A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

My first Aquaponics system and I'm hooked!

Hello to everyone and I’m sorry if this post ends up under the incorrect forum heading. Didn’t know where else I should put it.

This past year I decided to build a balcony Aquaponics system so I could grow some of my own food. I was able to do most of the research online by reading articles, white papers, blogs, and watching Youtube videos. It was a challenging and rewarding project, so I’ve decided to expand the system and make improvements. The alpha version had its problems, but you can learn a lot by doing something yourself and next year’s system is going to have many improvements.

Up until this point I have been building on work from other people and I’ve decided to give back in the best way I know how. As a software developer and prototyper, I naturally wanted to automate my AP system (not the first to do this). I have found videos and blog posts of people who have done similar things, but I have not found anyone who has released their source, either software or hardware. I’ve found ‘under construction’ websites, but nothing that is actively in development. So I’m building an open source software suite that will utilize other projects like the Arduino, the Raspberry Pi, and Linux. The applications are going to be part of an OpenAquaponics stack that can be run within a local system, or scaled up to be part of a larger community (think smart nodes). The first phase will be a local system with the OANode (an Arduino with sensors) logging and sending data to OAServer (a Raspberry Pi application) and an OAMobile (Android application) displaying real-time information.

Assuming people find the project worthwhile and are using it, I’d like to get feedback for features they would like to see included. Later versions will include a web interface that you view historical data, more advantage task scheduling, and support for multiple OANodes. All of the documentation I generate on this will be posted in the software repository and wiki page, so people will be able to follow along and built it themselves! I’ve just gotten this project off the ground in the last two weeks so everything isn’t up yet, but let me know what you think.

Software repository -> https://github.com/OpenAquaponics

Website -> http://www.opensourceaquaponics.org/

Youtube -> https://www.youtube.com/user/OpenSourceAquaponics

Twitter -> https://twitter.com/OpenAquaponics

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Permalink Reply by Chris Smith on November 26, 2012 at 11:52pm

Sounds like your are addicted like most of us. There is a 12 step program somewhere on this site to help you deal with your new habit! Post some pics and let us see.

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Permalink Reply by Josh on November 27, 2012 at 6:20am

It's such a good system and it works so well, it's really hard not to get addicted!

Chris Smith said:

Sounds like your are addicted like most of us. There is a 12 step program somewhere on this site to help you deal with your new habit! Post some pics and let us see.