Would I place the Litermeter in the garage on a powerbar so the outlet just turns it on with the sensor or is it strong enough to use as the full ato system pulling from the garage?If you're interested in having ATO and AWC I'd highly recommend going with the litermeter 3 (or are they up to LM4?) and the ATO units from Spectrapure. Mine will pump water 40 feet vertically and horizontally without any difficulty. I'd have to say out of all the junk made for this hobby, spectrapure nailed it with their ATO and AWC systems. Significantly better than the competitors.
I'm interested in hearing more about your automated setup as it stands. I'm in the same position looking for aquarium controllers and want to stay away from the Apex system.