Building The Most High-Tech Pond In The Neighborhood

What do you think of when you hear the word pond? If you’re like most people, it conjures up images of a simple water-filled hole in the ground, maybe with a few fish added in for good measure. But not [Anders Johansson] — his pond is a technical marvel, utilizing more unique pieces of hardware and software than many of the more traditional projects that have graced these projects over the years.

In fact, this is one of those projects that is so grand in scope that any summary we publish here simply can’t do it justice. The aptly-named Poseidon project is built up of several modular components, ranging from an automated fish feeder to an array of sensors to monitor the condition of the water itself. How many other ponds can publish their current water level, pH, and oxygen saturation over MQTT?

The ESP8266 fish feeder is just one element of Poseidon

[Anders] has provided schematics, 3D models, and source code for all the various systems built into the pond, but the documentation is where this project really shines. Each module has it’s own detailed write-up, which should provide you with more than enough guidance should you want to recreate or remix what he’s put together. Even if you use only one or two of the modules he’s put together, you’ll still be ahead of the game compared to the chumps who have to maintain their pond the old fashioned way.

In the past we’ve seen projects that tackled some of the individual elements [Anders] has developed, such as 3D printed fish feeders, but after searching through the archives we can’t find anything that’s even half as ambitious as Poseidon. At least, not for ponds. It reminds us more of a highly advanced aquaponics setup, and we wonder if that might not be a possible spin-off of the core project in the future.

Loki Is Part Cyberdeck, Part Sinclair Spectrum, And Pretty Tricky

You’ve got to watch out for Loki — he’s a trickster, after all, and he might make you think this semi-cyberdeck mash-up machine is named after him, when the backstory on this build is more interesting than anything in the current Marvel scene.

According to [Steve Anderson], Loki was the name of a mocked-up machine that Sinclair teased in the mid-1980s as a competitor for the Amiga. [Steve] coveted the vaporware machine and never quite got over it, but rather than pine for something that never existed, he created his own Loki. He only loosely qualifies the machine as a cyberdeck — it has some features of the genre, like a Raspberry Pi and a cast-off iPad screen for a display, but isn’t really intended to be as portable as a real cyberdeck. To scratch his Sinclair itch, the machine also includes a ZX Uno, which is an FPGA emulator of the Sinclair Spectrum. The keyboard is hand-wired using mechanical switches, and is backed up by a Pico running custom software so it can talk both USB and PS/2.

[Steve] has much more detail on Loki and his other cyberdeck builds over on his blog, which you should probably check out. Somewhat surprisingly, it doesn’t look like he’s entered Loki in our new Cyberdeck Contest that just launched. Hopefully that’s just an oversight.