Neanderthalman's ATO's

[ajmckay]

Okay so I had grand dreams of making my own ATO.

 

I have 1 float switch and an arduino equipped with an RTC, LCD display (on an I2C bus), some temp probes, and stuff like that.

 

But a while back I stumbled across some ATO's that N-R.com member Neanderthalman had created. Here's the link: http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=229028

 

I particularly like the second one down. Seems like it has several features, and I like the fact that it can be hooked up directly to AC power and function.

 

So here's my dilemma. I really need an ATO now that my tank has about 1g+ of evap per day. Do you think it would work better to try to put one together using the arduino as the platform, or would it be better to use neanderthalman's designs and save the arduino for other things?

 

On one hand it would be cool to have the arduino to allow more programmability, but on the other hand I'm not that skilled with it, and cost is a factor here (needs to be super cheap!).

 

If you have any links to good, cheap, and most importantly reliable ATO solutions that work good for you could you post a link? I'm interested if anyone has built Neanderthalman's ATO and how they would rate it.

[RK_tek]

I run an arduino for my lights and have looked into adding a few other functions to it as well, but an ATO needs to be dead reliable. I would only trust my arduino with non-critical things like monitoring parameters and such. Besides, if you go ahead and build a standalone ATO, the hardware is already there if you decide to incorporate it into the arduino later. my .02

[ajmckay]

Thanks for the comments RK.

 

I would hate for my tank to flood because I screwed up programming the arduino!

 

Still, has anyone used the neanderthalman one? looks like it has a lot of failsafes.

[mginster]

Just make the common air driven ATO with a float switch, power cord, air pump, and sealed container.

 

I use them on both my tanks and my mothers. They work fine and you can implement many backup measures. Including: Put it on a timer so it could only possibly be on for so long anyway. Buy two float switches and wire them in series, both have to be up for it to turn on, if one gets stuck down it just wont top off. Only have your container be a size that will not crash your tank...etc.