n2585722

There was a Hydros app and firmware update released today. One of the features I really like is the ability to change the icon on the tile for the inputs and outputs. I got some screenshots of me changing the one I now use for controlling my skimmer. The output was originally an output I was using to turn it off depending on certain inputs. Below is a screenshot before I changed the icon for the skimmer. It still has the default icon for a generic output type. The output is 42g Skimmer on the left middle row of outputs. Below is the normal edit screen for an output. Here it is the 42g Skimmer output. There is an icon of a pencil in the upper left corner. This used to be for changing the name. Now it does either the name or icon. Below is a screenshot after clicking the pencil. If you click on the icon that is highlighted it will open a menu to select the icon you want from. Below is the menu for the icons. They do not all fit so I had to scroll to the one I wanted. Below is a screenshot of the menu scrolled to the icon I want. This happens to also be at the bottom so all icons that are avaliable to choose from are on one of the two screenshots of the menu. Hopefully they will add to them in the future. Below is a screenshot after selecting the icon I wanted from the menu. Now all that is needed is to click ok and continue. Below is a screenshot after clicking ok in the previous popup. There is now a upload changes banner at the bottom. I just need to click on that to upload the changes to all controllers and the cloud. After clicking the upload changes banner in the screenshot above you get the screen of the upload status. Below is a screenshot of that screen as the changes were being uploaded. Below is a screenshot of the same status page on the first screenshot after the icon change. That is about it for that feature. I have changed several of the icons to match what the input or output is related to. In the top row of inputs the DI Level and the FSW Level have had their icons changed they used to have a frown face icon. Several of the outputs related to ATO or AWC have had their icons changed to match the ATO/AWC icon.

I added some redundancy to my ATO and AWC using three drive ports and three 12v relays. The drive ports that power the relays and the drive port used to power a particular pump are not on the same controller. This assures some redundancy if something were to happen to the controller that powers that particular pump. I have never had an issue with the drive ports to date but I had three that were not in use and also had the relays on hand. I also already had the drive port connectors so all it dowt me was the time to do it. I thought I would post it if anyone was interested in doing this. First I will go over the schematic for wiring the solenoids. I will start with the drain pump. Drive port 2 of my X4 in the garage powers the drain pump. I previously post the screenshots of the AWC setup so I will not post here also. The output of that drive port are connected to the common contacts of a DPDT relay. You can use a SPDT relay instead but I already had several of these relays. The cable going to the plug for the pump is connected to the normally open contacts of the relay. The polarity does matter. Pin 2 of the GX12 connector for the drive port has to connect to the center of the plug since that is the positive terminal of the pump. So if the solenoid is not on the power from the X4 drive port 2 will be applied to the pump when that drive port is on. If the solenoid is powered by drive port 2 of the second X2 then the connection is disconnected by the relay and power will be removed from the pump regardless of drive port 2 on the X4. I will get into the setup for the output on the second X2 port 2 later. Now for the ATO pump. The ATO pump is powered by drive port 1 of the X4 in the garage. The output of that drive port are connected to the common contacts of a DPDT relay. The cable going to the plug for the pump is connected to the normally open contacts of the relay. The polarity does matter. Pin 2 of the GX12 connector for the drive port has to connect to the center of the plug since that is the positive terminal of the pump. So if the solenoid is not on the power from the X4 drive port 2 will be applied to the pump when that drive port is on. If the solenoid is powered by drive port 2 of the second X2 then the connection is disconnected by the relay and power will be removed from the pump regardless of drive port 2 on the X4. I will get into the setup for the output on the second X2 port 2 later. Now for the fill pump. The fill pump is powered by drive port 1 of the second X2 in the garage. The output of that drive port are connected to the common contacts of a DPDT relay. The cable going to the plug for the pump is connected to the normally open contacts of the relay. The polarity does matter with this one also. Pin 2 of the GX12 connector for the drive port has to connect to the center of the plug since that is the positive terminal of the pump. So if the solenoid is not on then the power from the second X2 drive port 1 will be applied to the pump when that drive port is on. If the solenoid is powered by drive port 2 of the first X2 then the connection is disconnected by the relay and power will be removed from the pump regardless of drive port 1 on the second X2. I will get into the setup for the output on the second X2 port 2 later. Now to the settings for the Drain Stop output. I used the generic output type. It has 5 inputs that are used for control. Input one is the leak detector on the stand. If this is active there is water in the stand and I do not want to start a water change. The second input is a leak detector in the garage where the pumps, storage tanks and RODI unit is. So if there is a leak detection there I do not want to start a water change sequence. The third input is sump low. If this input is active I do not want to start the drain pump. The forth input is FSW Low which is a low level for fresh salt water storage. If this is low I do not want to drain any water from the tank. The fifth input is skimmer full. If it is full the skimmer will be off which will throw the water level in the sump off and I do not want the water change to happen since it uses the full level sensor the ATO uses. The output device is the second GR2 drive port 2. The inputs are all OR'ed together so if any one is active the output will turn on. Also if any input becomes unavailable the output will turn on. The depends on is set to the skimmer and it is set to on if off. If the skimmer is off for any reason I do not want the water change to start. The skimmer will be off if the return pump is off so that will stop the drain pump also. Now to the ATO Stop output. This Also uses the generic type of output. It has three inputs that are used for control. Input one is sump high. If this input is active I do not want to start the drain sequence since something is wrong. The second input is the leak detector on the stand. If this is active there is water in the stand and I do not want to start a water change. The third input is a leak detector in the garage where the pumps, storage tanks and RODI unit is. So if there is a leak detection there I do not want to start a water change sequence. The output device is the first GR2 drive port 1. The inputs are all OR'ed together so if any one is active the output will turn on. Also if any input becomes unavailable the output will turn on. The Depends on is set to the return pump and set to on if off. Now to the Fill Pump Stop output. I used the generic output type. It has 4 inputs that are used for control. Input one is the leak detector on the stand. If this is active there is water in the stand and I do not want to start a water change. The second input is sump high. If this input is active I do not want to start the fill sequence since something is wrong. The third input is a leak detector in the garage where the pumps, storage tanks and RODI unit is. So if there is a leak detection there I do not want to start a water change sequence. The forth input is skimmer full. If it is full the skimmer will be off which will throw the water level in the sump off and I do not want the water change to happen since it uses the full level sensor the ATO uses. The output device is the second GR2 drive port 2. The inputs are all OR'ed together so if any one is active the output will turn on. Also if any input becomes unavailable the output will turn on. The depends on is set to the skimmer and it is set to on if off. If the skimmer is off for any reason I do not want the water change to start. The skimmer will be off if the return pump is off so that will stop the drain pump also. I also got some photos of the relays installed on the DIN rail. in this photo the two relays are from left to right fill stop and drain stop. Both are off i this photo. This photo has the drain stop relay turned on. Each relay has a LED that lights when it is powered. This photo has the fill stop relay turned on. This photo is of the ATO stop relay. There is a 12v power supply to the right of it that is used to power my three level sensors. This is a photo of the ATO stop relay powered on. The relays are Magnecraft 782XBXM4L 12v coil. The socket is Magnecraft 70-782D8-1. The last ones I bought were from Mouser and were branded Schneider Electric. The relay # was 782XBXM4L-12D and the socket # was 70-782D8-1A. The sockets mount to a DIN rail which I think is a standard size other than the length of the rail. That is about it for this setup.

