Electrobes

So I finally decided to get off my butt and get some things done. I had, for the longest time, wanted to do several things that I just never got to:


1) Make my tank's info (Temp at the time) view-able WiFi and Cellular networks.


2) I wanted to have all my equipment (Not just the lights and temp stuff) controllable.


3) I was sick of my "Drawer" control board as the toll of pulling the drawer and dragging wires whenever I did it bugged me deeply. I wanted to have


a nice and clean control board that could hide but be easily accessible when needed.


The above is a tall order and I have graciously given a weekend, with the house to myself, to complete this project unhindered. (I am a house dad to


a two year old). I didn't have much time to plan this out well, so I needed to have a lot of measurements accurate, or just sheer dumb luck.


After obtaining what I thought were good measurements I went off to Home Depot and got the necessary materials to build the control board.


I started the project by removing the lights and semi-canopy off the tank.





I wanted it to be fairly consistent with my current stand. The first thing that needed to be done was to remove all three bottom drawers of the


stand, and knock out the supports that let them slide in and out of the stand. I could only remove the first two, because I still had to remove the


equipment from the top (of the three) drawer.





The next part involved cutting off the storage part of each of the two drawers, and keeping only the faces, so that I could later attach them


together forming a door.





Before I could remove the drawer with the equipment, I had to remove the equipment! It's amazing how much stuff could fit in there!





I finally got the last drawer out, plus I was intermittently doing the control board. It involved a little black staining, and some bordering, but it


came out nice.




Here's me gluing the border onto the back board.





I finally got the third drawer face and finished the "door".





Now it was time to add the equipment to the control board.





Overall the project is a major success given a weekend's time. I am so stoked as I bought a year subsciption to dyndns, and I can now control all of


my equipment on my phone, given I have WiFi or am within range of a cell tower. My only project left is to add a doser controlled by the controller


via the pH probe. The tank suffers from a fairly low pH, and I want to remedy that by having the pH monitor control the flow of Kalk water, and the


ATO using regular RO/DI. I hope it works in keeping the pH stable.. and helps with keeping the Calcium and Alk up.. as they are often times too low


even with me adding additives fairly regularly.

Here's how the tank looks now.