Rethinking how we interpret reef tank data…

[sg1.025]

Still rough… but I’ve been experimenting with a different way to interpret reef tank data.

Instead of just displaying numbers, the goal is to surface what actually matters — and help guide decisions.

A few early UI concepts exploring that idea:

https://openreeflabs.com

Curious what you’d want surfaced first — trends, alerts, or recommendations?

 

[Mebbid]

Is this going to be a stand alone monitoring ecosystem or is it going to be organizing and displaying information from existing controllers?

As for what I want to see first, definitely alerts.

 

[firechild]

Can you give a bit more of a rundown on what you're trying to achieve? What sort of intelligence does this have? I can just see charted parameters and an alert if one of them is offline. How is the alert sent (or is it just on the dashboard)?

 

[sg1.025]

Is this going to be a stand alone monitoring ecosystem or is it going to be organizing and displaying information from existing controllers?

As for what I want to see first, definitely alerts.

Hey Mebbid... thanks for reaching out....

Great question — honestly, I’ve been thinking about it as both.

Short term, I’m focused on ingesting and organizing data from existing controllers (Apex, Hydros, etc.) so people can see things in a different way without replacing what they already have.

Longer term, I’m interested in where it could go beyond that — especially around redundancy, validation, and smarter decision-making.

And that’s really helpful on alerts — that’s exactly the direction I’ve been leaning. Not just alerts, but making them more meaningful and less noisy.

 

[Doctor Derp]

Graphs. You discovered graphs.

 

[sg1.025]

Can you give a bit more of a rundown on what you're trying to achieve? What sort of intelligence does this have? I can just see charted parameters and an alert if one of them is offline. How is the alert sent (or is it just on the dashboard)?

Firechild.... thanks for your question...

That’s fair — what you’re seeing right now is still pretty early, and honestly a lot of it is just charted parameters and basic alerts at the moment.

The part I’m really interested in isn’t the charts themselves, it’s what sits on top of them.

Instead of just saying “pH is 8.1” or “temp is 78”, the goal is to start understanding context and change over time — and surface what actually matters.

For example:

• Not just “temp is 78.5”, but “temp has risen 2° in 10 minutes and that’s unusual for your system”
• Not just “pH is 8.1”, but “pH has been trending down for 3 days — here are a few likely causes”

So more signal, less noise.

On alerts specifically — I’m still figuring that out, but I don’t want it to just be dashboard-only. Ideally it would support things like push/email (and eventually smarter escalation based on severity).

Right now it’s very much an early exploration, but the long-term goal is less about displaying data and more about helping interpret it.

 

[sg1.025]

Graphs. You discovered graphs.

Doctor Derp.... all feedback is great!!!

Fair
Right now it definitely looks like graphs — that’s the easy part.

The part I’m interested in is what sits on top of them — figuring out what actually matters vs just showing everything.

For example, instead of just charting temp/pH, the goal is to highlight things like unusual trends, correlations, or early warning signals before they become obvious.

Still early, but that’s the direction.

 

[Mebbid]

Hey Mebbid... thanks for reaching out....

Great question — honestly, I’ve been thinking about it as both.

Short term, I’m focused on ingesting and organizing data from existing controllers (Apex, Hydros, etc.) so people can see things in a different way without replacing what they already have.

Longer term, I’m interested in where it could go beyond that — especially around redundancy, validation, and smarter decision-making.

And that’s really helpful on alerts — that’s exactly the direction I’ve been leaning. Not just alerts, but making them more meaningful and less noisy.

Ideally, people will want to be able to customize what they see and where and in what order.

 

[sg1.025]

Ideally, people will want to be able to customize what they see and where and in what order.

Mebbid, that’s definitely part of it — giving people (like yourself) control over layout and priority.

Where I think it gets more interesting is when the system starts to adjust that for you based on what’s happening.

For example:

• If something starts trending out of range, it shouldn’t stay buried — it should move forward automatically
• If a parameter hasn’t changed in weeks, it probably doesn’t need to take up prime space

So instead of a static dashboard, it becomes something that adapts to what’s actually going on in the tank.

Still early, but that’s the direction I’m exploring.