I decided to try out the auto water change regimen built into the Hydros system instead of the dual dosing pump. It started out as temporary to see if I could figure out how to pause the water change part without also pausing the ATO part of the water change for another user. This is what I came up with. The first three screen shots are of the automatic water change output settings. The ATO portion is copied from the original ATO settings. I use a Hydros dosing pump for my ATO pump. The original AWC pump is now my drain pump with the fill head removed. It was running for 11 minutes three times a day with the old dual head setup so I set the drain duration for 11 minutes. I believe if you use the depends on setting on this output it will stop all three pump even in mid sequence. So I do not use it at this time. I went another route I will explain latter on. Now for the schedule settings. Since I was already doing this three times a day I set the water change count to 3. I set the AWC output to the previous output setup earlier. Since the original start time was 7am I set that here also. Since the schedule treats the run time and off time between the next time as one complete change I had to set the end time to 1am to keep them at 7am, 1pm and 7pm. I also have it set to run every day. I set the depends on to a output I will show later called AWC Halt. The dependency mode is off if on. If this output is on we do not want the AWC to run. Now on to the halt and pause output settings. The output below is a combiner type output and is used to combine two other outputs in this one output to control the water change schedule. This is the output setup in the depends on settings for the water change schedule. The first input is the Low FSW output. This output is active if the fresh salt water container level is low. This will prevent the start of a water change if active. The second input is a output called AWC Pause. It is use to stop the AWC schedule if it is needed for some reason. Notice there is no actual output device assigned to this output since it is just being used for the logic. Halting the AWC schedule will not halt the ATO. Below is the Low FSW output settings. It is setup using the FSW low input sensor. When the water level is low the sensor will go into the dry state and this output will be active. This output also does not have an actual output port set to it since it also is just for logic. If this output goes active in the middle of a scheduled water change the water change will continue the active schedule. The second output is in the screenshot below. This is a basic constant output type. Default to off is turn on. If I want to pause the water change schedule just turn this output on and then turn it back to auto when you want the water change schedule to resume. I can alway change this to a generic output and use a switch as a input to pause and restart the AWC is I wanted. Below is a photo of the AWC, ATO and dosing pump. The bottom left pump is now the drain pump. The upper left pump is the fill pump. The bottom right pump is the ATO pump. The upper right pump is dosing All For Reef. These are in the garage behind the workbench. The DI storage tank, fresh salt water tank and mix tank are under the workbench. They do have casters so they can be rolled out from under the workbench as needed.

I imagine you are correct. They are constantly improving them. I probably dropped it around that much for the royal blues. Even more for the UV's but there are 6 of them now instead of 4.

I got the LED's I ordered to fix the Lighting on the tank. It made it almost 9 years without touching it. I removed the moon pods from where I will be placing the new stars. The new ones have three LED's per star instead of one per star like the originals. Below is a photo with the new stars installed. Two royal blue and two UV. In the photo below the royal blues one are now wired up. There are a lot of other wires that will need to be replaced since the insulation is crumbling from some of the wires. The light from the LED's must be getting to the insulation. In photo below the UV LED's are wired up. Below the old stars have been removed. I also had to glue back some of the lens holders that got knocked loose. Below the lenses have been installed on the nee stars and on the lenses that were glued back. Below are the LED's removed. The ones on the right check bad. The three bad lenses were on 3 of the 4 UV LED's. The ones in the bag check good but not sure it is worth trying to use them again. Below are the wires that were replaced due to bad insulation. I decided to change the fans also since they have been in use for even longer than the LED's. Below is a photo with one guard removed on one of the fans. The top frame has to be removed from the heat sink to replace the fans. The connectors are also mounted to this frame and have to be removed from the frame. Below is the two new fans. One has the guard already installed. Below is the top of the heatsink before cleaning with the top frame removed. Below is the top frame flipped upside down on top of the heat sink. Below is the top of the heatsink cleaned and ready for reassembly. Below the new fans have bee installed on the cleaned top frame assembly. Below the top frame assembly has been reinstalled on the heat sink and the terminal strips have also been reinstalled on the top frame assembly. Below the Light assembly has been flipped to show LED's. Below the moon lights have been reinstalled, Below the LED's are on except for the UV LED's. Below the light assembly reinstalled in the canopy with all lights on at low level except for moon lights. I had to lower the max level on both the UV's and royal blue LED's after installing the new LED's. I guess that was to be expected though. The UV string has 6 LEad's now instead of 4 and they probably have a higher light output than the originals even before considering the age on the older ones since improvements have been made to LED's since the original LED's were purchased.

My MP10's are controlled via a EcoTech RF module but it has nothing to do with wifi. There is a EcoTech RF module installed in my Wave Engine. It is the master pump and the MP10's also have the RF modules and are in slave mode and follow the Wave Engine just like it is an EcoTech pump. The Wave Engine can control some pumps directly using the direct drive ports. On the WEv2 which I have it also has 4 0-10v control outputs along with 4 0-10v inputs.

