So after a some down time :

Back panel

Had to disassemble some, took the base and hood frames back into the garage, and welded odd tabs to hold the various electrics in place.  Will probably end up taking the base apart again to weld in more tabs for the plumbing.  Anyways; here is the back panel which will have a power jack, and an ethernet jack.  The power and the ethernet cables run through the grey pvc conduit, just for safety.

The brains.

Here is the computer and the various control bits.  Ended up mounting it a bit differently.  I had to order a custom sized USB cable after being unable to source one locally.  Its not in the photo yet.  The computer control AC relay unit is inside the left grey box.  I made a shroud for the fans to vent out the back, instead of blowing all the wonderful humid air onto the computer parts.

Ruh roh

Jason at sourceselect built a custom linux for me.  Based on opensuse, unfortunately it didn’t care to boot up for me off the livecd.  The little computer sure is finicky.  I installed Archlinux in a VM on my mac, and started working on the control software, pretty confident it would install and boot on the little box, but no dice.  I ended up settling for Zenwalk core linux, it installs and runs without issue, however even the core version has X installed and a bunch of other fluff I’m not interested in.  So I’m still searching for a suitable host OS.  I wrote a simple little program in C that gets run via cron job every 5 minutes.  It reads a temperature sensor in the hood and turns the fans on or off, as well as turning the lights on or off depending on the time.  I’m working on a nicer standalone daemon, but that’s for another day.

She lives !

Here it is plugged into the wall, and the network.  It works with no sparks !  My only concern is the fans are somewhat ineffective if the hood isn’t closed up with wood.  Its a bit like trying to blow out a candle 3 meters away.  I don’t care how big your lungs are, it ain’t happening unless I give you a 3 meter straw to blow through.  Still waiting on custom USB cable to arrive to finish up the wiring and making things all tidy.

At this point, I’m thinking about the wood finishing and the plumbing.  I have a contact for a woodworker from a friend, so will be contact with him in the next few weeks.  Thanks to the new ride, I have to put off the fancy filter and pumps; I do still have an Eheim canister filter from the old setup, so will be using that meantime.  Next immediate step is to make some room in the garage, clean up the tank and carry it inside and into the stand.  Did I mention its 1/2 inch thick glass ? Yep very heavy.  Fun fun.