My PC as monitor and controller

[Whalehead9]

I have an extra PC and I want to try and use it as a monitor(pH, Temp, etc) and possible controller for dosing and possible powerhead wavetimer for multiple systems that I have going.

Anyone tries this yet? If so Where do I start?

Any previous threads that would be interesting?

Ray

[Keelay]

Haven't tried it. Will not likely try it. If I did, I wouldn't run windows. Windows is still too unstable for any critical system, so maybe for monitoring and logging, but controlling is another question. This rules out using a PC that I already have.

Another problem is the power requirements for running a new separate PC day in day make the system costly in the long term. There are much better and more reliable special application setups that do monitoring and controlling for an aquarium.

PC's are cheap and have very robust and easy to use development environments to create this kind of software, but in the long term, It makes sense from a cost perspective to do something else.

This is my opinion.

Here's one crazy thread on doing this another way.
http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=484912
Or another:
http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=692306&perpage=25&pagenumber=1