an alarm of some sort when current goes to far out of value from when either a pump or heater dies, or other type of fault.

I thought this would be a great way to know if your back up heater / equipment was working overtime to make up for something faulty.

I'm still awhile from finishing, but will put an update once I've completed anything major with it, but thought might as well put it up now as the idea could help someone else.

 

[Ranjib]

Great idea.
Kasa 300 smart power strip, and 110 smart outlet provides current monitoring. I use those with reef-pi. This allows the equipment control (on./off) as well as their current draw (we model it as ph reading , in reef-pi). I tend to use it for charting or just general check for validating the power rating of the equipment, their internal thermister based on/off cycle etc. I have thought of this (using current monitoring to alert /detect equipment failure), but never actually set it up,,
keep us posted

 

[marekd1]

Great idea.
Kasa 300 smart power strip, and 110 smart outlet provides current monitoring. I use those with reef-pi. This allows the equipment control (on./off) as well as their current draw (we model it as ph reading , in reef-pi). I tend to use it for charting or just general check for validating the power rating of the equipment, their internal thermister based on/off cycle etc. I have thought of this (using current monitoring to alert /detect equipment failure), but never actually set it up,,
keep us postedr

Another option that can also be used is to use current sensing transformers. Since Reef-Pi now supports A-D devices, this can easily be done with little supplementary circuit to bias the current transformer and connect it to A-D inputs.