I want to monitor my AP system from a web site

[Michael sanders]

Anybody have a location to purchase monitors that I can use for online (web) access.  I want to monitor my system when I am on travel.  Someone had a system on youtube but he did not give any suggestions on the hardware it would take.  I am looking to monitor PH, PPM, Nitrite levels, etc. 

[Kobus Jooste]

Will take your concerns around probe robustness under advisement, but there are ways to create "sample bays" in the system that reduces the amount of solids (the system is pretty clean as is, especially the return flow that has seen 7 square meters of settlement tanks) that could get to the probes without going to the cost difference between YSI and Aquatronica.  Before the water reaches the filter, I put it through two canister filters in order to trap and remove solids on a daily basis.  The water that leaves the last strainer is pretty clean, but the chemistry will still be that of a pre-filtered unit.  I will also remain in favour of the aquatronica interface which is way better than any aquaculture system that I have seen (plus it can be modified and updated). 

RupertofOZ said:

I mentioned the fact that YSI had a long record in the aquaculture area... principally because of the solids loading and nature of water quality in both pond based and RAS operations... as opposed to the generally more pristine aquaria systems...

 

Thus a proven track record of online meters/probes that work in an environment that is more similar to what we're likely to find in AP...

 

I've seen other, albeit much cheaper offerings... that, while supposedly constant online solutions... just didn't hack it for more than a week or two...

Kobus Jooste said:

Which suddenly makes it a lot more of an option than YSI.  I also do not have any need whatsoever for the 10 m cable - the distance from my fish tank to where the controller will be installed is around 2 meters.  ORP is borderline ok for me in the application that this system is intended for, although nitrate and ammonia probes will be nice.  I'll give the guys a buzz to see if a probe from another company can be slotted into their monitoring grid.  In South African terms, I'd be paying around R 30 000 for aquatronica and R60 000 for YSI, and then I still need a computer.  Their long presence in aquaculture does not pursuade me to part with 50% more.  That is like arguing that if I need a car it must be a Mercedes because they have been at it for longer than Toyota or whoever.

 

As for the fact that aquatronica originated from marine aquaria, I do not think that is an issue.  pH 7 and 26 degrees happens everywhere- aquarium or aquaponics.  We happily use aquaculture and hydroponic gear in aquaponics, so I have no issue with investigating aquarium probes for my greenhouse.  The quality of the probe and software is all that should matter, but price is very important for this project, obviously.

[Aaron]

The guy from cool greenhouse is at Bigelow Brook Farm, LLC.  He designs remote automated systems for a living.  You can contact him through www.bigelowbrook.com.  He is also happy to have visitors come and take a peek at his systems.  Currently he has designed a pretty impressive set up for a geodesic dome greenhouse to be started at first thaw in the spring.  Sorry it this is repeat information but I didn't read all 36 postings. Good luck!

[Matthew]

I have not setup a camera for my tank yet, but I have a security system that is only ~ $100 total.

 

take any old computer PIII or higher.  Add $10 4 camera card from china on ebay.  Add ccd cameras ($15-$30 each from china on ebay.)

 

Setup your computer with remote desktop....will need your router to give port 3389 access.

 

I am a computer geek by trade....

 

Also like knowing when UPS drops off a package a.

 

Just have your thermometers and other readings in one place and point a camera at them!

 

[TCLynx]

hay Mathew, got some computer geek questions for you.

I've got some cctv cameras that I want to get to the internet.  I've got one of these cheap 4 channel usb devices but I think I bought crap and haven't been able to get it to work.

 

I actually want to post the video onto the internet publicly so the surveillance systems don't really work for that.  any recommendations on video servers that can work with cctv cameras and get the video out to separate pages on the internet.  example http://www.aquaponiclynx.com/aquaponic-lynx-live-garden-cameras/duc...

 

Of course my duck tv camera is an IP camera so it was easy to do.  The underwater cameras I'm trying to set up are cctv so I need something that can take a composite bnc or rca input and get it to the internet.  I do have an old computer already running the weather station that I could use if I can get multiple camera feeds into it.

[Matthew]

The one I use really is no good for posting it on a website.  Was made (poorly) to be a security system.  The easiest way to put online, woudld be if the software for the cameras supported saving a still image at a certain interval.  So you would save somethine like fist_tank1.jpg to a folder.  It would automatically replace the image like every 5 seconds or so.  Then all you need is a simple website on your pc, always pointing to that file.  Then you just need to set the page to auto refresh every few seconds....so it would update the image.

