FreeRTOS Based Aquarium Monitoring and Maintenance Embedded System

Abstract

This paper presents the prototype of a real-time embedded system for monitoring and maintaining an aquarium. The prototype has a modular design and consists of a main board with a dsPIC33 microcontroller and a NodeMCU module that provides the system with “Internet of Things”-type facilities. The dsPIC communicates with the NodeMCU module through the serial interface. The main board was specially designed in order to provide flexibility in the modular development of the embedded system. The application on the dsPIC is based on the FreeRTOS real-time operating system and makes use of its specific facilities for task control, communication and synchronization between tasks. The system offers facilities like automatic fertilization, fish feeding and lighting for the aquarium, provides information regarding the water temperature and controls the pH level by CO2 addition. Moreover, the system employs a DS1307 real-time clock in order to access the time and date information. The NodeMCU module hosts a web server on which the aquarium data is displayed.