I am interested in being able to receive alerts if my Aquarium water temperature is outside of normal operating range.
Does anyone have hands-on experience with any of the options out there?
From what I have read, Fibaro makes a contact sensor and an RGBW controller that can accept an optional temperature probe. Any other solutions?
Thanks!
You could get an arduino board and use something like this with it, then use the HubDuino driver to connect it to Hubitat. You could use the Arduino for controlling your aquarium lights too if you wanted.
Thanks Iāll look into this
The Qubino relays also have an optional temp sensor. Like @EdwardN says you could use the relay to control lights while still getting temperature. I converted the ST DH as a driver for Hubitat pretty easily. The Smartest House sells Qubino on their website and Amazon.
On ST I use a Fibaro contact sensor with an external temperature sensor. It uses a custom DH.
I then use webCoRE to do exactly as you wish.
I will be migrating across to Hubitat but haven't done it yet.
Here's the thread if it helps or I can tell you how I did it when I get home.
That is the one Iāve been eyeballing. Adurino and Oubion both look like interesting options too, but since I just need temperature I think the fibaro should do the trick.
The Fibaro does look like a nice solution. On ST Iāve been using a stuck-on Iris contact sensor at on the back of the tank to get an idea of the water temperature (much the same as @bobbles described early on in his thread) ; Iām mainly interested in avoiding the heater failed stuck on/stuck off scenarios. The Iris has no external contact capability. I use a couple rules with ānever exceedā limits to generate alerts that hopefully would provide a warning regardless of the room ambient.
Probably a topic for another thread, but I also (in my ST setup) have an Aeon Smart Strip with individually controllable outlets connected to the filter and circulator pumps, main and moon lights, and an always-on outlet connecting the heater. I use it for automating the lights and I find this really makes tank maintenance convenient (being able to tell Alexa to control a circulator pump rather than crawling around on the floor with my hands wet with salt water to mess with the plugs). All outlets support power monitoring and I have a bunch of rules watching them to detect the power draw to decrease the chance of a spurious cloud even setting them to the wrong state; this has never happened in the couple of years Iāve been doing this. I also have them turn themselves back on after an audio warning and delay unless I am in āmaintenance modeā to avoid me fat-fingering the mobile app and turning something off by mistake.
It occurs to me that I should have enough data to be able to either calculate a āroom ambientā offset to get a better approximation of the tank water temperature; alternatively since the heater power is monitored in real time it should be relatively easy to monitor the duty cycle (at least when room temperature should indicate the need for water heating) in order to tell if the heater had failed in a permanently on or off state.
Iād love to move this setup to Hubitat but so far there is no support for individually controlling the outlets on the Aeon powerstrip.
Iāve gone down the same route.
Rules to notify me if temperature exits a set range.
I also have my lights, pumps and heaters connected through Fibaro devices. I also hav virtual switches to turn everything off and on if needed.
I have rules to turn off the heaters if the tank temp exceeds a set limit and or if it drops below a set limit. (In case they have turned off by mistake or havenāt turned on after a power cut.)
I also have a rule to alert me if temperature hasnāt changed for 12 hours to check the sensor is working ok. My tank temp goes up and down by 0.1 to 0.2 every couple of hours.
Going to transfer this all over to Hubitat when my hub arrives, hopefully.
I need the same thing for my Bearded Dragon Vivarium. Any luck on getting that (the Aeon Smart Strip) working yet?
Thanks,
Brad
The Aeon Smart Strip now works for on/off control of individual outlets with the built-in driver that is in the current (.706) firmware but there was an issue with it not reporting the individual or total power of the outlets correctly. I reported the bug to support and yesterday I received an email that a fix for this problem will be in the next firmware release.
WARNING. DS18B20 PROBE CAN CAUSE LEAKS.
I have been using the Fibaro sensor connected to a DS18B20 temperature probe for a while now and it has been working great.
The other day I noticed the carpet near my aquarium was wet, extremely wet.
On inspection i could find no leaks to my tank. I moved it out of my house into the garage so that I could both clean up the mess and also monitor the tank to see if I could detect the leak. I left the Fibaro sensor hanging down the back of my tank with the probe still in the tank. (This is how it was in my house).
After a week of no water leaking a pool started to appear at the back of my tank.
On closer inspection the water was dripping from the Fibaro Sensor. What has been happening is somehow the water has siphoned its way up the inside of the probe lead and then dripping out on to the floor.
If the sensor and probe lead is above the water level then this cannot happen.
Just thought I would post here for information and you may wish to check your setup so that it does not happen to you.
I flashed a sonoff TH16 UK Amazonand attached a DS18B20, its been working great.
Tied to a piston on ST, and a virtual switch, I just ask Alex how the fish are, and get a push message on my Apple watch, and have the current temp spoken. Also triggers events if too hot/cold etc.
I was so sick and tired trying to determine whether the aquatic thermos were actually actuate, but this works great. That said, I will keep my eye out for any leaks now!!
My suspicion from the photo of the product is, you might be experiencing wicking with that probe if there isn't anything more than the shrink tube covering the junction between the probe and the cable insulation. To be at least IP67 rated, it should really be like this...
You could counter it by coiling the excess and keep it suspended higher than the water level. Not very nice looking unfortunately. You could also cut away the shrink tube, seal the junction with RTV silicone and then cover it up with new shrink tube.
Sorry for digging up an old thread, but does anyone have new solutions to share for what they use to monitor aquarium water temperature? FIBARO no longer makes the contact sensors that have the ability to plug in an external temperature probe, looking for a way to monitor the temperature of my aquarium and have Hubitat act on it, thanks!
If you want do a bit of DIY, there is plenty of solution.
One solution is using DS18D20. There should be waterproof version.
You would need an Arduino to read the sensor. You can take the route of Hubduino to get the data to Hubitat.
I personally make my Environment Sensor that is expandable. Coincident over the weekend, I build one probe using an ST32 Arduino. I am testing how long cable can I use. I tested 15 feet cable without issue. I am planning to see if I can get all the way to 100 feet.
I wrote simple child DTH and Arduino sketch for it. Please feel free to reach out if you like to pursue this route. Here is how it come out on the hub.
If you notice, there are many pin on the Arduino. Those are available for other things that you want to monitor or control.
Thanks
Iman
After doing a lot of digging, i found a solution outside of using Adruino. The following allows me to use a temp prob with a Qubino relay. This will give me the info needed and control for me to create rules for thermal protection and kicking on the Aux heater.
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