commod0re's UNS R90 Build

[commod0re]

On Monday my new aquarium controller hardware came and I spent both that evening and the following evening getting it set up:

I got this dual-core dosing container from Printed Reef to hold my reference A and B fluids for the ion director and plumbed it in. Now that it’s all hooked up and on, it kinda looks like something you would see in the background in Mr. Freeze’s laboratory… just needs blue dye in the reference fluids haha!

I accidentally ordered extra ref B but not A so will be fixing that mixup this week lol

The probe is doing some kind of preparatory soak right now and I’ll get to take the first measurement with it a bit later today, just after noon, which I’m pretty excited about

Unfortunately, NONE of this stuff, including the power bar, fits into the equipment area in my cabinet…. which is fun since I forgot to check dimensions before I spent all the money. So I will be putting it in the space behind the cabinet instead. The next step on this particular piece of the project will be to 3D print some kind of thing to hold it a little better than this.

On the software side my first impressions are: robust and featureful, but really bad UI. Absolutely awful. As unintuitive as it gets, it reminds me of Panasonic’s PBX management console from the 1990s in a lot of ways lol. At least most of it doesn’t need to be touched once things are configured. I’ll have to figure out how to get all the sensor data into home-assistant for better graphing.

On the tank side: I unfortunately no longer have the conchs. I didn’t see what happened to the tiger conch, the shell turned up empty after a few days, but I did see what happened to the fighting conch: last night, Harry the halloween hermit, committed conch murder, right in front of me. I attempted a rescue operation but it was too late, the conch was done for. All that I managed to accomplish there was to allow the two shrimp to get a few bites in too. Welp! No more conchs in this tank, unless I move Harry to another tank eventually first anyway lol

I still haven’t seen the goby again yet but I now hear the pistol shrimp snap at something else in there, at least once per evening now. I haven’t spotted it but I have clearly heard it. It’s somehow both louder and quieter than I expected lol

One more dose of cipro left on the BJD treatment. I’m pretty sure the smaller duncan did not make it. Every day, I get less confident that this will save the other duncan, but I’m gonna keep the treatment going to the end of the course and cross my fingers that it does work

 

[commod0re]

New lid arrived today:

Extremely pleased with it so far. It seems strong enough in case cats get up there and sealed enough for the looming wrasses

Another thing that arrived today: a couple weeks ago I ordered a pico pack from TBS for my wife to put in her new 10 gallon. She used about half of the sand and most of the rocks. I put what was left into my tank, mostly in the refugium but I did put one rock in the display. I also got a container of sludge and put that in the refugium as well. I left the return pump off for about 20 minutes but that wasn’t long enough for it to fully settle so it briefly clouded up the display tank as well but it’s clearing back up. I’m going to wait until it’s almost completely settled before I run the first measurement with the ion director, probably in another couple of hours.

 

[commod0re]

neato

 

[commod0re]

also interesting is what happened with redox and pH after I added the live rock, sand, and sludge - and it was just 4 fairly small rocks too!

the increase of both parameters began after the return pump started again... interesting! adding the live rock, sand, and sludge had an immediately obvious impact on the environment within the tank - for the better. I'm already thinking about ordering more lol

 

[TheWB]

It didn’t take much patience at least! It only took 1 week to culture 16oz of it into a gallon. It does need a bit of space, not a ton but some

Patience was probably the wrong word to use. What I meant was that I’m very unlikely to properly clean and sterilize the containers between batches. I would have good intentions but then I’ll slack off and the next thing you know the whole setup is just sitting there unused. I really wish I knew someone local to me where I could just stop in a buy some when I want it. The only option for something local I’d have to order it ahead of time from K&P because they never have any extra. That doesn’t work when I just want to pick some up whenever. Not really looking for a subscription. So I do without.

 

[commod0re]

Patience was probably the wrong word to use. What I meant was that I’m very unlikely to properly clean and sterilize the containers between batches. I would have good intentions but then I’ll slack off and the next thing you know the whole setup is just sitting there unused. I really wish I knew someone local to me where I could just stop in a buy some when I want it. The only option for something local I’d have to order it ahead of time from K&P because they never have any extra. That doesn’t work when I just want to pick some up whenever. Not really looking for a subscription. So I do without.

