Wanted to provide some quick details for the meeting Monday. This one might be a little more low key than normal but it shouldnt be any less fun! With all the other things going on(trips, events, etc) i still dont have everything 100% wrapped up for monday so i will apologize in advanced in the case that something falls through but here we go!
Food - hopefully chinese
Raffles - hopefully frags from ECA, plenty of $25 gift certificates, and the Golden Ticket will be a BIG giftpack courtesy of Seachem which includes several products from their new line!
Speaker - BJ from the Fish Bowl!! I will also have the rimless nano tank for the Fish Bowl event for everyone to check out!
VTTOTM - John(Marchingbanddjs) will be doing this months VTTOTM for his newly set up 80g!
DIY Technique - Once again im bumping the DIY technique for something else but at least this time its related and hopefully more interesting! Ive been dropping hints here and there about a little pet project of mine and Monday i will be rolling out ALL the details. Here is the gist! We will have ATO’s for club members to purchase at a very discounted rate. I know, ho hum, ATOs. So whats the exciting part? Well, the exciting part is that they will be DRC brand!! We are going to have manufactured quality ATO’s available for almost half the cost of other ATOs! So what do i meand by DRC branded and “manufactured quality”?
Well, to begin with these will be in a manufactured electronics box with our log custom screenprinted on the box. All of the holes for the components are going to be custom CNC’d using $100,000+ machines! Im talking professional ATO’s here! Our’s will come with TWO floats with 45" leads and a 3.5mm jack on the end so that they can plug right into the box(no DIY here!). The box itself will be TINY and will come with flanges so that it can be attached easily to your stand(no velcro needed here!). And the guts? Well no DIY relays here! No big clunky 12 V DC transformers! The guts will be state of the art solid state micro electronics soldered to a circuit board(no wire nuts, splices, or anything else you would find at lowes!). The point is that we are not passing off a DIY ATO as something else! This is the real deal! Unfortunately, i still dont have the boxes that i was hoping to have by monday and its very unlikely that i will until the last week of April. BUT, i do have the next best thing! All of the engineering CAD drawings of the case including color logo and all of the components.
If anyone is interested i have a special incentive only available for those willing to preorder and pay in advance at mondays meeting! The price will be only $50(i assure you that this will not be the price later on) AND i am going to include a unlimited(as long as you are DRC premium member) guarentee for the ATO! I will provide details at the meeting but if you buy an ATO and it breaks we will replace or fix it for free as long as you are a premium DRC member!! The only exception is for abuse and the floats and cases(which shouldnt break unless they are abused!). EVERYTHING else(parts and labor) will be replaced for FREE! This guarentee will cost money later on but will be free for preorders! There is a limited number of cases to build these and the turnaround is almost a month so first come first serve! The ATO will also include a NICE acrylic, adjustable, float holder as well! Will have plenty of pics and details at the meeting.
We will have chinese food at the meeting tomorrow from the best chinese takout place in DE!! We will have General Tso’s chicken, Chicken and Broccoli, and Fried Rice!
We will have four VERY NICE frags courtesy of Matt and ECA!!
We will have 3 $25 Gift Certificates from a varitey of sponsors!
We will have the rimless nano tanks that will be raffled at the ECA and TFB events next month at the meeting for everyone to see!
Shawn I assume you’ll be able to go through a bit of this at the meeting, but figured I’d ask now save some time at the meeting. Will this ATO work attached to a RO unit the way you had your nano set up and the way you tried to set things up at Andy’s? Or will it work off a reservoir by controlling a pump?
Some of the ATO currently available that are designed to work with pumps and reservoirs come with several set up options via a switch between different modes. Some people set them up with a high and a low sensor, and some people set them up with a high sensor and a back up sensor incase the first one malfunctions. A third way to use the sensors is to have one in the reservoir which will not allow the pump to suck air and run dry if the reservoir is almost empty. I’d like to find an affordable one that has two sensors in the sump and one in the reservoir.
Other features I have seen in ATO that shouldn’t be too difficult to include in a DRC ATO model would be an optional buzzer that lets you know when the ATO is running and a built in timer that will only allow the ATO to pump continuously for only 60 seconds before shutting off.(Figuring if the water level has dropped significantly all of a sudden it is not likely a massive evaporation event happened in the last minute and it is more likely that there is a leak or you took water out of the system without unplugging the ATO)
To be honest I haven’t read every post on every thread where ATOs were discussed.(A topic some of the DRC members love to chat about) Hopefully this isn’t a repeat of some thoughts already discussed thoroughly.
some people set them up with a high sensor and a back up sensor incase the first one malfunctions.
I believe this is the configuration used 99.9% of the time.
A third way to use the sensors is to have one in the reservoir which will not allow the pump to suck air and run dry if the reservoir is almost empty. I’d like to find an affordable one that has two sensors in the sump and one in the reservoir.
I could build something like that easily but i have yet to see a standard ATO with inputs for three float switches? Could you post a link to a $100 ATO(not a controller) that comes with three float switches?
Other features I have seen in ATO that shouldn’t be too difficult to include in a DRC ATO model would be an optional buzzer that lets you know when the ATO is running and a built in timer that will only allow the ATO to pump continuously for only 60 seconds before shutting off
These would be easy enough to include but are features that you would like to have and not necessarily something everyone else would want. I know that i personally wouldnt want an ATO always chirping at me when its working! All the features you want can be installed in conjunction with an ATO and really shouldnt be built in to the ATO. With that said, i would have no problems customizing an ATO for any individual.
The only features that will be included in the next build are status LED’s and hysteresis functionality.
I’ve had three-four people ask me where the meeting was at. Could someone add the location to the top of this thread and to the news feed? Might also be good to mention in the event thread that in addition to the regular meetings we will be having our regular meetings the third Monday of every month at 7pm at William Penn.
I am not sure of an application where anyone would need or want an auto top off to run more than 60 seconds at a time without stopping for a short time. Even with an aqualifter with a micro ball valve dialing it back 60 seconds of a slow stream should top off even a 500g tank. I personally would have to do some research to figure out what part to order to add on to the ATO to get it to act this way.
As far as three sensors wired to an ATO, I said I’d like to find one affordable that could at these way not that I have ever seen one. Not sure why anyone wouldn’t want a back up float and not sure why anyone wouldn’t want their pump not to run dry when the reservoir is out. Sucks you have to make the choice with most ATO to either have to count on one sensor not failing or for you to remember to top of your ATO reservoir.
Do people like the 3.5mm jacks for the float switches? I was going to make up some ATOs for some folks, but I just hate when multiple products come out that don’t have interchangeable parts. Thoughts?