 

Comletely depends on the camera you use and what the software it came with can do.  There MAY be free apps on download.com that will do it, but they would probably need a twain compatible camera.

In many cases the cheap usb webcams can do this.  The cheap China made one I have does not.

 

I tried dabbling with creating my own app that would just take a full screenprint every few seconds and leaving the camera application always open with the camera images, but that did not work correctly.

 

I may revisit that however at some point and if it works can give you a copy  of the application (I am a software developer).

[TCLynx]

I've messed with yaw cam that could do ftp things like with with a usb web cam. However, I don't know how to do it with more than one camera.

 

Problem is I don't know of any USB web cams that can run a cable that is like 100 foot long and also be waterproof and have led lights for IR viewing in a dark fish tank.

 

So I'm in search of a piece of hardware that will deal with cctv cameras and help get it onto the internet or at least onto the computer.  Still searching I guess..

[Matthew]

Found a copy of the source code for the app I tried making years ago to do it.  I can see it has issues, I will see if I can fix it. What it is supposed to do, is it invokes the print screen button on the keyboard at a specified interval.  The print screen/screenshot of everythign on the sceen is saved to a set destination.  Such as c:\screenshot.jpg.  This is different than most screen grabbers as it contains video which is an overlay.  Usually if you do a screenshot of a video it is just black and does nto have the pictures from the video, somehow I got around that but do not recall how.

 

If I can get this working it may be a viable solution for you.  You would just leave the camera application open at all times, probably would need to disable screensavers, etc.  Then this app would constantly write and overwrite the screenshot.jpg at a certain interval (you can set it)  Because the file sis 120k, I had to set mine to like 15 seconds, as my internet is slow to upload it.

 

This is a .net framework 2.0 app, so you would need to install .net framework 2.0 from microsoft on the computer.

 

I'll let you know how it turns out.  If this work, would you liek a copy of it?

 

Do you have the knowhow and capacity to host the single image or site on your computer or are you running it on a third party povider?

[TCLynx]

Well I'm gonna want to work out something that I can do more than one camera at a time.  I might just need to get some IP video servers to run the cameras on and hook them to the router directly.

I've been able to get the IP camera up to the web site using ddns service and getting the live stream to the web site in an iframe

I'm kinda doing the same thing with the weather station stuff being uploaded to the web site by ftp.

Now I'm searching for hardware that will help me get the cctv camera feeds to the internet some how.  I don't know if my home internet service will really let me host the video on my computers I probably need to send it out some how for them to be publicly viewable.

[Matthew]

TCLynx said:

Well I'm gonna want to work out something that I can do more than one camera at a time.  I might just need to get some IP video servers to run the cameras on and hook them to the router directly.

I've been able to get the IP camera up to the web site using ddns service and getting the live stream to the web site in an iframe

I'm kinda doing the same thing with the weather station stuff being uploaded to the web site by ftp.

Now I'm searching for hardware that will help me get the cctv camera feeds to the internet some how.  I don't know if my home internet service will really let me host the video on my computers I probably need to send it out some how for them to be publicly viewable.

[Matthew]

I beleive I have the app to a point where it is usable.

 

Here is an example from my server:

As you can see, I can have all my cameras on at the same time.  I just leave the dashboard open, and the app takes a complete screenshot of whatever is on the screen.  Then I just point the webite to that jpg file.

I actually programmed the app with a compression setting, to make the size smaller for the image.  It's set pretty high.

 

Let me know if you want to give the app a try.

Matthew said:

TCLynx said:

Well I'm gonna want to work out something that I can do more than one camera at a time.  I might just need to get some IP video servers to run the cameras on and hook them to the router directly.

I've been able to get the IP camera up to the web site using ddns service and getting the live stream to the web site in an iframe

I'm kinda doing the same thing with the weather station stuff being uploaded to the web site by ftp.

Now I'm searching for hardware that will help me get the cctv camera feeds to the internet some how.  I don't know if my home internet service will really let me host the video on my computers I probably need to send it out some how for them to be publicly viewable.

[Matthew]

set my resulution lower so you can see images a bit better in the screenshots.

[TCLynx]

Once I work out the cameras I might be interested in the app but I'm not quite sure it suites my particular purpose.

 

However, I expect there may be others here who would be interested.  would you be willing to upload the file to make it available to others here who might be interested.  Or I suppose they can always contact you if they want to try it out.