Fab Academy 2015

Fab Academy

How to Make Almost Anything...


Sensor

The aquarium must be completely sensorised to detect changes in water quality,of all sensors, to me there are two essential temperature and pH in the future I want to put conductivity sensors, nitrates and nitrites gauges.

Temperature

To measure the temperature of the water I used a digital temperature sensor (DS18B20) this sensor can be purchased here. The DS18B20 provides 9 to 12-bit (configurable) temperature readings over a 1-Wire interface, this is also a waterproof sensor.

Making Board

Features

pH probe

The pH sensor is difficult to find at good price to me it was very difficult to find a suitable probe, in the end I found looking on Ebay. The pH probe is an analog sensor which gives a signal as a function of the acid that is water, this was a big problem, because I had to create a board to adapt the signal, since the probe gives a very low voltage and has a large Impedance, this is the board

Making Board

pH probe gives a voltage value between 0 and 0.5V depending on the pH of the pH range that can read go from 0 to 14. The conversion between voltage and pH is done by software.