I have got some schedules setup for my MP10's on the WEv2. The first one is the schedule for low power mode. I set the pumps to10% flow. I am trying to recreate the schedule I had in the ReefLink for now. I can adjust it later. The EcoTech interface has outputs White, Cyan and Orange. These can be set for Same End, Opposite End and Back. I don't use all three right now but I setup one for each in all the schedules so if I ever do start using them they are already setup in the schedules. The one the individual pups use are set in the pumps themselves so if they accidentally get changed at least they will still run. Active in modes is set to be active in low power mode all other modes it is inactive.The start time and end times are set to 00:00:00 so it can run anytime the low power mode is activated. This will usually happen if the power goes off and the controller is running on battery backup. The pumps also have a battery backup supply. The second schedule is the morning flow pattern. I set this one to the LPS Reef pattern. I have the max speed set at 60% for now? This may change latter. The pump settings are the same as the other schedules. Active in modes is set to be active in all modes except low power mode. The start time is set to 8:00am and the stop time is set to 12:00 noon. The depends on setting is set to the 42g Feed Mode output and set to off if on. All the schedules except on have this same setting. I will get to the 42g Feed Mode output later on in the post. The Next schedule is the noon flow pattern. The flow patter here is set to random. The speed range is set from 1 to 55%. The pump settings are the same as before. The active in mode settings are the same as the morning flow schedule. The start time is the end of morning flow at 12:00 noon. The end time is set to 16:00 or 4:00pm. The depends on setting is the same as the morning flow schedule. The next schedule is the afternoon flow pattern. This uses the nutrient export pattern. It is set for a flow from 1 to 70%. The pulse frequency is set to 1 minute and 10 seconds. I think that is the default setting since I do not remember changing it. The pump settings are the same as the other schedules. The active in modes is set the same as the morning flow pattern. The start time is set to 16:00 or 4:00pm. The end time is set to 20:00 or 8:00pm. The depends on settings are the same as the morning flow pattern. The next schedule is evening flow. This uses the LPS Reef pattern like morning flow. The max speed is set to 40%. The start time is set to 20:00 or 8:00pm. The end time is set to 00:00 or midnight. Other than that it is the same as the morning flow pattern The next schedule is night flow. This one uses the sine wave pattern and has a flow rate of 5 to 21%. The Cycle duration is 1 minute. The pump settings are the same as morning flow. The start time is set to 00:00 or midnight. the end time is 8:00am. The depends on settings are the same as morning flow pattern. The last schedule is the feeder flow. This pattern is set to constant speed and the speed is set to 6%. The pump settings are the same as morning flow. The start time and end time are set to 00:00 just like low power mode since this will run only during feed mode. The depends on setting is set to the 42g Feed mode output. The difference is the dependency mode is set to off if off. So if the 42g Feed Mode output is on this schedule will run. Next is the 42g Feed mode output. This uses a combiner output type since we will use another output to trigger it. The input count is one sine we will only have the one input. The input is the 42g feeder output. It is not inverted. Advanced setting are enabled since we want to set an minimum on time. The minimum on time is set to 30 minutes which is how long I want the pump to run at the lower speed after the feeder runs. The feeder only runs for a couple of seconds so that s why we need the minimum on time set. That is about it for now for the schedules I have setup for my flow pumps.

Got some photos with the camera.

I have some LED failures on my tank LED's so I got to checking how long it has been and come across a photo from September 24, 2013 of the LED's in their current configuration. Below is the photo along with another one taken at the same time. They almost lasted 9 years. So I guess I cannot complain. I have ordered some more LED's to at least replace the ones in the strings that are out. The UV string of 4 and one of the royal blue strings of 6 are out. I ordered stars with three LED's per star. So I got 2 stars of each and the lenses that go with the stars. The current configuration has single LED's per star. i will probably order some to go ahead and replace the others also. I want to wait and see how these stars work out before doing the rest. The white LED's are 3 amp LED's but the driver is only a 1.5 amp driver and their maximum percentage was set at 50% so they were no where near max. I will probably leave those for last. I did change some wiring that the insulation was crumbling on the wiring. So the UV from the LED's can damage things. Photo of wires removed below. The insulation just crumbled off the wires. That happened to the wires at the closest points to the LED's. Changing the wires did not get the two strings running again. Looks like all 4 UV led's are out and two of the royal blue LED's are out. I still have the lower power royal blue string and the white string along with two RGBW LED's and a cyan and deep red LED.So I am not completely down on lighting.

I got my hands on a Wave Engine V2 for my Hydros controller. Right now the only thing I have it can control is my two MP10's. To do that I need a EcoTech RF module. Those are hard to come by right now. Since I will not be using my ReefLink after installing the Wave Engine I decided to use the RF module from my ReefLink in my new Wave Engine. I took some photos of the swap out. The main difference between the Wave Engine and the Wave Engine V2 is it uses the same microprocessor as the other Hydros controllers and also has a SD card. It can also be a wifi master which the old Wave Engine could not do. Also you will have to get and install a Eco Tech RF module to be able to control the EcoTech MP series wave pumps. Below is a photo of the new Wave Engine V2. I will remove the 6 screws Below is the Wave Engine V2 opened up. You just have to make sure the white gasket is in place correctly before it is reassemble. The RF module will go in the upper right corner of the PCB. Ok now to removing the RF module from the ReefLink. Below is the ReefLink with the rubber feet assembly removed. The back plate had to be peeled away from the bottom to remove the bottom. The flex cable in the lower center of the PCB below has to be disconnected from the connector to get the PCB out of the case. Below is the PCB removed from the case and flipped to the side with the RF module. The RF module is the small green PCB in the upper left of the PCB below. Below are two photos one of the top and one bottom of the RF module removed from the ReefLink. Below is a photo of the Wave Engine with the RF module installed. It plugs in to the sockets on the PCB but you do have to be careful when you plug it onto the PCB. Below is the Wave Engine back together ready to add to my account and setup. I also decided that I would use it for the wifi master since it can do that as a test. So once I had it setup in the collective I set it as the preferred wifi master. I also had to enable the EcoTech pumps in the options menu below. The heading is WE Enable EcoTech Pumps. Screenshot of options menu below. After you enable the pumps you will get the three tiles for the EchoTech pump channels. They are White, Cyan and Orange. The White is same side, the Cyan is oppisite side and Orange is back for EcoTech on the MP controllers. You can assign them how you want them on the schedule though. Since mine are on the same side I am using the White channel for both for now. That is determined by how you setup the EcoTech controller for each pump when you pair them to the Wave Engine. Below is a screenshot after setting the Wave Engine to wifi master. I actually have 9 controllers in the collective now. I will go over the schedules I created for running the MP10's in a later post. I am trying to set them up as close as I can to where they were on the ReefLink.

