saf1 wrote:So basically what you are doing is extending the expansion box via the cable. Then within your code just identify which box belongs to what tank and off you go. Wonder how far the signal would go with regards to length of cable. If house was hardwired you could use an existing network jack and patch panel to re-route to another room without laying cable.
Never thought of doing it this way but I see the concept and how it would work.
Yes, exactly. I have not done this yet but I am switching tanks around and adding another one over the course of the next few months. I will be setting up two tanks using this method. The only distance limitations would be that of the cat 5 cable which is about 350 feet. Once I have this in place I will let you guys know how it works. I will start out monitoring one reef tank and one freshwater tank.
Only one salinity probe? I didn't know that. I was hoping to have another one in my mixing barrel also. My second tank will be fresh water so I won't need the salinity probe in there.
So you could run an ethernet cable to an expansion hub to add an additiona relay box, ph and orp etc. Then run a seperate cabe to add an additional temp probe. May have to play with this. Currently I have run wires to my basement to monitor my frag tanks and that works well.
Maybe Robert can chime in and let us know if this is a limitation of the hardware for adding a salinity probe. Adding another probe would make it perfect.
lnevo had talked about setting up 2 RA head units to control his mixing station a while back.
He was going to use an optocoupler, but I think when the RANet came out he abandoned that idea.
Fishflipper, it is my understanding (and I am new at most of this) that you cannot extend usb cables that far. Does converting it to ethernet cable provide a stronger signal due to the quality of the wire? I have a ton of cat5e laying around. This would be very usful for a number of aquariums I service that have sumps located in the basements.
Due to its design, USB cable has a normal maximum length of about 5 meters (16.4 feet).
Cat 5e or Cat6 has a max distance of about 100 meters or 300 feet.