Ah yeah, I completely get that. There’s a very real chance that will happen to me too, and since I don’t really need as much as I can make in a batch, there’s also a reasonable chance that the starter I set aside from my first harvest will actually expire before I can use it to start a second batch… I almost need to get into culturing pods too, just to be sure I can use it fast enough to keep it going lol

 

[overhead]

On Monday my new aquarium controller hardware came and I spent both that evening and the following evening getting it set up:

I got this dual-core dosing container from Printed Reef to hold my reference A and B fluids for the ion director and plumbed it in. Now that it’s all hooked up and on, it kinda looks like something you would see in the background in Mr. Freeze’s laboratory… just needs blue dye in the reference fluids haha!

I accidentally ordered extra ref B but not A so will be fixing that mixup this week lol

The probe is doing some kind of preparatory soak right now and I’ll get to take the first measurement with it a bit later today, just after noon, which I’m pretty excited about

Unfortunately, NONE of this stuff, including the power bar, fits into the equipment area in my cabinet…. which is fun since I forgot to check dimensions before I spent all the money. So I will be putting it in the space behind the cabinet instead. The next step on this particular piece of the project will be to 3D print some kind of thing to hold it a little better than this.

On the software side my first impressions are: robust and featureful, but really bad UI. Absolutely awful. As unintuitive as it gets, it reminds me of Panasonic’s PBX management console from the 1990s in a lot of ways lol. At least most of it doesn’t need to be touched once things are configured. I’ll have to figure out how to get all the sensor data into home-assistant for better graphing.

On the tank side: I unfortunately no longer have the conchs. I didn’t see what happened to the tiger conch, the shell turned up empty after a few days, but I did see what happened to the fighting conch: last night, Harry the halloween hermit, committed conch murder, right in front of me. I attempted a rescue operation but it was too late, the conch was done for. All that I managed to accomplish there was to allow the two shrimp to get a few bites in too. Welp! No more conchs in this tank, unless I move Harry to another tank eventually first anyway lol

I still haven’t seen the goby again yet but I now hear the pistol shrimp snap at something else in there, at least once per evening now. I haven’t spotted it but I have clearly heard it. It’s somehow both louder and quieter than I expected lol

One more dose of cipro left on the BJD treatment. I’m pretty sure the smaller duncan did not make it. Every day, I get less confident that this will save the other duncan, but I’m gonna keep the treatment going to the end of the course and cross my fingers that it does work

Sorry to hear about the conchs. I thought about getting larger hermits, but stuck with the blue leg hermits hoping they would be a little more peaceful and less likely to do crab stuff. I hear my tiger pistol as well, usually a couple of times a day whenever one of my peppermint shrimp wanders too close to an opening under the rock. My goby is still missing as well, I searched the tank looking for bones thinking my ******* of a Royal Gramma may have finally killed it, but I don't see any. Could be dead under the rock for all I know.

That controller set up looks pretty cool and can feel your pain about bad UI's. I am an aviation dork and set up an ADSB receiver in my house using a Raspberry pi. People can write awesome software to collect, interpret, catalog data and display it on a map, use multilateration to fix aircraft locations that are not transmitting their location data, etc but somehow to set it up or to change something I still have to manually update some text configuration file(s) to get it to work. I feel like it is a test to determine if I am cool enough to run the software or not.

 

[commod0re]

Sorry to hear about the conchs. I thought about getting larger hermits, but stuck with the blue leg hermits hoping they would be a little more peaceful and less likely to do crab stuff. I hear my tiger pistol as well, usually a couple of times a day whenever one of my peppermint shrimp wanders too close to an opening under the rock. My goby is still missing as well, I searched the tank looking for bones thinking my ******* of a Royal Gramma may have finally killed it, but I don't see any. Could be dead under the rock for all I know.

Oh yeah I knew this was a risk going in, because halloween hermits are specifically adapted to cone shells with the side openings like conchs. None of my other crabs gave the conchs even a glance because it's not the shape of shell they care about... and normally, I would be able to say that Harry is my most peaceful crab, I've never seen him fight other crabs or pull other snails out of their shells and he was the very very first animal I put in my previous saltwater tank like a year and a half ago

That controller set up looks pretty cool and can feel your pain about bad UI's. I am an aviation dork and set up an ADSB receiver in my house using a Raspberry pi. People can write awesome software to collect, interpret, catalog data and display it on a map, use multilateration to fix aircraft locations that are not transmitting their location data, etc but somehow to set it up or to change something I still have to manually update some text configuration file(s) to get it to work. I feel like it is a test to determine if I am cool enough to run the software or not.