There is new firmware out for the Hydros that has dynamic dosing and also power monitoring for drive ports and XP8 outputs. It is not available on the wifi power strips since the power monitor hardware is not in those power strips. I decided to try out the dynamic dosing on my All For Reef Dosing pump. Since it takes a while for the All For Reef to break down to affect alkalinity I only made minor changes in the dose related to pH reading. The first screenshot below is the popup that appears if you click the pump tile. You can run a calibration test, manual dose a specific amount or add or set the reservoir amount form the popup. I use an Intllab pump for All For Reef dosing. It is set for 12ml per minute of flow. To calibrate this I use the manual dose instead of the calibration function. I set it to manually dose 10ml I weight it after the dispense. I adjust the flow rate pot on the pump one way are another until I get 10ml. I have the pump set 12ml per minute of flow on the Hydros so this way I am adjusting the pump itself to match that. Below is the setup for the All For Reef dosing pump. The Intllab is a simple doser. So it is set for that type of pump. The flow rate is set for 12ml per minute. That happens to be about as slow as the Intllab pump can go and still have a stable flow rate. I use one of the drive ports to run the pump. I have the power range set for a low of .5 watts to a high of 3 watts. If it gets out of that range when the output is on it will send an alert according to the orange alert setting in this case. That is a push notification the way I have mine setup. There is also a set up for a low reservoir alert. I have it set to .1 liters. That is the lowest setting. The container I use will only hold .4 liters when full. So I start getting alerts when it is down to 1/4 full. The next two screenshots below are for the schedule for the All For Reef dosing. This schedule is the Dosing Regimen type. I have Dynamic Dosing set to on. The input for dynamic dosing control is my pH input. Next are the set points for my tank the low set point is set to a pH of 7.9 The high set point is set to 8.3. I have the total daily dose per pump set to 21.8 ml if the pH is at or below the low point. I have the total daily does per pump set to 19.8ml if the pH is at or above 8.3. If the pH input is invalid for some reason it is set to dose 20.8ml per pump per day. This was the original setting before using the dynamic dosing setup. It is set to dose 6 times a day. I only use one pump so the Doser Count is set to 1. Doser 1 is set to the AFR dosing pump. The pump speed was carried over from the pump setup and is 12ml per minute. I left Active In Modes to the Defaults. The All For Reef Pump doses into the same tube in the garage that the ATO uses so it will actually be dispensed to to tank by the ATO. It is set to start at midnight and run everyday. The Depends on setting is set to the ATO OK output. If t is ok for the ATO to run then it is ok to dose. The dependency mode is set to off if off. So if ATO OK is not on the pump will not run. I also dilute All For Reef to 1/2 strength so the actual dose for standard AFR is half of what my numbers here are set. I did this so I would be able to dose more frequently and still have enough dosing time. The dosing pump on the Hydros needs to run at least 2 seconds each time. Below is the log for the ARF Dosing pump. The range is 3.4 to 3.6ml per dose. That is a range of 20.4 to 21.6ml per day. I think it varies the dose depending on where the pH is between the low and high setting. I had a small difference between the two since I am just doing this mostly to test out the dynamic dosing function. That is about it for the dynamic dosing. Now on to the power monitoring on the XP8. I have most of the outlets I use on it with the power monitoring setup now. I will go over one for one of my heaters here. The screenshot below is of the popup after clicking on the Heater 1 tile which happens to be on right now. It is a 50 watt heater and is reading 50.1 watts. This popup also shows the voltage, current and carious other readings. The power is the one you can set a range for and an alert for. If you click on the gear in the popup it brings up a screen with the settings for the output. The two screenshots below have the setup for one of my heaters. This uses an output on my XP8. The output type is heater. You could also use the generic output but the heater has the settings geared for heaters. The on temp is set to 76.1 if the temp get down to or below this setting the heater will turn on as long as the minimum off time setting has been met. The off temp is set to 76.3 if the temp raises to or above this setting the heater will turn off as long as the minimum on time setting has been met. The Temperature Input is set to my tank temp input. The Output Device is outlet 6 on my XP8. I have it set to off if the input is unavailable for some reason. Now on to the power monitoring settings. I have the low set to 45 watts and the high set to 55 watts. So the safe range is 45 to 55 watts. If it gets out of that range when the output is on for some reason it will send an alert if it is set to do that. I have the power notification to orange which is a push notification. Push notification shows up on any device I have the app installed on which for me is my iPad and my phone. So as long as I have one of those with me I will get the alert. I left the Active in Mode at the defaults for this output. The Depends On is set for the return pump. It is set to off if off. My heaters are in the sump and the sensor is not in the same compartment of the sump so I don't want the heaters running if the return pump is not running. I have advanced settings enabled and the minimum off time set for one minute. So it has to stay off for at least one minute before it turns back on. The minimum on time is set for 20 seconds. So it will stay on at least 20 seconds if turned on. The maximum on time is set for 8 hours and 30 minutes. Run past maximum on time is set to on so the heater will continue to run but an alert will be sent that the maximum on time was exceeded. Where my tank is it would be unusual for the heater to run that long. The notification level is set to orange so I will get a push notification. I have the thermostats on the heaters set to 3 degrees above the control setting on the hydros output settings. The way things are set if the heating element opens, the heater gets unplugged or the heater turns off I will get a low power alert for this output. Also if for some unlikely reason the power level goes above 55 watts I will get an alert for that also. I purposely unplugged the heater and below are the alerts. The tile itself turns red and has the alert. The first screenshot has the popup. The second screenshot is after I clicked on the push notification that was sent to the iPad. The push notification has the same basic information on it. That is about it for now.

