My Neptune Apex web interface compatible DIY reef controller

[d0ughb0y]

jrossjr, unless you made changes in software related to alert, outlet switching does not trigger alert. check for a loose connection, this is the most common cause of problem I run into. You can test the relay board by itself using the relay test sketch to verify that it is working. I can see individual relay to not work, but not all at the same time. As someone pointed out, the power supply used can cause problems also.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=22648973&postcount=354

 

[wirewiggler]

I see what you mean the official duplicates the ethernet including the flash card. The cheaper ebay offerings probably would require more code experamentation than the official, as well as needing a flash reader. You are of course correct, maybe I could endure a foray into the attic to run a cable for $75.

Bill

 

[jrossjr79]

jrossjr, unless you made changes in software related to alert, outlet switching does not trigger alert. check for a loose connection, this is the most common cause of problem I run into. You can test the relay board by itself using the relay test sketch to verify that it is working. I can see individual relay to not work, but not all at the same time. As someone pointed out, the power supply used can cause problems also.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=22648973&postcount=354

Will try relay sketch, I think I dont have something wired right though. But will need to check the relay, is there a sketch to check the mega?

Will also try to splice the 12v line to add that thing, I have several, tried to wrap it around in there, hope I didnt snap a line. I also tried using the usb to power the arduino and tested only the relay board, same thing happens.

 

[teslo]

only standard ascii. that is what is supported by arduino.

outlet name is declared as char name[14]
so you can have up to 13 characters.

Interesting behaviour.

If I use "_" in Outlets names then on Outlet webpage can set that outlet to On of Off state still after refresh it will be on Auto.

If in outlet name I use space " " then I could toggle between Auto/Off/On and this works still name of outlet remain all the time in green color.

And if I don't use any space or instead of that I use minus "-" then everything works normally.

 

[d0ughb0y]

Interesting behaviour.

If I use "_" in Outlets names then on Outlet webpage can set that outlet to On of Off state still after refresh it will be on Auto.

If in outlet name I use space " " then I could toggle between Auto/Off/On and this works still name of outlet remain all the time in green color.

And if I don't use any space or instead of that I use minus "-" then everything works normally.

The outlet name is part of the HTTP post data sent back to the controller when you switch the state. Something like this

Unused2_state=1&noResponse=1

So you can see why "_" and " " will not work.
This is based Neptune Apex controller web interface.

Therefore what you observed is correct. You cannot use "_" and " " in outlet names.


<code role="listitem" class="focusRow subFocusRow "> </code>

 

[jrossjr79]

Seems everything is ok, I am going to guess that my shotty attempt at soldering is the issue. I think I am going to end up rebuilding it all from scratch. Noticed several problems.

1. My backlight of my LCD no longer comes on.
2. Not only does my buzzer go off when I turn an outlet on, but the light on the ph stamp flickers less after I turn on an outlet.

Before turning on the outlet, no buzzer sounds except in the event that the controller turns on, and boots up. The light on the PH stamp flickers on and off real quick repeatedly, in milliseconds. After I turn on an outlet, the buzzer goes off in pulses, the light on the ph stamp flickers on and off in seconds instead of milliseconds.

The other part I have noticed is if I power the arduino with USB my outlets stay on after they are turned on. If it is being powered with the 12V plug when I turn on the outlets, they will come on, but after about 15 - 30 seconds they turn off, and my arduino gets hunged up. Here in a little bit I am going to bypass the soldering and go directly from the plug to the arduino to see if it is my shotty soldering work, or if the plug is bad.

*****bypassed my soldering work, and can confirm that the plug is bad*******

The 12V plug is suppose to be 1 amp right?