Thanks! It's been a satisfying exercise so far setting it up in spite of the difficulty. I've worked with a lot of different kinds of electronics and software over the years but this is my first brush with something like a Programmable Logic Controller. I think if I were already used to PLCs specifically, I would find parts of this interface less obtuse, or at least more familiar. The upside is that the manuals for it are detailed about how to set things up, so even though the interface is a bit clunky, it's not actually all that hard to achieve desired configurations. Although even with that, there are like 4-5 parallel manuals that each cover slightly different things, so I might have to search through more than one to find the answer on how to do something that I want to do, or to find a more detailed explanation of something that was mentioned in another manual

Something I've noticed as both a professional software engineer and an open source enthusiast is that polishing a setup/configuration flow is boring work, and especially if you're contributing in your free time vs getting paid, you often want to bang on something more interesting. And the config file is "good enough" so it would inevitably take a back seat to developing or improving more pertinent features. And then if that goes on long enough, more and more of the most enthusiastic+vocal users will actually defend the config file and create additional/unexpected friction around improving it... and at the same time, users have gotten both dumber and meaner in recent years, which contributes to accelerated burnout of the devs (who wants to keep doing free stuff for users who are so ungrateful?) so they spend less and less time on the project in general... anyway I digress

 

[overhead]

That makes sense

Oh yeah I knew this was a risk going in, because halloween hermits are specifically adapted to cone shells with the side openings like conchs. None of my other crabs gave the conchs even a glance because it's not the shape of shell they care about... and normally, I would be able to say that Harry is my most peaceful crab, I've never seen him fight other crabs or pull other snails out of their shells and he was the very very first animal I put in my previous saltwater tank like a year and a half ago


Thanks! It's been a satisfying exercise so far setting it up in spite of the difficulty. I've worked with a lot of different kinds of electronics and software over the years but this is my first brush with something like a Programmable Logic Controller. I think if I were already used to PLCs specifically, I would find parts of this interface less obtuse, or at least more familiar. The upside is that the manuals for it are detailed about how to set things up, so even though the interface is a bit clunky, it's not actually all that hard to achieve desired configurations. Although even with that, there are like 4-5 parallel manuals that each cover slightly different things, so I might have to search through more than one to find the answer on how to do something that I want to do, or to find a more detailed explanation of something that was mentioned in another manual

Something I've noticed as both a professional software engineer and an open source enthusiast is that polishing a setup/configuration flow is boring work, and especially if you're contributing in your free time vs getting paid, you often want to bang on something more interesting. And the config file is "good enough" so it would inevitably take a back seat to developing or improving more pertinent features. And then if that goes on long enough, more and more of the most enthusiastic+vocal users will actually defend the config file and create additional/unexpected friction around improving it... and at the same time, users have gotten both dumber and meaner in recent years, which contributes to accelerated burnout of the devs (who wants to keep doing free stuff for users who are so ungrateful?) so they spend less and less time on the project in general... anyway I digress

That makes sense. I run an audio feed of air traffic control from an antenna on my roof up to Liveatc.com. They don't make a bunch of money providing the audio. They send you a build, you install it on a pi and hook up a couple of SDR's to an antenna. They then log in to set up the frequencies. I wanted to do the configs, or atleast understand them, but they said it would take longer to show me than it would for them to log in and do it...I asked for a manual, not available. I get it from them, there is no money in what they are doing and if everyone asked to do what I wanted to do it would just take up their time. I started messing around with it and figured it out, but it took time. The ADSB data goes up to ADSBexchange.com, airplane tracking data can be valuable, but I am not sure if that company is selling the data or not. They may just live on advertising on their site. Their software was a little easier to use and required no help from them so I am not sure how their support is. There is also a larger community of people using the software. I wanted to look at and export some of the raw ADSB data because I was working on a little project to use a projector to display planes passing over my house on the ceiling that also displayed speed, altitude, type, etc (told you I am an aviation dork). I had to figure that out myself, but it was not that hard...never did get the projector to work. If I spent less time picking algae out of my tanks by hand maybe I would have time to get back to that project.

I am just a simple systems admin/project manager/technical manager, I don't do a ton of coding, My brain is not cut out for it, both my brothers are programmers.

