melev

Right before my trip to Arizona, I spent Thursday installing the Apex controller on my system, replacing the Aquacontroller 3 that I've had for several years. I prefer never to make a big change before a trip, but the AC3 had to be rebooted internally and I lost connectivity with it. Unable to check on the tank over the web when traveling is bad news, so I gritted my teeth and took the plunge and hoped that I would get lucky this time.

What I have is the Apex brain, the display module, an Energy Bar 8 (EB8) for the light rack over the tank, and EB8 for some items under the tank, and an EB4 for the heaters. Each Energy Bar has a 15 amp limit, and I don't want to exceed what they can provide. In addition, I ordered a 15' extension cable because I needed pretty much 21' of USB cable from the EB8 on the lightrack to the brain under the frag tank. And finally, I ordered a power supply that is plugged into a UPS. If the power goes out (and the Energy Bars are powerless), the UPS will provide the juice to the power supply so the Apex can notify me. [[ The Apex gets its power from the Energy Bar via USB wires. ]]

During the setup period, I was trying to make sure it could email and text me if something set off an alarm - an item outside of the desired parameters. As expected, t his took much longer than anticipated and the controller froze up and rebooted almost as if it was possessed. I wasn't feeling to secure about this new upgrade, but I was also out of time and options.

Since leaving town, I've been using the Apex App on my iPhone3 and the iPad2, as well as the web-login with Safari. You might say I'm a tad nervous since I wasn't even home to watch it operate for a single day. Here are a few screenshots from the Apex App.

Temperature:
Temperature is very important and as I was leaving town I was worried that the Apex might not even turn any of them on. I have three 300w heaters. I wanted these powered by the EB4, which can handle 15 amps. The heaters combined would use 9 amps. So one was plugged into the Apex, and two heaters were plugged into the wall to assure that heat was available during the cold nights.

Of course, Day 1 my city hit 81F and the HVAC was set to heat-only. I didn't expect to have to cool my house in January (aka Winter). The tank temperature rose up to 81.1 on Friday, and the Icecap fan turned on and ran until the tank finally got back down to 78.5F. Had the tank gotten up to 82F, all the lights would have shut off to help prevent the tank getting hotter. That night, the temperature in Fort Worth got down around 20F (crazy, right?) and here's the graph since Friday until tonight.



pH:
The pH measurement has been pretty stable. The graph shows a single spike where I was calibrating it prior to departure. Looks like the system is running 7.9 to 8.1 now.



ORP:
The ORP level of the tank has been going up and down, and looks really dramatic in this next screenshot. This simply measures the oxygen level in the water. Trapped CO2 in the house can drive this down, and of course adding food to the tank can affect this measurement.



Outlets:
I have a number of outlets programmed into the Apex, and in the future can add more, including "virtual outlets". Here's what I can not only see, but control remotely if desired.





I can also see how much electricity is used by each Energy Bar. This is one with 8 outlets.
This is the light rack that runs the three Metal Halides, the VHO fluorescent bulbs, and the moonlights. This pulls the most power at 10amps at a time daily.


This is the EB4 that powers the heaters. I'll have to fine-tune these when I get home. Ideally, I don't want them ti cycle on and off but rather hit that sweet spot where they come on for a period and then don't have to come on again for a few hours. This graph is just for one day so it can be read more easily.


Here is the screenshot of the other EB8 that powers the refugium light, the frag tank lighting, the Skimmer Swabbie and the Icecap fan. As you can see, it doesn't pull much at all with all the LED lighting.


I'll provide pictures of the actual gear when I'm home again. For now, you can see what I'm tracking.