What’s next from Apex? (After Trident)

[Mpal771]

Auto frozen feeder would be amazing. There are a few challenges here, biggest one I can think of: what frozen food does it support? Frozen food now days comes in flat sheets, cubes, big chunks, etc. I don’t see Neptune becoming a frozen food maker just to support one piece of hardware. Although they did make crossover diet for the AFS (likely a relabel if I were to guess).

I would hate to see Neptune build a light. It seems like everyone now days builds a tank and a light. I am not sure what they could bring to the light game that would set them apart from all the others out there. People pay a premium for apex because no on else can do what they have done, I don’t see this being true in the lighting world. What feature in lights is missing that apex could implement?

Orange & grey hood?

 

[Allredarms]

I’d like to see a dedicated battery backup module. It would take any generic battery (say a car battery) as an input, and would power the Apex "brain" and run routines for outlets specific to a power outage. I think this could manage limited battery backup power much better than existing systems that power just one dedicated piece of equipment, like a pump. For instance, I'd like to:

1. Turn the lights, dosing pumps, reactors, etc. off (can live without them for 2-3 days).

2. Keep the return pump at low speed for say 3-5 turnovers per hour (assuming DC controllable). This will keep the heater and probes supplied with tank water as well.

3. Keep one heater running as normal. Surely this would be the biggest power draw.

4. Run wavemakers only when the heater isn't running (limit peak draw), and at only 10%.

5. When remaining battery charge drops to 10%, turn everything off and turn on an airstone that is always installed in the main tank.

I could imagine with a system like this you might get 24-48 hours of quality life support (depending on how cold it is outside), and maybe another 48 hours of emergency life support (air stone only) off a car battery.

This module could also have a cellular device built in (for a monthly fee, I'm sure) that could continue to give you notifications and updates even when the power was out.

sigh...dreaming...

This is a great idea

 

[ZaneTer]

P&ID loops. Easier custom programs. How about Trident. Like make it happen!

Proportional, integral and derivative loops is far beyond most people here. That isn’t a slight against anyone but I do see people screwing up their dosing control (that is its most likely use). I work with them daily (senior automation engineer for Siemens). You will be giving people enough rope to hang themselves.

Of course if apex supported key stroke logging then it would be easy to find out if it were the customers fault.....

 

[Reefcowboy]

Po4 and No3 probes would be all needed. Not much I could ask for beoyind that and the trident!

 

[Narniahopper]

A few goofier ideas, not on the hardware side:
1) Audio on cue. Think thunder to accompany lightning.
2) Programming interoperability between multiple Apex units. If you have it on your Fusion dashboard, let them talk to one another.
3) Fix season tables (don't think they REALLY work yet, correct me if I'm wrong).
4) Ability to incorporate local weather data into daily programming. Not sure where to pull data from or how we would use it, but I like the idea of thunderstorm outside equals thunderstorm in my tank. Kind of.

 

[Todd Black]

Price. A neptune Apex on BRS is US$800. here in Australia we pay US$1177.00 and that's with the old powerboard. Allowing us to buy the AUS model from US sites might help?

An AUS version of the EB832 Energy Bar

Greater supply. things like the ATK seem to sell out as soon as they land

The ability to access real time data to create Grafana graphs or add to home automation systems

 

[juanmanuelsanchez]

I would add.... Incorporate a siren to make audible alarms in case something happens!

 

[User]

I would add.... Incorporate a siren to make audible alarms in case something happens!

You can do this by plugging in a 120v buzzer from eBay , or a 12v one with power supply, and creating virtual outlet for your alarm conditions to trigger the outlet

Or buy the lcd screen that came with the older units

 

[chuckies reef]

A plug and play Camera would be nice. Thank You Apex for all you do we should be glad how far you have come in this field. Many would have left this field if not for Apex in my eyes.

