Apex no comm

143MPCo · May 19, 2016

Ryan, humor me for a second with this question; do you have the base unit installed with the optional external power supply and is that optional DC power supply connected to a UPS?

143MPCo · May 19, 2016

https://www.neptunesystems.com/downloads/docs/Comprehensive_Reference_Manual.pdf

How do I setup my Apex to notify me of a power failure?

The Apex base unit and the EB8 module can each detect power interruptions and you can test for this in your email alarm outlet program. The key to being successful here is to keep power to the base unit and your network equipment long enough to send the email. The base unit accepts power from two sources - the EB8 via the USB looking AquaBus connection or via a DC adapter (Neptune P/N PS12, 500ma output, 12v, 2.1mm tip, center electrode positive). To insure you keep power long enough, get a small UPS. It only needs to be big enough to power the base unit, your router and modem and your PC (assuming you don't use a laptop). A UPS in the 300 - 500Va capacity should be more than enough.

In the configuration → outlet setup page, the following statements for the emailAlm (email) or the SndAlm (audible) outlets should do the trick (example assumes you have a single EB8, number 3):

Set OFF
If Power EB8_3 Off 001 Then ON <--this detects if the EB8 loses power
If Power Apex Off 001 Then ON <--this detects if the base unit loses power

You might wonder, if the base unit is on a UPS, how would the "If Power Apex" statement ever be true. Normally it wouldn't, the UPS will prevent that unless of course its battery fails. But anytime you reboot the base unit, it is momentarily without power and will recognize that as a power failure, triggering the alarm condition. If your base unit reboots on you during the middle of the day, you’ll know about it. Of course, the EB8 gets its power from the wall and would note any normal power interruption. If you wanted to limit these emails to only if the power has been out for a couple of minutes, you can use the new Defer command.

Version: 5.0 Page 142

Beginning with release 4.03 a new option has been added to the System – Misc Setup menu. Called Power Monitor, this option will enable the base unit to sense a loss of power on the supplemental 12v power port. This gives you the ability to put your EB8 on a UPS and plug the 12v adapter into a regular wall outlet. If power fails, the ‘If Power Apex’ statement will detect it while the UPS provides uninterrupted power to the EB8 and through that, the base unit. The default for this option is ‘OFF’ so make sure you set it through the display module if you want to use this feature.

After sending you the email alarm, the Apex will wait a short while before sending another email message to avoid streaming dozens of emails to you regarding the same condition. This delay, known as the “re-email delay” is defined in your email configuration in the configuration → network setup page. You can set it to however many minutes you want. The default is 5 minutes.

rayn · May 19, 2016

143MPCo said:
Ryan, humor me for a second with this question; do you have the base unit installed with the optional external power supply and is that optional DC power supply connected to a UPS?

No I don't. Gonna be looking into this now. I have the ecotech battery for the vortech if that works somehow.

rayn · May 19, 2016

Sabellafella said:
Hows the qts and tank doing?

Thanks for the concern! Everyone seems to have weathered it fine.

143MPCo · May 19, 2016

rayn said:
No I don't. Gonna be looking into this now. I have the ecotech battery for the vortech if that works somehow.

A simple rule-of-thumb calculation you can use to determine how much UPS is as follows:

1.6 * Wattage Load = Minimum Volt-Amperes (VA)

Volt-Amperes are the standard measurement used to describe the capacity of UPS units. Using the equation above we see that the minimum VA rating we’d want for our 400w needs would be a 640 VA rated system.

Now that you have a minimum rating, the next question is most likely: How long will that minimum system run the setup? After all you’re getting a battery backup system for your EB8 to keep everything running when the power is out, for as log as possible or as much as you can afford.

Unfortunately there isn’t a super quick rule-of-thumb calculation for determining the runtime like there is for determining the necessary minimum VA. In order to calculate the estimate runtime of a UPS system you need to know four things: the VA rating of the UPS unit, the number of battery cells in the UPS unit, the DV voltage rating of those batteries, the capacity (or Ampere-Hours) of the batteries. Unfortunately not all of this information is easily cribbed off of a simple web site listing for the product you’re interested in running the calculation on so you’ll likely need to dig through a PDF of the manual, supplemental documents, and so on to get it all. In other words, it’s a huge pain.

Once you have all the requisite information, however, you can plug it into the following equation:

( Battery Voltage * AH Rating * Efficiency) / VA Rating = X
X * 60 = Estimated Run Time in Minutes

Pretending we’re looking at a theoretical UPS unit that has the following specs:

VA Rating: 700
Battery Voltage: 12
AH: 9
Efficiency: 0.9 (90%)

When we plug those numbers into the equation we get the following:

( 12 * 9 * 0.9 ) / 700 = 0.139
0.139 * 60 = 8.3 minutes

So this particular UPS unit could sustain the system under full load for a little over eight minutes (longer if the system is under partial load) and long enough for the Apex/Fusion to email you the power is out yet again.

Hope that is somewhat helpful.

rayn · May 19, 2016

Yes, yes it is. Gonna re read it so I COMLETELY understand.

Is this a cheaper option then a generator? Or is this just another tool in our arsenal?

143MPCo · May 19, 2016

rayn said:
Yes, yes it is. Gonna re read it so I COMLETELY understand.

Is this a cheaper option then a generator? Or is this just another tool in our arsenal?

This is shortterm, depending on duration of outage a generator should be kept on standby.

It's "somewhat" cheaper depending on size of the unit you decide to buy, and is meant to alert you so that in a long duration outage you can pull out the ole generator and get things working until power is restored.

rayn · May 19, 2016

The amount of money we spend just to keep tanks running!

I can count on one hand the number of times I have lost power for any length of time in 20 years. But the one time...

Sabellafella · May 19, 2016

Wow so glad to here things turned out ok, unfortunantly im a ticking time bomb and havnt bought a generator yet. But seeing your thread the other day really made me start to save up for one. Powerouts are so stressful and ill be going absolutly crazy if i had to deal with one without backup power

jonmos75 · May 19, 2016

rayn said:
How isn't it set up correctly? If it looses power it is suppose to alert me. If the whole house looses power, it looses connection to fusion. Fusion should have alerted me.

At least that's how understood it to work.

That is not correct the Apex does not have a monitoring system that tells you that it has lost communication. This would be a great feature and maybe someday in the future it could have this capability, but as it stands today it does not.

That being said I use reeftronics.net for this feature and other features that it offers in conjunction to my APEX Fusion.

rayn · May 19, 2016

Sabellafella said:
Wow so glad to here things turned out ok, unfortunantly im a ticking time bomb and havnt bought a generator yet. But seeing your thread the other day really made me start to save up for one. Powerouts are so stressful and ill be going absolutly crazy if i had to deal with one without backup power

I should get one too. I can borrow one from work if I need to though. All I could think of was loumaggs post about her tank crash. I showed the wife and she even said she was worried about it. My fish aren't near as big as hers were though, or as many yet.