DIY Arduino dosing pumps

[afboundguy]

I have been doing a ton of research and planning to automate as much as I can with my tank. I found a DIY frozen food setup on R2R that WallyB created and I've been in contact with him about building multiple dosing pumps!

I plan to do a 3 headed dosing pump for the 3-part/balling method, 2 headed doser for phyto dosing, 4 head doser for DIY frozen fish food setup, and then a 9 head doser to automate dosing my tank with pods (4 different strands, 4 pumps to dose back in phyto and 1 to remove same amount of water from sump to reservoir)

Super rough sketch

 

[afboundguy]

I purchased most of the parts on AliExpress and Temu as they're super cheap and I was in no rush. Lucky me I ordered right before USPS said they'd no longer take direct packages from China so I bought some parts off Amazon to start making one.

Some of the pumps will use an H-bridge so it can run in both directions (pod dosing pumps and the frozen fish food setup) and some will just do relays (3-part and phyto and dosing phyto back into pod cultures). The pumps are Kamoer 24v pumps.

I am building the 3-part dosing pump first as it's the simplest. The frozen fish food one will probably have a Raspberry Pi as well (hopefully) to be able to program it better.

I wired the 24v power supply in parallel to the 3 relays and then ran the input wire to the Arduino. I wired in a module so that it could keep time even when powered off. I need a step down module to go from 24v to 5v to power the Arduino board so I don't have two power cords. I also will hopefully be using a touchscreen to program everything!

Enjoy the ride it'll be a long one!

 

[thrillreefer]

This is very cool and I applaud the efforts! I do wonder if those dosers will hold up long term?

 

[afboundguy]

This is very cool and I applaud the efforts! I do wonder if those dosers will hold up long term?

The guy from R2R has had them going for about 7'ish years at this point. And if they do die they're only $5-$10 dollars to replace and they look and feel significantly sturdier than the Jebao dosing pumps I currently have up and running and I am a big fan of the flexibility!

 

[thrillreefer]

That’s awesome. Is it the ReefPi guy? I also want to automate phyto dosing, following along with your build!

 

[afboundguy]

That’s awesome. Is it the ReefPi guy? I also want to automate phyto dosing, following along with your build!

It's not the reef pi guy it's WallyB. I looked into reef pi but heard bad things about the reliability. I've been doing small Arduino stuff for my train layout and all the research I've done I rarely see anyone complaining about reliability issues with Arduino projects so decided to go that route especially since it's a relatively simple project.

 

[afboundguy]

Ordered some 24V power supply units to get all four future setups on two setups to save power outlets! Also waiting for the step down module so I can wire it in parallel with the current 24V wires to step the voltage down to 5V to power the Arduino to again save outlet space! Step down module will arrive tomorrow and then I will play around with coding as the R2R guy gave me some tester Arduino code to make sure everything is working properly!

 

[afboundguy]

This is the original DIY frozen fish food setup the R2R guy created. He has since made improvements and I will be using an existing mini dorm fridge

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Here is a normal dosing pump he did as well

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[JBendel]

Looks like you have it all under control, but if it's any help, here's was my approach on dosing with an arduino. Have had not issues.

Post in thread 'Arduino 2 Part Doser / Vacation Plant Waterer'

Nov 30, 2019

I only used an Uno, because I had one laying around and it gave plenty of space to lay in the circuitry. Liked the idea of just plugging the "Dose Board" directly into the Arduino without jumpers. I have never used one, but I would think a raspberry Pi would work fine. I am Analog, so my programming is rudimentary, so this was a test run to see if I could make it work.

• JBendel

• 

 

[serwobow]

This is awesome!

 

[afboundguy]

And here is his

Looks like you have it all under control, but if it's any help, here's was my approach on dosing with an arduino. Have had not issues.

Post in thread 'Arduino 2 Part Doser / Vacation Plant Waterer'

Nov 30, 2019

I only used an Uno, because I had one laying around and it gave plenty of space to lay in the circuitry. Liked the idea of just plugging the "Dose Board" directly into the Arduino without jumpers. I have never used one, but I would think a raspberry Pi would work fine. I am Analog, so my programming is rudimentary, so this was a test run to see if I could make it work.

• JBendel

• 

I saw your thread and took your setup into consideration but some of my dosing pumps will be complicated needing to go in both directions with specific timing so I will be adding extra parts for redundancy and safety and doing a ton of testing to make sure everything is as bullet proof as possible!

 

[afboundguy]

This is awesome!

Thanks! Going to try and upload codes tomorrow with any luck and see how the pumps work!

 

[mind]

I was thinking of doing something similar, but using an ESP32 and writing the code in micropython. But then I decided that I wanted to get it to show up in my GHL so now it's looks like I will need to reverse engineer their wire protocol, which I suspect is canbus....

 

[afboundguy]

I was thinking of doing something similar, but using an ESP32 and writing the code in micropython. But then I decided that I wanted to get it to show up in my GHL so now it's looks like I will need to reverse engineer their wire protocol, which I suspect is canbus....

I like the idea of being able to easily customize and expand easily. I might be adding 2 more types of copepods for a total of 5 different types and if I do it's easy enough to add more pumps to automate everything!