aquarium sending/receiving data to sql server on the internet/cloud

[lutetium]

Hi,
I am building an aquarium that is controlled by a microcontroller, the microcontroller controls the lights, temperature and water level. To do all these controls I’ve used a Arduino mega and at the moment it’s all working fine.
My new goal is:

*To set up on the internet/cloud a sql server and send data from my house aquarium to the database. This gives me the possibility to show data on a website with my smartphone.

*The other aspect that I’m looking for is to send commands from the internet to the aquarium, such as switching on and off the light or regulate the temperature.

What electronics components should I use?
A web server integrated in the aquarium? Are there any cheap chips? How do they work? Can it send and retrieve data on internet?
Please give me guideline of topics and aspect that I need to study.

Please don't suggest raspberry pi, cause I'm planning to sell the aquarium and I would like that the electronics and controls would not cause any problems in terms of speed, crashes, price.

thanks

 

[dougy83]

Have a look at the Arduino Ethernet Shield https://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardEthernet. It's under $10, (e.g. **broken link removed**).

To connect it to the internet, you just need to plug an ethernet cable between it and your LAN / internet-router. You'll need to set up port-forwarding in the router to allow external access from outside your LAN (i.e. the internet), and you may wish to get a DNS server to point to your address (so that you can access it with a name rather than an IP address). This site gives free addresses and DNS redirection: https://www.cloudns.net/

 

[MrAl]

Hi,
I am building an aquarium that is controlled by a microcontroller, the microcontroller controls the lights, temperature and water level. To do all these controls I’ve used a Arduino mega and at the moment it’s all working fine.
My new goal is:

*To set up on the internet/cloud a sql server and send data from my house aquarium to the database. This gives me the possibility to show data on a website with my smartphone.

*The other aspect that I’m looking for is to send commands from the internet to the aquarium, such as switching on and off the light or regulate the temperature.

What electronics components should I use?
A web server integrated in the aquarium? Are there any cheap chips? How do they work? Can it send and retrieve data on internet?
Please give me guideline of topics and aspect that I need to study.

Please don't suggest raspberry pi, cause I'm planning to sell the aquarium and I would like that the electronics and controls would not cause any problems in terms of speed, crashes, price.

thanks

Hello there,


Keep in mind that if the micro controller fails your fish might be dead. It is necessary to have at least one backup controller that is set up to monitor the first one, and make the necessary changes if it detects something is wrong. Of course there's always the chance that the second one could go bad, so you might have a third one, etc.

If this sounds unreasonable then consider this: the original Shuttle used 7 separate systems. The final decision was based on having multiple systems come up with the same results, and the ones that came up with other results were considered disfunctional. So the decisions were based on at least two out of three providing the same results.

Not only are your fish's lives at stake so you could loose your pets, but if they are salt water based fish you stand to loose a lot of money.