- [Man 1] Hello. I'd like to introduce you to my automated nitrogen aquarium testing
kit. Now, what this does is it tells you how much nitrate is in your aquarium
water. Now, why do we care about this? Nitrate is a byproduct of the breakdown of
fish waste, and it is, in high levels, very toxic to fish and is a common cause
of death in aquariums. Now, how does this work? What we do here is we actually will
sample a dose of aquarium water, determine the color of that aquarium water and then,
from that color, determine how much nitrate is in the water. Now,
a very quick demonstration of what this does. Right now, I'm substituting the
commercial test kit, that will be used in future models, for standard colored water.
Now, what we do, we take a sample. Okay, and while we're waiting for this...
Now, who would want this? Pet stores would be very interested in this because every
day in a pet store that sells fish, you have to test the water for nitrate.
You have to keep a very close eye on it. Now, that gets tedious in large aquarium
settings because you have multiple tanks, you have to do it over and over.
This though can, on a regular basis, tell you very easily through these two LEDs,
that tell you, based on a threshold, do you have too much nitrate in your water
and do you need to take action. This can tell you if action is necessary without
user input. All you have to do, press a button, or it can, in future models,
be set to operate on a timed schedule. Now, we have determined our nitrate level
here. We've determined that it is 208 parts per million, which is very high and
unacceptable. Thus, the system through this red LED is giving the user a graphic
warning, that there is too much nitrate in the water, and that action is required.
We're now flushing the system to set up for the next test.
This would also be useful to home aquarium users who, in large aquariums that require
lots of maintenance, or for people that don't have the time every day in order to
actually take care of their aquarium as they'd like to. This lets them still keep
track of what's going on. Now, the system is now ready for another reading,
and we can give it something that we know will be safe. This should be...this is a
much lower nitrate level. And if I just hold that in there, and we're ready to go.
Now, what else needs to be done for this? Now, obviously, you can see that we aren't
actually dosing anything to actually use the commercially available nitrate test
kits. What will be done in the future is we will add a second dose,
two more dosing pumps in order to actually dose this and we will then have direct
nitrate readings. Now, we are taking...we take 30 readings
in order to get a good average of our
nitrate level, with the color sensor, in order to help eliminate some of the
errors. We're just about ready.
And you can see that this is...for some that might be considered high,
but for most aquariums, 12 parts per million is well within tolerable range,
and you can see our graphic has told us that we're good to go.
And, once again, we're flushing the system. All right. Thank you very much.
I appreciate your time.
- [Man 2] Go for it.
- All right. So, discussing the hardware we've got going on here.
What we have here is, we have a little peristaltic pump that's meant for dosing.
It's very good for very small, very precise dosing and it also is
low-maintenance because it's never in direct contact with the fluid.
Bring it up through here. All right. Then, what we've got here is we've got a little
$7 RGB color sensor, just off of Adafruit. A cheap little thing and it just gives you
RGB values and also clarity, [inaudible]...It can give you a lot of
information, and it has a built-in LED for it, to determine what color things are.
Now, what we're doing to get the color, right now we have these syringes here.
Each of these syringes because it is a binary test kit, these standard aquarium
nitrate test kits, what we do is we first would dose the first chemical.
Mix back here. We have some little vibrator motors that help mix the fluid.
Then we...
- Let's see those real fast.
- They're not hooked up right now, but they're just little...these are what you'd
find in your cell phone.
- Okay. So, this clear chamber's the mixing chamber.
- Yes.
- So fresh water?
- Fresh aquarium water comes in through here...
- One sec. Guys, can we just...one second before you...could we...?
Okay. So, fresh water comes in through here?
- Yes.
- Right. From the aquarium.
- From the aquarium, yes.
- Comes into your mixing chamber and then, once it's in the mixing chamber the
chemicals...
- Are dosed. Right now we've got syringes, but in the future, we would have their own
separate dosing pumps in order to automate the process. Right now this is counted as
one shot, and it's done. Dosing pumps would allow us to have multiple shots.
Now, we've also, as we already discussed, we got the sensor there that tells you
what color it is, which is how these test kits work. You just compare it to this
color chart, and that tells you how much nitrate's in your water.
Up here we've got a solenoid, little tiny 12-volt DC solenoid.
This just gives us a nice seal and makes sure that the chamber is isolated,
so we don't end up having backflow, things like that. When we're taking a sample,
we open the solenoid to allow it...so this doesn't turn into a pressure vessel.
Then, when we're ready to...also same thing, just whenever we're moving water
with the pump we have the solenoid open. When we close it, we've got a sealed
system.
- Awesome.