I transferred 2 channels of the 6 channels of daytime lighting to the Hydros. The controller with the 0-10v inputs is in the garage 35ft away. So I powered down all the remaining DA modules in the garage so I could use the DA buss cable from the tank to the garage to get the 0-10v signals to the tank. I made a cable to go from the 0-10v output connector to a RJ45 breakout. The connector on the DA buss cable is a RJ11 but it will still plug into the RJ45 breakout Just pin 1 and pin 8 will have no connection. The connector on the X4 that the cable is connected is the lower purple coded one in the upper right of the controller which is on the right. The RJ45 breakout is to the left of the relays on the DIN rail at the bottom. The connector is the one on the right and the terminals are then bottom ones. Pin 7 is ground and pin 6,5,4 and 3 are Outputs 1,2,3 and 4 form the controller. The two boards with the red LED's lit below are the two 0-10v to PWM converters I got to try out. The RJ45 breakout above them is connected to the cable coming from the garage. You can tell I don't get into this compartment very often, it is dusty. The PCB with the LDD's has the three LED drivers that will be controlled by the Hydros. The top two a LDD-1000 and a LDD1500 drive two strings of 6 royal blue LED's The bottom one on the left a LDD-700 is the other one and it drives 4 UV LED's. So as it is currently wired 0-10v output 3 drives the 2 royal blue dirvers and 0-10v output 4 drives the UV driver. Below is the output setup for the royal blue output. The converters I have do not change till about 2.5v is applied to them. I don't like this and plan on trying some different converters to see if I can find some that light at a lower value. So for now I have this set for a low point 25% and a high point of 50%. I checked with a scope and at 50% I do have 50/50 duty cycle on the PWM output. 50% was the high setting on the Archon for these strings. The type of output is set for variable light. The output below is setup for the UV LED's. It also uses the variable light type. It has a minimum 24% and a max of 70%. The max matches the max set on the Archon for this channel. Below are two screenshots of the light schedule for the above outputs. The type is light schedule. The variable light mode is slope for now since it matches with the Archon schedule. I may change this once I get all the channels on the Hydros system. Start time is set for 9:30am and end time is set for 8:00pm. The slope is set for 4:00 hours. The lights will get to their max setting at 1:30pm and stay at max till 4:00pm. At that time the lights slowly dim down to off at 8:00pm. The minimum power is set for 0 and the max is set for 100. 1 is the minimum that is set on the outputs and 100 is actually the max set on the outputs. So the 1-100 is within the minimum and maximum set on the output. Light count is set for 2 since I will be controlling 2 outputs. I left active in mode at their defaults which would be active in all modes. It is set to run every day. It runs all days of the week. The depends on setting is not used here. So the testing begins for the Hydros lighting and the two converters.

Thank you, I am hoping it may be a help to someone that is looking for a way to do some of the things I have done already. I did use those squares to build my acrylic sump. I think I have three or four like that.

I have made a shelf for the pumps that the Hydros pump will fit into. I have one completed and installed. I still need to complete the second one but it is not currently in use. So no hurry on it. This will allow me to use either the Intllab or the Hydros dosing pump in all locations. I cut some wood for the project on the table saw. I cut enough for both shelf assemblies. Another photo of the wood. I had not done the back of the shelf section when these were taken. Back side of the front frame assembled for testing. It is not glued or sanded on this photo. Front side of the second front frame assy. Back side of second front fame assy. Front side of first frame assembly. The first one had the mtg holes already drilled in the photos. To glue together the shelve unit I used a square with some double sided foam tape. The square used has the corner removed so it does not get into the glue while the glue dries. Attaching one shelf section to the square with double sided tape keeping it flush to shelf side section. Adding glue to the end of the shelf section that attaches to the side section. Shelf section in place using a wood block to get flush to the end of the side section. Cleaned up excess glue. Now waiting for it to dry before I continue. The other shelf unit and other side gluing. I used the same process on this one as the other. Once dry I will glue these together. Gluing one corner using the jar for weight on the joint while it dries. Glueing the other corner but needed a little heavier weight to keep it in place while the glue dried. Glueing the center shelf in place. This shelf extends to the front of the front frame assembly. The two wood blocks are used to keep it centered while the glue dries. Shelf unit complete except for back. Shelf unit standing up. Back side of shelf unit. Shelving unit with back attached from front. Completed Shelf unit on top of front frame. Back side of shelf unit. Shelf unit tested in place in the control board. Testing the pumps in the shelf unit before final assembly. Shelf unit complete and painted. Adding mounting holes for the tubing holders using a fixture to get them placed correctly. Using the fixture for the holes for the tubing holder on the top. Removing pumps and tubing so the old shelf assembly can be removed. I temporarily label the cords to make sure and get them back in the right place on the new shelf unit. The first pump in the new shelf assembly. This is the pump used to dose All For Reef. All pumps are installed in the new shelf assembly. Tubing all hooked back up. The Hydros pump on the bottom right is the ATO pump. The bottom left pump is the AWC pump. The empty spot above it is for a second AWC pump if I choose to use two separate pumps. Right side of the control board with the older style pump shelf installed above the new one. I will leave it there until the other unit is finished. That one is for a second tank when I get around to setting it back up.

I got a Hydros dosing pump to try out. I set it up as an ATO pump since that is the most used pump. I am going to need to make a new shelf unit since the Hydros dosing pumps are a little higher than the Intllab ones I have been using. In the mean time I set it on a stand near the shelf unit and hooked it in place of the one I was using for ATO. The 42 ml per minute flow of the Hydros was close to where I had the Intllab set so I didn't need to change any of the settings on the Hydros controller. It was plug and play other than not fitting on the shelf.

There are some new features out now on the Hydros. I use one of them for my AWC. Since I use the dual head dosing pump I have modified I use it with the simple doser output and a schedule. This is my AWC page. Below is the 42g AWC output if you click on it. It has a calibration function to calibrate the pump flow. I did not use this since I have to divide the flow number anyway. This is the setup for the AWC output. It uses the Simple Doser output type. The flow rate is set for 8.3 ml. The pump flow are is adtually 83ml. Since this is from a common shared storage tank that can hold up to 20 gallons the calculation for usage is not used and left at 0. Below is the schedule for the AWC output. I used the Dosing Regimen type for a dosing pump. The dosing amount is set for 275.7ml since the pump is actually pumping 10 time the amount set in the flow rate the actual amount that will be changed a day is 2757ml or about 2.9 quarts. I was using timers to do this and came up with that figure to match the pumping time already being used. The Dose Count is set to 3. So it will divide the dose into 3 equal dispenses. Doser count is set to 1 since there is only the one pump. The pump selected is 42g AWC. The doser speed is set to 8.3ml per minute. I think that carries over from the output selected. The start time is set for 7:00 am. The other two are spread out between the end time equally. The off time is included so the last dispense is not at the end time. It is set to run every day of the week. The depends on is set to the AWC Ok output and is set to off if off. So as long as AWC Ok is on the AWC will run on schedule.

