Category Archives: Paludarium

Cloud-native ramblings: Adding Redis

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Erik Zandboer| Leave a comment

Many people think I am “just” building a paludarium… But they don’t see the complex world of automation behind it. In fact, there is a full blown application running the paludarium, build in a limited-but-functional cloud-native architecture.

This architecture is limited… Because you can have multiple instances of your microservices… But in the end there is only one piece of hardware to control. A single relais, a single led light, a single pump, a single valve and a single level sensor. And this is a problem; what if multiple microservices all talk to the one hardware platform at the same time? I needed a way to put a lock on who can send commands, and Redis came to the rescue.

The limitations of having “one hardware”

What if you have all kinds of microservices and functions that all want to talk to a single hardware platform? There are several functions and services that want to talk to the hardware:

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Posted in Automation, Paludarium, the Canopy

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Building a styrofoam waterfall

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Erik Zandboer| Leave a comment

One of the main features in any of my paludariums is a significant water body. As I then have both land and water, a waterfall should definitely be part of the setup! I have always created my waterfalls out of styrofoam. In this post I will share more details (and do’s and don’ts)

Sourcing styrofoam

This turned out to be one of the hardest things: Where to get a styrofoam block thicker than 8cm without the need to buy a truckload of it? This turned out to be harder than I thought. For previous builds I have always been lucky to find pieces of styrofoam casted away at build sites. The best one was a road being reconstructed near my home that ran through the marshlands. They constructed this road… Floating on styrofoam. You can imagine the size of those blocks! Even the smallest piece of discarded styrofoam would not fit in the trunk of my car 😛

For the previous build I wasn’t that lucky. In the end I settled for layers of thinner (5cm) styrofoam plates glued together; a “don’t” as I was soon to find out.

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Posted in Paludarium

Cricket-proof way to run wires into a paludarium

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Erik Zandboer| Leave a comment

If there is one thing I have noticed (and my wife hates) is that through ANY hole in a paludarium, crickets will find a way out. One of the toughest problems to solve is how to decently create a feed-through for wires and 6mm hoses that are guaranteed to be “cricket escape proof”.

It still starts with large holes

In order to make sure I can always run any wires or hoses into the paludarium, I started out with having three large (40mm diameter) holes drilled in the top of the paludarium:

It still starts with holes… 😉

I my case the company that built the glass encloseure only had a limited set of hole sizes they could cut. I ended up with 40mm. I measured them afterwards to get the exact size (and glass thickness). I then fired up Fusion360 and drew up a design that would allow me to place a neatly fitting plug in the holes.

Next, I designed 6mm holes in the plug, and I also printed tiny sliders that can cover those holes. The end result:

Top and bottom view of the cricket-proof plugs

These plugs are now inserted into the large holes on top. By default all the sliders are closed, but whenever I want to run a wire or hose I simply open up a slider and feed the wire through. I then reclose the slider as far as I can, effectively sealing the holes shut. No crickets shall pass!

Posted in Paludarium

Watering the background

Posted on September 10, 2023 by Erik Zandboer| Leave a comment

One of the tricks I have been using to keep things growing everywhere in the paludarium is by regularly watering the background. In this post I will describe how I made a spray bar and how I mounted it inside.

The idea

In order to get water onto the background and have it nicely sift through I have been using a 12mm PVC tube with a series of 1.5mm holes drilled into it. Really simple, and works well even with the smallest of pumps:

Example from an older setup on how to use a spray bar

Mounting the PVC pipe

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Posted in 3D printed, Paludarium, Water physics

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The Aeryn module: Palu Air Conditioning

Posted on August 6, 2023 by Erik Zandboer| Leave a comment

The Aeryn module was designed to allow air to be taken into the paludarium, heated and/or moisturized (mist) before it enters the setup. This is all part of the idea to have “no tech inside” but rather outside for easier access, maintenance and replace with updated versions.

What is Aeryn

Remember the sci-fi series “Farscape”? I originally designed this module named the Aether module. In honor of Farscape I renamed this module to Aeryn 🙂

The Aeryn module is a box-shaped module approximately 60x15x13cm in size, and is inserted into the hood above the paludarium. It lines up with two 12cm holes in the ceiling, where two fans draw in air from the outside. On the end of the module a 40mm pipe leads to the meshed strip on top of the paludarium where the conditioned air gets inserted.

