Category Archives: lighting

People are often confused what things are all in the paludarium, what they are called and what they do. In this blog post I’ll explain the different components (sub projects if you will) that make up the paludarium today.

A quick overview

In order to get the paludarium working as it works today, I had to run several different projects and put them all together. First I’ll quickly list all the different components:

1. The Cabinet – The custom-built cabinets that hold the paludarium;
2. The Paludarium – The glass structure that holds water and air (the paludarium is a closed construction);
3. The Land part – The part above water. Filled with tropical plants, and for now no animals here;
4. The Aquatic part – The front underwater part of the paludarium, where the fish live;
5. The Sump – The rear underwater part. Any excess water from the Aquatic part is dumped here, and the plants living on the background panel get their water from here (and return it there too);
6. The Waterworks – The board in the cabinet that holds all the plumbing (water valves etc);
7. The Canopy – The intelligent armature sitting on top of the paludarium;
8. PaluPi – A standard Raspberry Pi with an RS232 level converter that sits inside the Canopy and handles all the “smart thinking”;
9. Apollo units – Named after the god of light, there are around 12 of these units inside the Canopy, each handling up to 4 leds, halogens, TLs or fans;
10. Neptune module – Still under development, this unit controls all pumps, valves etc in the Waterworks;

Quite a list right? Everything in this list had to be tuned Read more »