I modified a Intllab pump with a different motor to allow two pump heads on a single dosing pump. This has been in use since around March. It has been running so good that I decided to modify one of the spares like this. This time I got some photos as I was doing this. The first three photos below are of the dual head motor assembly and of a Intllab single head motor assembly. The only thing I can tell that is different is the length of the shaft on the motor. The dual head assembly was around $20 and the single head assembly was around $10. Both were purchased from Amazon. The photo below is of the dual head assembly disassembled for use. Below is a photo of the pump being modified. Below is a photo of the bottom of the pump. Two of the rubber feet in back have to be removed to gain access to the screws. There is another screw under the CE label that also has to ve removed. I assume the sticker is a way for them to detect if the pump has been tampered with for warranty purposes. Below is the pump with the bottom removed. Below is a photo with the motor removed. The wires are still attached. Below is a photo of both motors side by side after detaching the wires with a soldiering iron. Below is a photo of the new motor attached to the wires. The red dot on the motor is near the lug attached to the red wire. I would assume that if hooked up the opposite direction the motor would turn clockwise instead of counterclockwise. Below is the pump back together with both pump heads installed. Below is a photo after the tubing was changed to longer tubing and a flow catch was done. The flow was 60ml a minute with the pot setting in the photo. This seems to vary from pump to pump so a flow catch is required to get the correct value. This pump is ready to use if I need to replace the one in use. On the green pump head the clips are slightly closer together than the white ones so the pump head snapped back on the pump has a tighter fit and is harder to get off than the white pump heads.

Below is the graphs for an automated water transfer from the mix tank to the fresh saltwater tank. The refill of the mix tank with DI from the RODI unit was also automated. The first graph is the FSW tank water level. The FSW low sensor is what starts the transfer using a PMUP pump. There is a FSW full sensor that is not shown. Under normal circumstances this sensor is never wet since the transfer start on a empty tank and ends when the mix tank is empty. The mix low sensor stops the transfer and starts the DI refill. The mix tank full sensor stops the DI refill. The level sensors are pressure sensors that I put together. They are temp sensitive as you can tell by the level going up in the afternoon and down during the coolest part of the day. I can still get an approximation of the water level in the tanks without having to roll them out and lift the lid.

Ok, more about pages. With pages added you can segregate the inputs and outputs on different pages. This is great for larger systems. Also you can select the page you wish the app to start on. Below is a screenshot of the pages setup. Here is a list of all the pages on my system and at the bottom is the one it will start on when the app is started. You can add and delete pages from this setup screen. I will start with the home page Hex Tank. I could not get it all on one screenshot so the two screenshots below are of the Hex Tank page. At the top are the control units that pertain to this page. Below that are the modes I have setup. You can choose which ones are shown on the page by pressing and holding one of the tiles. Then select or deselect till only the ones you want shown on the current page are checked. Below the mode is the inputs that are selected for this page. Only the ones that are directly related to this tank are shown here. Below the inputs are the outputs. Just like the inputs these output are directly related to this tank. The next page is the AWC page. The inputs here are related to the AWC or auto water change operation. Leak AC is under the central air conditioner but it is only a few feet from the pumps and storage tanks in the garage. So I want to know if there is a leak there as it could be caused by the AWC components. The outputs are the AWC pump And Low fresh salt water tank and any leak at the tank, air conditioner or the RODI. The wfi device shown is the one in the garage and does not control the AWC components vpvut there has to be at least on shown if there is one. The next page is the ATO page in the screen shot below. This page is very similar to the AWC page except the tank level shown is the DI tank instead of the FSW tank. The outputs shown are ATO pump, Low DI and Leak all. The next page next to ATO is just a page with all items shown. I did not get a screenshot of that it would take several screenshots to do that. The next one in the other direction from the Hex Tank page is the Living Room page. I put a wifi power strip in the living room to power and control some light houses, globes and jelly fish glass ornaments for my wife. These are scheduled to come on at 5pm and go off at 10pm every day. The next page is RODI related. It is on the two screenshots below. The inputs are for the DI and mix tanks. It is only these two tank that the RODI refill with DI. There is a RO bladder tank which is charged up to pressure from the RO output. There is the leak detector inputs for RODi and air conditioner. These are only a few feet from each other. There s a TDS input. The main display on this is the output from the DI cartridge and the second one is the output from the RO membrane. The output displayed are for RODI control. There is one for the DI tank refill and one for the mix tank refill. I also have a solenoid on the input of the RODI that is the RODI on output which is on in this screenshot. The RODI On output is a combiner output if either the DI Refill feed, Mix Refill feed or the RODI timer output is on the RODI output will be on. When the screenshot was taken the RODI timer was on. The timer comes on for 10 minutes ever hour to refill the RO bladder if needed. The rest of the outputs are for flushing the RODI system. If the TDS is high it will run the flush in sequence with the RODI timer but only up to twice a day. If it triggers it is usually several days from the last use. The next page is the Storage tank page. It is below on the two screenshots. This is inputs and outputs related to the three storage tanks Or the area they are in which is the garage. These are used to refill the DI and mix tank when they go low. Also it is used to transfer the mix tank to the FSW tank if the FSW tank goes low and the water in the mix tank is ready to use. The mix stir, mix full and garage fan are the three outputs on when the screenshot was taken. The garages gets very hot in the summer so I use the Hydros to control a fan that is aimed at the controller board. His helps keep them a little cooler during the summer months. The other non aquarium related uses to turn on the charger for the camera and light for the driveway and to turn on the light above the workbench. The mix stir output powers a powerhead in the mix tank. This will run if the water level is above 70% or the mix full input is active. There is a dispense pump in each of the three tanks. The one in the mix tank is used to transfer the mix tank to the FSW tank. The other two are used on demand to dispense either DI water or fresh salt water into containers as needed. all three lines have a manual valve also. The ones on the DI and FSW tank are kept closed until I want to dispense water from one of these tanks. That is about it for this page. The page that is left is a test page. If I create any inputs or outputs to test something I put them on this page. When I am done they are easy to find and delete. If I am helping someone figure out a way to do something specific sometimes I will create inputs and output to make sure it will work the way it is intended to work. Below is a screenshot of that page. Right now I don't have anything there except for the output I use to do flow catches on dosing pumps.