 

[redtop03]

jrossjr79, hope you can get your issues fixed, this is an awesome controller once you get the bugs all out of your hardware, I had several with mine as well, but finally managed to work through 'em..I use a 10v 1 amp for mine but the 12v 1a should work fine too

I don't remember now when it was that I started running my Chauvet on my tank but it hasn't missed a beat yet, ran perfectly all this time, I still haven't built the circuit for my auto feeder but I do have the pieces, just not had the time, I can't wait to get that running, I still have the manual button on my feeder and been using it but that's getting old fast LOL

I have 4 WP pumps running on it and my heater but I've yet to see my water temp drop enough for the heater to turn on, the wave function is excellent, it's always changing, according to how you program it, I love the randomness and the standing wave action on W1 is flat out awesome...with 2 WP10s and 2 WP25s in a 90g tank, I have some serious flow

I'm confident that the Chauvet will all do as it's supposed to when it's supposed to do it, manual control works flawlessly too, best of all, even if my internet goes down(and it has several times), I can still control it from my PC through my network, I love having that ability......that was my worst fear with no on board control that I wouldn't be able to control it without the web, that fear is gone and I'd put this controller up against any factory built for stability

 

[jrossjr79]

jrossjr79, hope you can get your issues fixed, this is an awesome controller once you get the bugs all out of your hardware, I had several with mine as well, but finally managed to work through 'em..I use a 10v 1 amp for mine but the 12v 1a should work fine too

I don't remember now when it was that I started running my Chauvet on my tank but it hasn't missed a beat yet, ran perfectly all this time, I still haven't built the circuit for my auto feeder but I do have the pieces, just not had the time, I can't wait to get that running, I still have the manual button on my feeder and been using it but that's getting old fast LOL

I have 4 WP pumps running on it and my heater but I've yet to see my water temp drop enough for the heater to turn on, the wave function is excellent, it's always changing, according to how you program it, I love the randomness and the standing wave action on W1 is flat out awesome...with 2 WP10s and 2 WP25s in a 90g tank, I have some serious flow

I'm confident that the Chauvet will all do as it's supposed to when it's supposed to do it, manual control works flawlessly too, best of all, even if my internet goes down(and it has several times), I can still control it from my PC through my network, I love having that ability......that was my worst fear with no on board control that I wouldn't be able to control it without the web, that fear is gone and I'd put this controller up against any factory built for stability

Thank you for the words of encouragement. It really is appreciated. And yes, I know that once it is working properly it will be better, 10 times better than those factory made ones. I personally opted out of controlling my feeding with it. Just really doing the basics right now:
Heater Control
Temp monitor
PH monitor
Salinity Monitor (once Doughboy has that part written out)
2 Jebs (wp40s)
WebCam
Email Alerts
Return Pump Control
Skimmer Control
as well as many of the macros that are already in the program.

I have ran across numerous problems in my build, most of it I can blame on my non-understanding of programming, lol. I had this controller running for 5 mins really well. It was just after I updated that I started running into problems. I cant blame the update, cause I even went back to re-upload the sketch that was on the controller before, but had same problems.

I am not 100% sure where I went wrong, but I will be fixing it, just going to take me longer than what I had originally planned for.

 

[redtop03]

I'm really just using the basic stuff too, the return pump control will turn off when the feed mode is activated and it works great, I haven't messed with the pump timing for the feed mode but I can activate the feeder part of the code and when time comes for feeding, the return and skimmer pumps shut down as expected, only thing was that when it did it, I wasn't expecting it and was kinda baffled at what went wrong LOL

I purchased a Belkin web cam to use with mine but for some reason, I can't get the camera web page to load on my PC, dang thing loads fine on my sons PC so I know the camera is good and everything is set up properly with it..

I've went through every setting I can think of on my PC and can't find a problem anywhere, even went into my firewall and told it specifically to allow the web site, still nothing, I don't understand it, I keep getting the "web server down,try again later" message

 

[teslo]

you program by the minutes in a cycle, not by absolute time of day.

if your cycle is 24 hours, and you want it to come on only from 6pm to 10pm, then the cycle starts (cycle always starts at midnight) in off state for 18 hours, on for 4 hours then off again for 2 hours.

so specify
off 18:00, on 4:00, off 2:00

"d0ughb0y" can you explain me more about this outlets program?