 

[juanmanuelsanchez]

You can do this by plugging in a 120v buzzer from eBay , or a 12v one with power supply, and creating virtual outlet for your alarm conditions to trigger the outlet

Or buy the lcd screen that came with the older units

Integrated... I don't know why you should buy this separately

 

[rkpetersen]

You can do this by plugging in a 120v buzzer from eBay , or a 12v one with power supply, and creating virtual outlet for your alarm conditions to trigger the outlet

Or buy the lcd screen that came with the older units

There are other very good reasons to have a Display module, even with the Apex 2016 for which control is web-based, but the alarm is not one of them. It's not very loud and will not wake many people from sleep if they're in a different room. Granted that a built-in loud alarm would be nice addition, but it's easy and cheap enough to set up your own. Get one of these loud piezo buzzers, connect it to one of these cables which then plugs into one of the 24V outlets on the EB832. Program the outlet with this code for an intermittent siren that goes off when the Display alarm does (if you own a display), or you can reference another alert/alarm outlet, or add additional lines of code directly here specifying conditions that keep the alarm off.

Fallback OFF
OSC 000:00/000:02/000:02 Then ON
If Output DisplayAlarm = OFF Then OFF

 

[MPS]

I’d like to be able to edit the chemical graphs. Meaning, delete Bogus entries. Sometimes I get a bad test reading but don’t realize it until I enter it in Fusion. I’ll re-run the test and it comes out correctly but my chart has a point way off the charts now.

 

[jonmos75]

I’d like to be able to edit the chemical graphs. Meaning, delete Bogus entries. Sometimes I get a bad test reading but don’t realize it until I enter it in Fusion. I’ll re-run the test and it comes out correctly but my chart has a point way off the charts now.

You can do this in Fusion:

When on the measurement page click on the Show Measurements Icon (Circled in red)
Then fined the measurement you want to edit or remove and click on the gear icon (Circled in blue)

 

[powers2001]

There are other very good reasons to have a Display module, even with the Apex 2016 for which control is web-based, but the alarm is not one of them. It's not very loud and will not wake many people from sleep if they're in a different room. Granted that a built-in loud alarm would be nice addition, but it's easy and cheap enough to set up your own. Get one of these loud piezo buzzers, connect it to one of these cables which then plugs into one of the 24V outlets on the EB832. Program the outlet with this code for an intermittent siren that goes off when the Display alarm does (if you own a display), or you can reference another alert/alarm outlet, or add additional lines of code directly here specifying conditions that keep the alarm off.

Fallback OFF
OSC 000:00/000:02/000:02 Then ON
If Output DisplayAlarm = OFF Then OFF

$2.50 for one of those piezo buzzers beats $100 Display.

 

[MPS]

You can do this in Fusion:

When on the measurement page click on the Show Measurements Icon (Circled in red)
Then fined the measurement you want to edit or remove and click on the gear icon (Circled in blue)

Much appreciated. If it weren’t for these forums, the Apex would be very difficult to work with. Their documentation leaves much to be desired.

 

[Narniahopper]

WiFi or IOTA compatible Energy Bar would be pretty amazing.

 

[AquaDaddy]

I think allowing users to document their code is paramount. It's one of those fundamental elements that should have been there from the very beginning. Other than that, I understand it's a limited resource company as we're a small hobby market. But, just because we are small doesn't mean we should accept cheap or poor quality. For example, I, like others, have never been able to get a conductivity probe to come even close to my refractometerr or even close to a hygrometer! Excited about the trident though.

 

[roberthu526]

I think allowing users to document their code is paramount. It's one of those fundamental elements that should have been there from the very beginning. Other than that, I understand it's a limited resource company as we're a small hobby market. But, just because we are small doesn't mean we should accept cheap or poor quality. For example, I, like others, have never been able to get a conductivity probe to come even close to my refractometerr or even close to a hygrometer! Excited about the trident though.

Conductivity probe is a joke....
Temp probe on the other hand is almost a must.

 

[MPS]

I think allowing users to document their code is paramount. It's one of those fundamental elements that should have been there from the very beginning. Other than that, I understand it's a limited resource company as we're a small hobby market. But, just because we are small doesn't mean we should accept cheap or poor quality. For example, I, like others, have never been able to get a conductivity probe to come even close to my refractometerr or even close to a hygrometer! Excited about the trident though.

Yeah, funny you mention that. I've been thinking that I must have done something wrong for my brand new Apex to have such drastically different salinity (conductivity) readings than my refractometer.

 

[doughboy]

make apex hardware and software open source