There was a new firmware upgrade and app upgrade on the Hydros. So now I can talk about the changes. One is the addition of RODI control. So far it is targeted at someone that has a single DI storage tank. I have two tanks and a RO bladder I have to fill. I was able to try it out anyways until a version for multiple tanks is released. The new output type is RODI Filter. Below is a screenshot of the settings for the DI tank. The only one I will use on this is the Feed Output Device. It is the DI fill solenoid between the RODI unit and the DI tank. The other two outputs I don't currently have. The next setting is the high level input. This is the full sensor on the tank that is to be refilled. The next setting is the Low Level Input. This is the sensor that will start the fill sequence in the tank being filled. The next input is the Leak Detector Input. If you have a single leak detector at you RODI station and storage tank you can select that detector here. I have two sensors so I used the Depends On settings to do the same thing. The next setting is the Depends On setting. It is set to Leak Garage. That output is a combination of the RODI leak detector and AC leak detector. The Detector under the AC is within a few feet of the RODI unit and the storage tanks. So I use it as a backup for the RODI detector. The dependency mode is off if on. I have the advanced settings enabled. I did this so I can set the Feed Maximum On Time. I set this to 4 hours. I am going to see if that shorter time frame is ok. Feed Run Past Max On Time is set to off. I want it to turn off it it goes that long and is still on. Notification level is set to orange. That way I will get an alert if it runs too long. This will create three Tiles in outputs but all lead to these same settings. It is split into three outputs so there is an indicator for all three. Once the output is created you will get these output tiles. Another new feature is pages. I will get into that next. His is a screenshot of a page I named Testing. Only the inputs and outputs I have selected show on the page. So under output I have it set to show only the three output tiles created selecting the RODI Filter output type. The flush and boost tile I don't use so the selecting tiles to display feature works great and allow me to deselect the two unused ones. Below is a screenshot of the page in the mode for selecting outputs to view. You enter it by press and hold of one of the tiles. You exit the same way. In the screenshot below I have already deselected the two that I don't use. After a press and hold the screenshot below is what I ended up with. Basically what I did was replace two outputs from my original setup with this one. It was the DI Fill and the DI Latch outputs. This is done within the output type now. I still have a solenoid on the RODI input. All I had to do was change the inputs on the original RODI demand output to the new outputs setup using the new output type. The screenshot is below. Since I changed the Mix fill to use the new output type also I change both inputs on this output. Otherwise it is still setup the same as before. This is it for now. I will get more into the pages on a later post. I really like the addition of the pages. It makes it a lot easier by setting up pages with inputs and outputs related to certain functions or places.

The last tank is the mix tank. It has three sensors. A low sensor, a full sensor and a pressure sensor. Below is the setup for the Mix Low sensor. It is connected to a sense port. It is a float switch. The Sense Mode is Water Level. The sense port is on a Control 2 in the garage. When this input was setup there were no notification settings so this output does not send a notification. If I change one of the notification settings it will start sending the notifications. This is a new feature on the new firmware. Below is the Mix Full sensor setup. It also uses a sense port and is also a float switch. It is on the same Control unit as the Mix Low sensor above. As with the Mix Full sensor I did not set any alarm settings. Below is the water level input which uses a pressure sensor. It is only for a general idea of the water level in the tank. The input type is 0-10v. The 0-10v input mode is Analog. The 0-10v input used is on a Control 4 in the garage. It is input 3. Scale factor is 10 and offset is 0. The Data Type is Generic. There are two outputs that follow the Mix Low and Mix Full sensors to use with the combiner outputs. Below is the Mix Low output. It uses the Generic type. It has a single input. The input is the Mix Low input. This output is on when the Mix Low input is dry. The output device is none. This output is used for logic only. Below is the Mix Full output. It also uses the Generic type and uses only one input. The input is Mix Full. This output is on when the input is wet. It also has no output device selected. Next is the Mix Fill Latch output. It is used to latch the mix fill output on once the Mix Low output turns on. It uses the Combiner type output. Input 1 is the Mix Low output. It is not inverted. Input 2 is the Mix Fill output. In is not inverted. The Combiner Mode is OR. So if either input is on the output will be on. Ths output has no output device selected since it is only used for logic. Below it the mix fill output. It uses the Combiner Type. Input 1 is the Mix fill latch. The second input on the mix fill latch is this output. So once this output turns on it causes the Mix Fill latch to stay on keeping this ouput on unless input 2 is on. Input two is the Mix Full output. This input is inverted. So when it is off it the same as on on a non inverted input. This uses the AND combiner mode. So input 1 has to be on and input 2 has to be off for the fill output to be on.The output device is a drive port on a Control 2 in the garage. This output depends on the Leak Garage output. The Dependency Mode is off if on. I switched the leak detectors from the Archon to the Hydros since the last post here. This output combines the AC Leak and RODI leak sensors. So if a leak is detected at either it will stop any refill or water transfers in the garage until the leak is resolved. Advanced settings are enabled. A maximum on time is set for 5 hours and 30 minutes. Run past max on time is set to off. If the fill output stays on for 5 hours and 30 minutes it will turn off and send a notification. If it takes that long something is wrong.

Thank you, I am trying to add enough detail to the thread so someone that wants to try the things I have done they have a good place to start.

Before I get into the mix tank I figured I go over the settings for the mix tank ready part. First off is the switch input setup. I named it Mix Ok To Use. I am using one of the 0-10v inputs for the user switches. This one is setup as a pushbutton. The input is the 4th 0-10v input on the Control 4 in the garage. The trigger voltage is set to 0 volts. When the 0-10v input goes to that voltage this input will be active. It is set to stay active for 15 seconds. Another press will end the active event. The input above is used on the output below. This one is named Mix Ready Start. It is used to initially start the mix ready sequence. The Generic Type output is used With 1 input. The input is Mix Ok To Use. There is no output device selected for this output. The rest are at their default settings. The output below is the latch to keep the mix ready output on after the Mix Ready Start goes inactive. It uses the Combiner Type output. Input 1 is the Mix Ready Start output. Input 2 is the Mix Ready output. This output uses the OR Combiner Mode. If either input is active the output will be on. Output Device is set to none. The rest of the settings are the default settings. The screeshot below is the mix ready output. This output uses the Combiner Type. Input 1 is the Mix Ready Latch. Input 2 is the Mix Low output. It is also inverted so it is active when mix low is not active. The output will turn off once the mix low output is on. This output uses the AND Combiner Mode. This output does not have a Output Device selected. This output is only for the logic in the controller. The reason for these outputs is to have a way to allow use of the contents of the mix tank after it has had the salt mix added and is ready to use. Once the salt mix has been added and sufficient time has passed all I need to do is press the push button switch and the Mix Ready output will turn on and stay on until the Mix Low output turns on. That output is turned on by the mix tank low sensor. So it will stay on until the contents of the mix tank is transferred to the FSW tank. That is it for the mix tank ready output.