Ok I understand cycle starts always at midnight,
and first parameter is delay until time when outlet should first turn on, then duration and duration off.
Or you mean this cycle could be use multiple in one day?
So if we specify: off 0:00, on 2:00, off 2:00
this means cycle will repeat every 4 hours with 2hour off, then 2hour until next midnight?

And even one outlet cycle at next midnight still didn't finish it's own cycle it will be reset and set to default state ?

And in this way one outlet can't be set-up to do some cycle in night time so in first 6 hours of cycle and then after 12hours again same cycle until midnight?

 

[d0ughb0y]

"d0ughb0y" can you explain me more about this outlets program?



Ok I understand cycle starts always at midnight,

and first parameter is delay until time when outlet should first turn on, then duration and duration off.

Or you mean this cycle could be use multiple in one day?

So if we specify: off 0:00, on 2:00, off 2:00

this means cycle will repeat every 4 hours with 2hour off, then 2hour until next midnight?



And even one outlet cycle at next midnight still didn't finish it's own cycle it will be reset and set to default state ?



And in this way one outlet can't be set-up to do some cycle in night time so in first 6 hours of cycle and then after 12hours again same cycle until midnight?

Yes your understanding is correct. The reason for this design is it makes the algorithm really tight, compact and fast, since it is running in an interrupt handler. If you can describe what you need, I can see if there is a way to program it.

 

[d0ughb0y]

you can try using macros. macro works like a nested outlet, a cycle within a cycle.

say you want an outlet to be ON 10 minutes OFF 20 minutes from midnight to 8 am, and ON 20 minutes OFF 10 minutes from 8am to midnight.

define macro 1 to be off=0, on 8hours, off 16 hours. macro cycle is 24 hours.
within macro1, define an action for outlet1, on 10 mins, off 20 minutes.

define macro 2 to be off=8 hours, on 16 hours, off = 0. Then define action for outlet1, ON 20 minutes, OFF 10 minutes.

the action timing runs within the "ON" time of the parent macro cycle.

 

[d0ughb0y]

I think there is a problem with NTP sync after midnight. At least on my setup, the last 2 days in a row the main loop hanged. I have to debug this further to find out why it hanged. The ntp code worked fine when I rebooted.

 

[d0ughb0y]

ok, I think my router needed rebooting. When the controller ping to the router failed, it reinitialized Ethernet, but the ntp sync code does not re-initialize the UDP, and that caused the hang. I'll upload a fix to github tonight.

 

[d0ughb0y]

I have updated the code on github.

I plan to work on this over the long weekend. Not sure how much I can complete.
todo list
add temp probe
add dosing pump
add atlas ph2, conductivity, orp

I have no way of testing the additional atlas stamps, so I'll ask here for testers.

 

[d0ughb0y]

Redtop,

You said you are running 4 jebao pumps? Can you post a screenshot of the webpage showing the pwm pump display?

Tnx.

 

[redtop03]

Redtop,

You said you are running 4 jebao pumps? Can you post a screenshot of the webpage showing the pwm pump display?

Tnx.

sure

 

[d0ughb0y]

Thanks for the screenshot. That worked out nicely.

I just finished adding temp probe code. I fixed the lcd, logging and web page to display the new sensors as well, including atlas sensors. So when I go add the code for additional atlas sensors, they will just display correctly.

This is how I added the second temp probe. I used a stereo splitter cable.

I also fixed the index.htm so it displays partial data so you don't have to wait 24 hours to get the graph to display.

 

[redtop03]

awesome new additions, and great idea on the splitter for the temp probes too, on my Jarduino I used the parasitic power so I only needed 2 wires, I used the RCA cables and a splitter with it like you are doing there, it worked out great,

I tore apart an old TV video selector box and used it's case for my Chauvet and used it's RCA ports for the temp probes on my Ferduino build

 

[d0ughb0y]

I did not have enough time to do any more coding. I created a new branch on github called temperature. You can download that branch if you want to start using multiple temperature sensor.

https://github.com/d0ughb0y/Chauvet16/tree/temperature