 

[commod0re]

I run an audio feed of air traffic control from an antenna on my roof up to Liveatc.com. They don't make a bunch of money providing the audio. They send you a build, you install it on a pi and hook up a couple of SDR's to an antenna. They then log in to set up the frequencies. I wanted to do the configs, or atleast understand them, but they said it would take longer to show me than it would for them to log in and do it...I asked for a manual, not available. I get it from them, there is no money in what they are doing and if everyone asked to do what I wanted to do it would just take up their time. I started messing around with it and figured it out, but it took time. The ADSB data goes up to ADSBexchange.com, airplane tracking data can be valuable, but I am not sure if that company is selling the data or not. They may just live on advertising on their site.

My second computing job was doing a combination of IT and writing acceptance test suites in python for a local small engineering company that makes VHF transceivers and receivers for marine AIS and while we _did_ have manuals available that explained how to configure, communicate, parse serial data output, (it was all using defined standards anyway), we almost always performed the initial configuration (and, sometimes, the actual physical installation as well) for all clients for the same reason: it got them up and running much faster and more reliably to have an expert set it up initially, and so so few of them ever wanted to know how to set it up themselves anyway. Also, doing the preconfig allowed them to be sure that the receiver data feed back to their own system was set up and working. They had (probably still have) a custom serial data multiplexer that would receive serial data from various different receivers over a tcp port, combine it all together, and then output the combined feed. While collecting it also output the combined feed in multiple streams as well, a couple for use internally mainly for marketing and testing stuff, and the external outputs were all either paid or traded for. I would be surprised if something similar wasn't happening with that ADSB data. FlightAware gives a free Enterprise account to anyone who sends them a copy of their feed, so it must be pretty valuable

I wanted to look at and export some of the raw ADSB data because I was working on a little project to use a projector to display planes passing over my house on the ceiling that also displayed speed, altitude, type, etc (told you I am an aviation dork).

I live fairly near to two airports and also multiple military bases involving planes, and I have one of those USB SDR dongles around here somewhere, so I've considered trying to set up some of the open source software projects that can read and export the data and also visualize it, but have never really gotten around to actually doing it. Seems like a fun project though

I am just a simple systems admin/project manager/technical manager, I don't do a ton of coding, My brain is not cut out for it, both my brothers are programmers.

I've pretty much always done both, when I started with computers you almost had to be able to do both in order to have access to the widest variety of fun with it. for most systems administration I've leaned heavily on the linux/unix side for... gosh probably 25 years now, and so am generally pretty comfortable with the text configuration files. Having a lot of dev experience in that area too just solidifies my understanding of why there are so many things that still use them. It has its advantages but it's not always the most usable or intuitive, and it kinda seems like the older a given project is, the weirder its configs can be lol

 

[overhead]

My second computing job was doing a combination of IT and writing acceptance test suites in python for a local small engineering company that makes VHF transceivers and receivers for marine AIS and while we _did_ have manuals available that explained how to configure, communicate, parse serial data output, (it was all using defined standards anyway), we almost always performed the initial configuration (and, sometimes, the actual physical installation as well) for all clients for the same reason: it got them up and running much faster and more reliably to have an expert set it up initially, and so so few of them ever wanted to know how to set it up themselves anyway. Also, doing the preconfig allowed them to be sure that the receiver data feed back to their own system was set up and working. They had (probably still have) a custom serial data multiplexer that would receive serial data from various different receivers over a tcp port, combine it all together, and then output the combined feed. While collecting it also output the combined feed in multiple streams as well, a couple for use internally mainly for marketing and testing stuff, and the external outputs were all either paid or traded for. I would be surprised if something similar wasn't happening with that ADSB data. FlightAware gives a free Enterprise account to anyone who sends them a copy of their feed, so it must be pretty valuable

I am not sure how either site manages all the inputs they receive. ADSBExchange is open source and does not filter traffic, they show military traffic and traffic that has requested the FAA block all their information. That is how that kid was tracking Elon Musk's jet all over the place. That just means they FAA will not provide them flight plan information or any other data the FAA may hold reference the plane or flight. Flightaware follows all the rules, they block most military traffic and block information from people that request it. For instance, a nationwide major flight school had a young student take a plane out, stop talking to ATC and decided to commit suicide, sadly, by crashing the plane. People tracked the flight and made videos about it (which is sort of gross), after that the school changed the ownership name for all their planes and asked the FAA to block their information so people could not track their flights. I can still see them on ADSBExchange and obviously can see them on my own receiver and can see them while in flight with the portable ADSB receiver I use.Flightaware also sells their flight tracking services to smaller carriers and other parties that might want it. I could set up my software to feed multiple ADSB tracking sites, including Flightaware, I just have never done it.

