Is This The Future Of Aquarium Monitoring?

April 9, 2009

For many years now applications have been available which allow you to control various elements of the aquarium whilst you are away from it. The can be simple things such as electrical timers to the more advanced controllers.

There are also some applications which allow you to monitor the aquarium over the internet so that you can check various parameters – again these are normally quite expensive.

Watching the aquarium whilst you are away is very simple as you can just hook up a webcam and broadcast it over the internet.

There is a relatively new one now available and it looks to be very good at first sight.

It is called TankedCAM.

What TankedCAM allows you to do is basically monitor your aquarium whilst you are away from home. This could be when you are at work, travelling, on vacation etc.

TankedCAM gives you the ability to be able to view your aquarium using a live video feed. It also allows you to pan the camera, check water temperature, pH levels, feed the fish and operate various equipment such as lighting, moonlights etc.

Now, this probably does not seem to be that new however there is a twist…

You can watch, monitor and control your aquarium directly from your I-Phone!

They have developed an application designed especially for the I-Phone which allows you to monitor/watch your aquarium and take control of various pieces of equipment. How useful could that be?

It is also available to be used on a PC so if you do not have an I-Phone and are interested in this product then you have not been left out.

As said this product is relatively new and or their website there is a poll running asking what else aquarists would like to monitor so I can only believe that they are hoping to add more functionality to the product in the near future.

I can see so many uses for it.

Below is an excerpt from their webpage:

These technologies are nothing new and can be very expensive to implement separately. TankedCAM is a much more inexpensive way to create an interactive aquarium experience that you can enjoy from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. TankedCAM is a modular set up that combines these technologies in to one solution and allows you to choose exactly which aspects you would like to monitor in your aquarium.

TankedCAM will be built based on your monitoring needs and shipped to you directly. Set up is as simple as placing the head unit near your aquarium, inserting the water probes (if any) and connecting the network and power cables. In a joint effort with WaveJam Technologies, LLC.  we can also set up and host a special web page that allows you to view your tank from an iPhone or computer web browser.

I do have to point out that this does look good but I have never actually tried it (If the owners read this then perhaps they will ship us a review version – hint hint!) however the images on their website lead me to believe that the equipment looks like it has a high build quality however as said I have not tried it so cannot comment on how robust it is, what it’s expected lifetime is etc.

If you want to have a look yourself then pop over to http://www.tankedcam.com

If you want to have a go with their online demo on your I-Phone then open Safari on your iPhone and type the address m.tankedcam.com into the address bar. If you want to try their PC version then they also have an online demo available on their site.

There is one thing that I am not certain of however, and that it whether the probes will be ok in salt water. Perhaps I will drop them a line and attempt to find out.

Below are some videos which show it in action.