Robo-Tank v6.0 is Ready - Now v6.5

[Rob F]

Not a lot of new features, mainly improvements. The scheduling interface was completely redone although it looks the same, now it uses the new table system that's much more efficient and fits better on small screens and I think everything is fully validated now. There was previously no validation when you edit a schedule and if a certain option wasn't checked it would crash the program. Fixed the "repeat every 1 day" option as that would skip the first day. It was also possible to create an "off" dosing schedule which wouldn't do anything and can confuse. Also when you added or edited a schedule there was a 250ms delay after you hit save before the table was loaded, it was enough to know it's happening. It was like that because the schedule data is sent to backend and saved from there but I had to make the UI delay until that happened otherwise it would read the database before the entry was made. Since I first added that I've figured out how to send confirmation from the backend to the frontend so it knows when actions are completed so no more delays are used. The same was for custom rules but that's been fixed as well. Speaking of custom rules I fixed them for pH, previously those custom rules wouldn't show the probe attached or work. I made a change on the new logging table, previously the "source" field just said schedule or custom rule, now it says that along with the schedule or custom rule name so you know which was logged better. I also updated almost all the variable array's in the backend to be fully dynamic, previously array's had a fixed length which put limits on things, for example schedule array's would only allow a maximum of 100 schedules, now the array's are sized to the actual number of schedules that exist so there's no hard cap, that took some time but with the help of valgrind memory checker it should be good. I also changed how the RTC works, now it's setup so when the Pi boots it reads the RTC first which updates the Pi clock text file in case NTP isn't available. The Pi will still attempt to read from NTP but if no internet is available it won't matter. In the app I'm no longer reading from the RTC, from actual time aspect it doesn't know the RTC exists. My main reason for this change is because the RTC doesn't track milliseconds, only seconds. As I'm picking and want milliseconds I had to do some wonky stuff to stay in that format with the RTC, now as it always reads the Pi time it's not an issue and the wonkiness is gone.

The biggest feature change is with dosing pumps, now I wish I hadn't started that as it's holding back the update because I got dragged into all the above but now I've made too many changes to put on pause. The UI is almost done but haven't made any backend changes yet. I added the ability to define dose amount for each schedule and added a copy of the dosing schedules to the dosing settings page so you can see and do everything related to dosing from there. The dosing schedules can still be altered from the main schedules screen, now it's just 2 options of doing it. You can also create daily batch schedules using total mL, number of doses per day and time to run first schedule, you can also select days of week these would apply to or repeat X number of days. Down the road I'll add other options for batches. Due to these changes I also have to update custom rules to allow user to define how many mL are dosed as the number of mL defined has been removed from dosing settings. I forgot this needs to be done so more time needed. I think I will leave the stirrer options and calibration for another day.

"mL" column has been added.


The "Milliliters to Dose" field only shows if creating a dosing schedule.




Just noticed in picture below it has a schedule "Repeat every 1 days", now that's not possible, if someone selects this as an option it'll change it to checkmarks for each day of the week.


Add group schedule