Next is the fresh salt water storage tank. It has a full sensor and a low level sensor. When the low level sensor is triggered it shuts off the AWC output. It will also trigger a transfer from the mix tank to the fresh saltwater tank if the mix ready latch is on. I will go into that when talking about the mix tank. Below is the screenshot for the full output that follows the full sensor. It uses the Generic Type With a Input Count of 1. Input 1 is the FSW Full sensor input. It is set to Active when wet. This output will be on if water goes above the sensor. Below is the FSW Low output. The low sensor is also used to turn off the auto water change as long as it is active. This is also a Generic Type with Input Count set to 1. Input 1 is the FSW Low sensor input. It is set to active when dry. So this output will be on if the water level goes below the sensor. Minimum on and minimum off times are set to 1 minute. The Depends On for this output is set to the MIX Ready output. The Dependency Mode is set to Off if Off. So if the Mix Ready output is off the this output will remain off.I will get into the Mix Ready output when I post about the mix tank, but basically it is set when the mix tank contents is ready to use. Below is a hold output. It is used to hold the latch on in the case the full sensor is triggered. We want to wait and drain the mix tank to the low sensor If for some reason the full sensor is triggered. The transfer pump will turn off but the fill sequence will remain in hold until the water level drops below full. Since both tanks are the same size and the full sensor is set to a lower level in the mix tank this should not happen but this output is in place just in case it ever does. It uses the combiner type. Input 1 is the FSW Fill Latch. It is not inverted. Input 2 is the Mix Low output. This input is inverted so it is active as long as the mix tank is not low. The Combiner Mode is AND. The output will be on as long as both the FSW Fill Latch is on and the Mix low outputs is off. This is also a latch type output. Below is the FSW Fill latch. It is triggered by the FSW Low output when it comes on. Once it is on it triggers the previous output the FSW Hold to on if the mix tank is not low. So they work together to keep the sequence running if the FSW tank were to fill before the mix tank goes low. It also uses the Combiner Type. Input 1 is the FSW Low output which starts the FSW fill sequence. Input 2 is the FSW Hold output. Neither are inverted. The Combiner Mode is OR. So if either input is active then the output is on. The minimum off time is set to 1 hour. It actually should be several days between each fill sequence so this will prevent a fill for a or power interruption. Below is the output that actually powers the transfer pump. It is also a Combiner Type. Input 1 is the FSW Hold output. Input 2 is the FSW Full output. Input 2 is the only input that is inverted. The Combiner Type is AND. The Output Device is GR 1-2 which is outlet 2 on a WiFi power strip in the garage. The Depends On is set to Archon Alarm. Dependency is Off if On. The Archon still has all the leak detectors hooked to it. This output is active if the input coming from the Archon is in the wet state. For this output since it is a AND type it will be on if the FSW Hold Output is on and the FSW Full output is off as long as there are no leaks detected by the Archon.

The DI tank has three sensors. Two are for control and one is a pressure sensor I am using to give me an Idea of how full the tank is without rolling it out from under the bench and lifting the lid to check it. The first three screenshots are the setup for the three inputs for these sensors. The first on is for the DI low sensors. This is used to stop the ATO if the tank is low. It also triggers the refill sequence. It is a sensor connected to a sense port. It is a float switch. The Sense Mode is Water Level. The port the the sensor is connected to is a Control 2 sense port 2. That is it for setting up a sense port. The screenshot below is for the full sensor. It is also connected to a sense port. The Sense Mode is also Water level. This sensor is also Connected to the same Control 2 on Sense Port 1. It is also a float switch. In the screenshot below is the setup for the pressure sensor. It is a MPX5010GSX. It works on a 5v supply. The input type used here is 0-10v input. The input mode is Analog. The port used is on a Control 4 and is input 1 of the 4 0-10v inputs. Since full in the container I use is only 1.9v for this sensor I used the scale factor set so that it shows 100 for 100% Of full. In this case it ended up being 61.9. Also since this sensor does not go all the way down to 0v I used the offset to correct. That ended up being -17.9. When the tube is out of the water it reads 0% and when it is down in the water in a full container it reads 100. Now for the refill control I used Combiner Type outputs since I had 2 outputs to follow. The DI full and DI low outputs are the 2 output I will use. The screenshot below is the output setup for the DI Low output. It uses the Generic Type. It is using an input count of 1. Input 1 is the DI Low input setup previously. It is set to active when dry. The input will show dry when the water level is below the sensor. No output device is selected for this output. The screenshot below is the DI full output. It follows the DI full input. It uses the Generic Type. The input count is 1. Input 1 is the DI Full Input. This one is set to active when wet. The tank is full when the water level goes above the sensor. This one also has no output device set. The screenshot below is an output that is used to latch on the DI fill output when it is triggered on by the DI low output. This is needed otherwise the DI fill would turn off once the water level was above the DI Low sensor and we want it to continue to fill till it is above the DI Full sensor. This output uses the Combiner Type. Input 1 is the DI Low output created before. It is not inverted. Input 2 is the actual DI fill output. It is not inverted. The Combiner Mode is the OR type. I want the output on if either input is on. The way this works is the DI low output turns this on and this output will turn on the output for the DI tank fill solenoid. In doing this it sends a on signal to input 2 which keeps this output on as long as the DI fill solenoid is on. The screenshot below is for the DI fill solenoid. This output will actually drive the solenoid that refills the DI tank. This also uses the Combiner Type. Input 1 is the DI Fill Latch in the previous screenshot. This input is not inverted. Input 2 is the DI full sensor. This input is inverted since we want a active signal when it is not on. In this case the Combiner mode is the AND mode. I want both inputs active for this output to be on. Once DI full output comes on since it is inverted it will turn off this output. This will also turn off the DI latch output. So it will require a on from the DI low output to start the fill sequence again. This output uses an output on a Control 2 Drive Port 1. There is also a Depends On set for this output. It is a output that follow the Leak input coming from the Archon. The Dependency Mode is set to Off if On. If the Leak output is on I don't want to refill the tank. That is about it for the DI refill setup. Below is a screenshot of all the inputs setup on my system. The first 4 are for the DI tank. The one named DI voltage is the same input as DI level. It is just setup to read back the actual voltage on the input. This is a new sensor on this input. The other two pressure sensors are different and have amplifier circuitry used with them. I have had them setup and running for a while. The one on the DI tank is just the sensor with a 5 volt regulator as the power supply. It will be a lot easier to use than making a amplifier circuit to go with the other sensor.