[Robovergne] prides himself on the beautiful reef aquarium that he has set up in his home. These sorts of water displays require constant maintenance due to the mineral requirements of living coral. Rather than add mineral solutions manually, he decided to build a nano-doser using espresso machine pumps (Google Translation).

These vibration pumps run on mains voltage, so he had several options as far as how to control them. Using relays would likely make things pretty noisy, so he chose to use a zero crossing detection circuit to precisely control the pumps’ duty cycles and output.

His setup uses a PIC to control everything from the zero crossing circuit to the display LCD. An amount of product and the distribution time frame are entered using a handful of buttons mounted on the front of his control box, leaving the PIC to do the heavy lifting. It will calculate the proper length of time to run the pump based on several factors, including fluid viscosity and height of release.

It really is an impressive system, and while his needs are very precise, we imagine this sort of setup would be quite useful in building less complicated dispensers, such as those found in an automated bar.

Continue reading to see a few videos of his Nano-doser in action.

Continue reading “Automated Aquarium Chemical Dispenser Is Extremely Precise” →