I live fairly near to two airports and also multiple military bases involving planes, and I have one of those USB SDR dongles around here somewhere, so I've considered trying to set up some of the open source software projects that can read and export the data and also visualize it, but have never really gotten around to actually doing it. Seems like a fun project though

It would be fun, I think there are a couple of programs up on github that will do something like that. A small company has made digital boards that will show the airline, altitude, destination, etc in writing, I believe they hook up to Flightaware via the internet and do not need a local antenna, but I am not sure. They are called "Flightwall". I am within 15 miles of a joint field which is mostly navy (I am literally under the final approach for one runway), the Navy master jet base for the east coast, Langley air force base and Norfolk international airport. Lots of traffic around here.

I've pretty much always done both, when I started with computers you almost had to be able to do both in order to have access to the widest variety of fun with it. for most systems administration I've leaned heavily on the linux/unix side for... gosh probably 25 years now, and so am generally pretty comfortable with the text configuration files. Having a lot of dev experience in that area too just solidifies my understanding of why there are so many things that still use them. It has its advantages but it's not always the most usable or intuitive, and it kinda seems like the older a given project is, the weirder its configs can be lol

My very first job in IT was running a BIND server and a couple of Apache servers for a small local company. Man, that was a long time ago. I don't mind configuration files or text editors; I just would prefer I know what the heck I am doing....wait a minute, I had no idea what I a was doing the first time I set up a zone file, but at least I had some documentation. Funny to think about, but when I switched to the Windows world back in 2000 or so I was like a DNS expert to them because of my BIND experience when in reality I did not know much. I can certainly write a script to do simple things, I just don't have the focus to write an entire "program" to do much of anything. I somehow ended up in the identity space years ago and never left, not much need for coding beyond writing scripts to pull data from a database or to pull errors from logs. Don't get me started on old projects, some of the stuff we tried to upgrade or transition when I worked on a military contract was often written by someone that died 20 years ago, lol.

Sorry for sidetracking your tank thread!!!!!

 

[TheWB]

Ah yeah, I completely get that. There’s a very real chance that will happen to me too, and since I don’t really need as much as I can make in a batch, there’s also a reasonable chance that the starter I set aside from my first harvest will actually expire before I can use it to start a second batch… I almost need to get into culturing pods too, just to be sure I can use it fast enough to keep it going lol

It’s kinda a real problem, isn’t it?

 

[commod0re]

The thawing cup that came with my Top Lid is nice

Went to both Sea King and Saltwater City yesterday to grab a few things, mostly more snails (2 turbos and 10 astraeas), a pincushion urchin, some more salt, some sexy shrimp for my wife’s tank.

The urchin is pretty cool looking. It’s noticeably bigger than the tuxedo urchin. Close to the size of a baseball I’d say if that makes sense. Seems like the tips of its spines are light pink which is pretty neat. Both urchins are surprisingly active around the tank, which is pretty fun to watch


I also picked up a Neptune magnetic probe rack for my GHL probes. $65 for this thing feels like it’s about 3x the price it should be. In light of that my review will be harsher than usual, because a premium price demands premium quality.

It does look better than a dangling pile. The magnet is strong enough and it fits my probes. The threads in the block are clean and well formed, so the screws don’t bind up. However, they chose a fine thread pitch, the screws are long and fully threaded, and it comes with them fully inserted into the block. Each one needs to be almost fully unscrewed before a probe can fit and with the fine thread pitch, it takes a lot of turns. And they’re all thumb screws. That mostly only matters during the initial setup, but for that much money I expect a little more thought put into that aspect of the product. It’s not enough to make me dislike it or regret the purchase, but I would have gone for a cheaper generic one if either store had one lol

Both of my zoa rocks were getting too overgrown with turf algae and none of the inverts seem to want to help with it, probably at least too much length. So I set up and did a 10 minute hydrogen peroxide dip and used a toothbrush to remove every last bit of the algae before I moved them back to the tank. Hopefully it won’t be long before the zoas open back up. Some of them haven’t been open in a while because of the algae, but they all still look alive at least

I think the 10 day treatment course saved the one duncan from BJD. I’m now just keeping an eye on that coral to see if it starts to improve again. The fish and crabs are doing well at least