Make your aquarium smart powered by Xiaomi Mi Home

Hi, I'm Charles Lales, and here you'll find how to turn your aquarium, firstly fresh water aquarium, in a smart aquarium with monitoring and automation. You'll get more time to enjoy your tank and less stress to maintain best conditions you can provide to fishes you care about.

It is based on my own experience and is not aimed to generate financial benefit. You'll find there a lot of info, but this up to you to follow these procedures and result is your own responsibility.

First, I'd like to point out existing solutions on the market:

  • Neptune Systems, firstly for reef but not only, with an ApexEL budget friendly ( ~500€ + etx.)

  • Felix Smart, recent addition, beautiful design, from and for aquascaping (~550€ + mth)

  • Seneye, monitoring only then more budget friendly (~100€ + mth )

  • GHL Aquarium Technology, ~ German Neptume Systems (starts 500€ + etx.)

This quick technological overview may guide in your choice: these are reliable options. This webiste is about another approach, a compromise between plug-and-play systems and complete DIY projects.

Instead of developing another specific solution, e.g. based on Rasbery Pi, I looked after technologies already existing for other domain and found out how to adapt then for aquarium needs. The best solution is currently Xiaomi Smart Home Products or Mi Home Ecosystem products.

Why the best?

Fits the needs

First, it fits my needs, and will probably do the same for yours. It's not a dedicated but flexible enough to perform 99% of the tasks you'd wish to automate. In some cases, the first approach won't work, let's say won't be optimal, and you'll have to spend bit more creativity to find out the right combination.

Cheap

Secondly, it is very cheap because mass produced, in the first place for asian market where Xiaomi performs much more than in other continent. It is cheap but consistent, part of an ecosystem growing years after years, and certainly more sustainable since Xiamo is not really startup size.

ZigBee

Thirdly, it is based on suitable technology: ZigBee. It's kind of bluetooth low energy and long range. And this is not WiFi, this is important point: you don't want to lose your tank automation just because you're rebooting your WiFi router or because you're shutting it down during the night...

User friendly

Finally, applications managing all these IoT are quite accessible, with continuous updates to insure optimal user experience and security level (yes yes, it is Chinese product). The accessibility or user-friendliness is not required to me, since I'm SW developer for living, but with the motivation to share the solution to anybody, it turns to be a strong criteria.

An example?

42 IoT devices.. the tanks but not only!

Each tank is a room to group devices

Tropheus tank

Discus tank