Robo-Tank v5.0 Screenshots and Flowchart - Ideas Needed

[aquaalgae]

Safety is paramount. I'd much rather have to buy a new relay box than have a higher risk of an electrical fire.

[Rob F]

Yes definitely. I think a lot of electrical fires start where connections are made, if the connection is slowly lost there's more resistance and things heat up. Fuses can miss this because the current could be under the limit but that connection is heating up, that's one reason I love this wireless box. It's like when you plug a large heater into an extension cord, the plugs heat up much more than the cord. I've had one good story come in about these power bars, the fuse was blowing quite often and it turned out to be some piece of equipment going bad and overdrawing when turning on, the power bar remained safe in that condition so that made me happy. That's what gave me the idea for it to learn what an outlet typically draws so you can be warned if something is starting to draw more than expected.

[Aquadominus]

Rob I am reading all these new staffs you are going to give us and I am very impatient to see all that!!!!! I am waiting you to finish and order all that new stuff. As I read you are preparing your own boards for Ph, TDS & ORP that's perfect!!!!!!! I hope you will be ready in a couple of months.

[Rob F]

Hi Aquadominus, sound good, shouldn't be much longer and yeah I'll be offering those other circuits soon, I have the boards and parts just need to put the pieces together and make it work. :)

[aquaalgae]

Oh! I didn't know you were going to have boards for probes soon too. I was going to purchase the atlas scientific boards sometime soon but I'll wait for yours. Anything else in the pipeline?

[Aquadominus]

Rob... Give info to the crowd!!!!!

[Rob F]

Yeah I'm really excited to get those circuits working, could be a game changer as many walk away after seeing the cost to add them using Atlas. These will be just as good and have full isolation but no extra board required, they'll be plug and play and cheaper of course.

I was actually at a crossroad about 4 months ago, I had a subcontract with a company for years but they lost the contract so I was out as well. I had flexible hours and mostly worked part time but made decent money which is how I've been able to keep working on this. At that point I decided roll the dice and go all in as I don't have many other options and I'm so close I can taste it, I hope I know what I'm doing lol. The main reason is the hardware has become much more reliable and I finally have a vision for everything.

So right after v5 I'll be updating the website and posting videos along with working out the circuits and power bars, when finished there will be a software update then I'll do the other addons for extra ports. There will also be a power outage sensor with some cool software features and that internet module I talked about which will have software updates as time goes on until everything is web based. Plus any sensors I can get working such as nitrate and PAR. Down the road hope to have a light as that's another problem, not many are controller friendly. Lots of ideas for software, so much can be done there. One fun thing I have planned, some sort of rain curtain to go with the storms, something I've always wanted, easy DIY but it'll be a nice kit. Maybe a 10" screen as well, same 800x480 just larger in size and over time I'll start looking into equipment and see what I can do there.

Well I took my first overall numbers, I was trying to wait but couldn't, I'm happy so I have to report. All system are up and running except custom rules so these numbers are almost final and custom rules won't do much to them. The controller consistently checks everything 2100 times per second or every 476 microseconds and the analog ports are read 42,000 per second. When schedules run and searched it takes less than 1 millisecond.

[Aquadominus]

I am really excited as I told you and happy that someone from as "the Hobbyist" is doing all these with consideration the Hobbyist... I believe that everything you are doing and that you will do in the future it will be compatible.... and Rob if you can give me an excel sheet with the phrases in English like the one I saw in a post, I thing it was for German language, I can translate the phrases to Greek... so I can say that I helped you a little bit to take the controller a step further!!!!!

[Rob F]

Thanks Aquadominus, it'll be a little while before I can add the language packs but would appreciate the Greek if you're up to it. I don't have that excel sheet yet but will make up something soon.

[aquaalgae]

Wow! The arduino makes it through the new software 2100x per second!? Thats awesome!

Maybe another week or so and we'll be able to try it out?

[Rob F]

Well now I have to revise that, I only had 3 temp sensor ports enabled but with all 5 its 1980 times per second and addons won't effect this. The temp sensors are the only thing that takes time to read, I eliminated all delays from the DHT22 but the DS18B20 takes about 15ms that's why it dropped from 2100 to 1980. I'm going to convert that number into a health meter and display as an icon under the time so there's a visual to see how well the controller is running and add alert, right now it could be running but maybe a bad setting is slowing it down and now you'll know. This will only reflect the controller, there won't be one for the display because it doesn't matter.

Should be about a week, I'm going to load it on the controller for my tank in a day or two.

[Irass]

I also write to translate phrases into excel, into my language

[Rob F]

Thanks Irass, that's appreciated. In a week or so I'll do up that excel sheet as I'm still adding text here and there so don't have everything yet. It'll be quicker to do multiple languages at once.

[fietsenrex]

Yeah you could send me one as well for dutch translation, personally I wouldn’t use it since my english is almost better than my dutch.
But there might be people who need it..

[Rob F]

Thanks fietsenrex, I appreciate it! There's a few people in the Netherlands with the controller so they might be happy and it could bring me extra sales. :)

[Aquadominus]

Rob about the Water flow meters are these suitable????
https://www.banggood.com/Water-Flow-Sens...rehouse=CN

https://www.banggood.com/G12inch-DN15-Tr...rehouse=CN

https://www.banggood.com/60Lmin-Water-Fl...rehouse=CN

and is there any way to create a routine to open a water solenoid valve and keep it open until the flow meter count a specific amount of  fresh water??? So I can make daily water changes???

With this Solenoid Valve for my Reverse Osmosis System

[fietsenrex]

You probably need a totalizer or something like that.

[Aquadominus]

You probably need a totalizer or something like that.

What exactly is the totalizer???? Can you give more details???

[fietsenrex]

https://www.predig.com/products/product_...-totalizer

For example, don’t know if rob will/can ADD something like this..
It would be Just a simpel piece of software to count the flow for a certain amount of time, maybe something for V5.1? :p

[Rob Wheatley]

The flow rate sensors on the V4 do have totals on them, so far my hospital tank is on 1.9 million litres!!!!