DIY Kalk stirrer with Wi-Fi

[yury88]

I'm bored, how about develop something real cool?

All Kalk stirrer on market are pathetic, in 2024 they even do not have Wi-FI, what a poor engineering!

So in this thread I'm going make all these fancy brands blush with shame

Let's start with same basic, primitive functionality for Stirrer:
1)Wi-fi controller with interactive WEB interface
2)Stepper motor for stirring with adjustable speed and totally quiet operation
3)Stepper motor Doser
4)Saturation sensor(TDS board with mod)
5)PH sensor to avoid overdose
6)Water level sensor for SUMP to avoid overdose
6)Stirrer ATO
7)Tank ATO

Basic software feature:
1)Automatic calculation, logging, and reporting dosed limewater and automatic calculation of dosed dKH
2)ATO logging
3)Dosing pump calibration and manual control
4)Calibration of PH electrode with any type of buffer(8.5PH etc) and any number of calibration points
5)Dosing limewater to PH level
6)REST API and MQTT for system integration

Add lets add some crazy idea that nobody done before:
1)Second stepper motor doser to dose Acid(vinegar or formic acid) to Limewater strirrer to achieve 200%+ saturation
2)Kalk slurry with controllable saturation, just idea- not sure that TDS sensor can detect saturation over 100% if its solid paticles.

 

[lapin]

Think they are listening?

 

[yury88]

Think they are listening?

Nope, that's why most of cool stuff is DIY, and this is a good part of our hobby.

I just can't stand with thing that there are no ready to go solution for sps tank on Kalkwasser
So in these thread I will solve my personal Issue with hardware that do not exist and have some fun with DIY)

 

[yury88]

I'm going to keep this build cheap and with everywhere accessible components.
I already bought for build:
1)Acrylic pipe 110mm(biggest size that available to me)

2)3pcs Stepper motor drivers MKS Servo42C(available on aliexpress)


3)3pcs Nema17 Stepper motor

4)2pcs cheap, but good quality peristaltic pump head:

5)ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 Wifi controller

6)TDS Sensor board:

7)Floating Water sensors

8)PH sensor module, ads1115 module, ADUM1201 module and small DC-DC isolated regulator

 

[yury88]

Finished with soldering isolated electric circuit for PH. Working great.


Now the toughest part, 3D printed casing:

 

[yury88]

Almost finished with with case prototype:

 

[yury88]

I decided to left idea about 2 pumps, too complicated functionality.
All 3D printed details already finished, just waiting for some small things from delivery and will start assembly and programming

 

[Kjames]

Looking forward to more updates on this DIY!

 

[exnisstech]

I wish I could do stuff like this.

 

[robinm]

A DIY kalk stirrer is on my to do list, there's very few available in the UK and they're way overpriced for what they are. Are you going with a gravity overflow or a pressurised system? It's one of the design issues I'm mulling over, I don't like the overflow idea because if the tube gets blocked then the input pump will continue to fill until the whole thing overflows. With a sealed system you either need an airtight bearing with the stepper outside of the seal or include the stepper in the sealed volume and seal around the wires going to the stepper. I'm leaning towards the last idea, just need to spend some time on Fusion360 and draw it up.

 

[yury88]

A DIY kalk stirrer is on my to do list, there's very few available in the UK and they're way overpriced for what they are. Are you going with a gravity overflow or a pressurised system?

This project is none of these. This stirrer is "storage" type.
Its just not-pressurized container with mixer and some sensors.

It means that it will premix saturated limewater for the whole day, wait until limewater becomes clear, and then dose using a peristaltic pump with automatic PH control.
+ Automatic ATO for refilling. So all these issues will be solved by design.

In my case, I'm not dosing limewater after the light hits peak because the PH will be too high. So this will be the time to refill the stirrer, and it will take a few hours to make the limewater clear.

P.S Actually stirrer is almost ready to run, but last time I'm accidentally burned controller, already got replacement, I'm going to finish it tomorrow

 

[robinm]

Ahhh, I see if you're only using it to dose for half of the day then that makes sense.

 

[yury88]

Ahhh, I see if you're only using it to dose for half of the day then that makes sense.

its more than half. My limewater doser works around 18h a day.

 

[yury88]

Hi everyone.
I was so busy with my Doser controller project, but its finally fully-functional and I can continue others.
So actually stirrer hardware finished, all functional well, but software with Web UI need to be made.


The thing is that i decided to use TDS sensor module to check saturation of limewater.
Available module is super cheap, just few $.


But the problem is that these boards only operate up to 1000 TDS, while saturated limewater has ~ 4000 TDS.
When its reach the limit you get 1.5V value on output
Good thing that board is open source; here is the schematic diagram.

Some times I didn't understand how to modify the board to get the desired operation range of 0-5000 TDS.
But today I finally realized that the TDS sensor is just a "resistor," and gain can be changed by U2C amplifier R10 resistor.


So I changed R10 resistor to 1K and now I have reading ~ 1.1V with saturated and 0.4V with 1000TDS


So the last problem is solved today and I also got high-secretive backup ATO sensor for stirrer

 

[steamboat]

Are you able to program a simple WiFi Ph logger? I have been trying to find one but haven’t had much luck at all with what is available commercially. Ideally, a simple phone interface with a graph.

 

[yury88]

Are you able to program a simple WiFi Ph logger? I have been trying to find one but haven’t had much luck at all with what is available commercially. Ideally, a simple phone interface with a graph.

Yep, its easy to program in web UI.
But I'm not storing history on esp32 coz its flash has very limited rewrite cycle(~10k), so it will not last long.
I'm using external server for this, prometheus+ grafana now(you can see the graph above), but soon will move everything to Home Assistant

 

[steamboat]

Yep, its easy to program in web UI.
But I'm not storing history on esp32 coz its flash has very limited rewrite cycle(~10k), so it will not last long.
I'm using external server for this, prometheus+ grafana now(you can see the graph above), but soon will move everything to Home Assistant

That’s an awesome setup that you came up with. Let me know when you get it figured out how to store the PH readings

 

[Quasar child]

I'm going to keep this build cheap and with everywhere accessible components.
I already bought for build:
1)Acrylic pipe 110mm(biggest size that available to me)

2)3pcs Stepper motor drivers MKS Servo42C(available on aliexpress)


3)3pcs Nema17 Stepper motor

4)2pcs cheap, but good quality peristaltic pump head:

5)ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 Wifi controller

6)TDS Sensor board:

7)Floating Water sensors

8)PH sensor module, ads1115 module, ADUM1201 module and small DC-DC isolated regulator

Bro I would love to test you prototype sounds dope

 

[yury88]

Actually sensor readings can be stored in RAM without consequences to show some history for last day or two, but when the power goes off it will all gone.
So publishing to HA over MQTT is the easiest way to have long-term history.
And Home Assistant has android/ios app...

 

[officialreefbros]

This is awesome! Will you be sharing your Files? Also what PH probe is that? I've had a card time finding one to tie into HA that isn't expensive