Aeryn section 1: the air intake

The first section of the Aeryn module contains two 120mm fans, RPM regulated (and RPM measured back). These fans are put on top of the module, blowing down into the module. So first the airflow needs to be guided to flow sideways, which is accomplished using a 3D printed guide as shown below:

First section: After the air is pushed in from the top using two 120mm fans, this 3D printed guide directs the air to the left, on to the next sections of the Aeryn module.
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Posted in Air regulation, Paludarium, Rain and Mist

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Artemis v1.22: The new automation module

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Erik Zandboer| 1 Comment

As you may have noticed, I love calling everything a “module” more and more. And with good reason: If you build a project of this size, splitting up in modules makes sense. It allows you to focus on PART of the problem, and replace the module if you find something smarter / better.

Required specs for the new automation hardware

As I was building out something new, I figured it should be big and bad enough to handle anything I want to throw at it, PLUS have room for future expansion. As I was falling in love with many smaller light sources again, and the RGB-CCT led panels, I came to the conclusion that whatever hardware I build, it has to have MANY channels I can use to control and possibly dim all hardware. Just as an idea, I wanted to use three RGB-CCT led panels, and those use 5 channels each for red, green, blue, cold- and warm white. So that is 15 PWM channels at 24V already maxing out an Arduino Mega (which has exactly 15 PWM outputs). So I needed more. Time to grab back to my faithful PCA9586 PWM I2C-based controllers. I would not place them onboard this time, but design them as separate modules that I could either place on top of the Artemis Controller, or optionally somewhere else (just running power to them and the I2C connection).

In the end, this is the huge wishlist I cam up with regarding the automation hardware:

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Posted in Paludarium

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Ordering the Paludarium itself

Posted on February 4, 2023 by Erik Zandboer| Leave a comment

After some measuring, more measuring and several conversations with the people at Blue Lagoon (A Dutch Terrarium shop who build custom terrariums / paludariums), I pulled the trigged and put in an order.

The Big Bad Glass Box has arrived!

It took them less than a week to build. I got a phone call that my paludarium was ready for delivery… So I needed to speed up the construction of the cabinet! I had triple verified where the holes should be drilled in the glass… But that stays exiting every time. Will they have drilled in the right place, did they measure from the outer wall or the inner wall? Did *I* measure correctly when I drilled three big ugly holes in the cabinet for the PVC piping to go through? Luckily, in the end it all worked out great.

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Posted in Glass structure, Paludarium

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Adding software features to Artemis

Posted on May 24, 2020 by Erik Zandboer| Leave a comment

New things! Everything is progressing nicely. Did additional testing on the 230VAC detection circuit and wrote software to read SHT31 digital humidity/temperature sensors. Also added a ClosedLoop function so analog inputs can be used to compare to store values and have an outputs act on the comparison.

230VAC detection

Finally I had the time to properly measure the mains voltage inputs. No shorts or anything… So I decided to go on and plug in the mains voltage into the Artemis.

The 230VAC detection circuit is connected to D48 (ICP5 on the Arduino), which mean I could potentially measure the exact frequency of the mains AC voltage. Still, I do not require to have that, so instead I built a simple timer that resets if the phase comes up, and counts down if the phase disappears. This way I always have a stable reading on the signal, even when the Artemis accidentally measures on an exact phase zero crossing.

        if (digitalRead(PIN_230V_DETECT) == LOW) // Active? Reset Timer.
        {
                TIM_50HzDetect = 10;
        }
        else
        {
                if (TIM_50HzDetect) // Not active -> count 2 zero and stay.
                {
                        TIM_50HzDetect--;
                }
        }
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Posted in Automation, Paludarium

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Putting Artemis through it paces

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Erik Zandboer| Leave a comment

The hardware is finally in! This post is a geeky tech post as a result 😉 I had some issues soldering an SMT component that was not in stock at the PCB manufacturer… So I needed to solder that manually. After that the rest of the THT components were soldered, and then it was test, update software, test, update software.

Just like the computer render – but this time it is for real! The first prototype is just about ready to go!

Manually soldering a TSSOP28

As I quickly discovered – no fun. The Chinese PCB manufacturer mounted all SMT components, except one: The PCA9685 PWM timer which was out of stock.

So I ordered the chips separately and manually soldered the thing. Using a soldering iron and soldering flux I managed to get the component soldered. Up close it is REALLY ugly, but eh, it works:

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Posted in Automation, Paludarium

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Artemis hardware ordered!

Posted on May 6, 2020 by Erik Zandboer| 3 Comments

After looking at the schematic, looking over it again and once more, then at the PCB once more… I decided there could not be too much wrong with the design as-is… So I pulled the trigger and ordered five PCBs including SMT parts!

After Artemis v1.00 was almost sent to production I did make some last minute changes. That resulted in v1.01 of the hardware. Yesterday was a big day: I finally uploaded my design to jlcpcb.com and progressed with the order!

Exciting! The PCB or Artemis v1.01 finally went into production.
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Posted in Automation, Paludarium

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