MrZ2u Posted April 19 Share Posted April 19 I  read somewhere at some point in the past about a fella suggesting putting an ATO on a timer to help mitigate against runaway fills on a stuck switch. It seemed interesting but I never put it into the rotation...till now. I hope you find this useful 🙂 These are super inexpensive and so useful in so many ways. The one I will LINK here is just one physical format option of many and the one I will be talking about today. Almost all of them are on a standard protocol these days but you basically just need to see it say Google, Alexa and/or SmartThings and you will be on the common protocol and you will have SEVERAL app options for setting up the automation. I use SmartLife but there are a bunch out there and I have used at least 3-4 others at one point in the past. I have them on a UPS in the closet that shares a wall with the aquarium so all my AC is out of the splash zone which is also a nice space-saving play for under the aquarium. The power supply that powers all the pumps and wave makers in the tank is ON in this pic, just below it is the ATO which is OFF. The pumps arent on a schedule, its just nice to be able to just click a button in the app for feeding. From here you can see all the different devices I have on the app right now...yes, I have my lava lamp on a timer cause why not 🙂..its $5 to have it automated in my home office while I am in there. My Inkbird temp controller integrates with this app as does my doser (which is not in use yet)...so that was a nice surprise. The light on my little 5gal tank has no internal timer so this is an easy option to automate that where I couldn't otherwise. Down at the bottom the icon for "porch lights" looks different because those are actually wall switches...that run on the protocol. Like I said, lots of formats. Tons of uses at Christmas!  If we go into the schedule function for the Lagoon ATO you can see how the timer function can be set. I had my schedule set to turn on for 2 minutes every 6 hours...today I switched it to 1 minute every 4 hours because I felt like a little too much was evaporating each cycle. You set the on and off time as well as what days. When I was looking for the link to the smart plugs I linked above I came across this one and this is pretty cool and fits an application I have right now...dirt cheap as of this post at $10 for two!  https://www.amazon.com/KMC-Monitoring-Protector-Compatible-IFTTT，ETL/dp/B087FTZGGY  I ordered the pair of those. I really like these on their own but for the price its at right now...dang! It shows up in the app as a single device...I named it 5gal aquarium in this case. Then inside its got the three individually controlled outlets. In this case I only have four things to plug in so this fits well. The light and ATO are on a timer schedule, the filer is just on a controlled outlet cause it needed to be somewhere, and the heater is on the "always on" outlet which does not show in the app. It has a screw to secure it to the wall outlet so it makes for a tidy install for this application and the wall warts here really cooperate  TONS of format options...like if you are a power strip fan. https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Compatible-Google-Protector-Charging/dp/B097NJ8Y4N ...sorry, I am getting out of hand with this now. Hope you find this useful 😉  2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted April 20 Share Posted April 20 Nice! A lot cheaper than an Apex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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