Neptune programming. Set alarm for when doser is stuck in on position

[chicago]

OK.. so I have the doser set for alk and calcium. Use my iphone to turn lights on and off. to feed ect. Last night by accident I hit the slider by mistake and turned on the doser for the calcium. I did not notice until I got the warning text from trident at midnight that calcium rose to 495. I got lucky as I use a gallon bucket for holding the calcium liquid to dose and it was low.

so how do we set an alarm to tell us lets say

1. Doser has been dosing or on for more than lets say one min.
2. or better yet doser is in the on position past a certain amount of time..

If this were the alk side of my doser.. bad things would have really happened.. thanks

 

[Tastee]

I don’t believe you can do this in the Apex. If any monitored parameters go out of bounds you can alert on that (e.g. pH) but not DOS run time. The ON position of outlets can’t be used as a trigger at all as far as I know.

@SuncrestReef may be able to chime in further.

 

[Daquan44]

Use the when statement. Ex. When On > 001:00 Then OFF
This will shut the outlet off when it has been on for longer than 1 minute. It cannot come back on until you turn it back on.
Use the If error statement in your email outlet to be notified it has been shut off.
If Error [outlet name] Then ON

 

[chicago]

Thanks for the info . that is great..

 

[leepink23]

Use the when statement. Ex. When On > 001:00 Then OFF
This will shut the outlet off when it has been on for longer than 1 minute. It cannot come back on until you turn it back on.
Use the If error statement in your email outlet to be notified it has been shut off.
If Error [outlet name] Then ON

I don’t think this will work if the user switches to on though, because on bypasses the coding. I would create a virtual outlet, I would program it to come on if the doser is on but put a defer in it for whatever time I wanted as a max for the doser. Then in my alarm I would program if that virtual outlet is on then on.

 

[SuncrestReef]

If your DOS uses the graphical schedule, then there is no programmable way to determine when it’s On or Off because it always reports On even when it’s idle. This has been a frequent complaint and Neptune has not provided any way to determine the DOS status using the graphical scheduler.

If you use manual programming and profiles on your DOS, then you do have the ability to check the On/Off status and could use a virtual output to alert when running too long. This would also be able to notify you if you accidentally left in in the manual ON position, though the program could not actually turn it Off since all programming is ignored when in Manual ON.

 

[chicago]

very interesting comments.. thank you ..

 

[leepink23]

very interesting comments.. thank you ..

Are you using a dos or different doser?

 

[chicago]

yep using the dosers made by neptune.

 

[leepink23]

yep using the dosers made by neptune.

Gotcha, Suncrest suggestions would be the best. You may want to move the sliders out of the way or hidden from the screen so you can’t do this.

 

[FinsNgills808]

Unfortunately, I found this post because last week I accidentally switched my DOS to ON and overdosed my tank with vodka! It resulted in a catastrophic disaster! 1 whole liter of vodka went into my 300 gallon system! Lost 6 fish and had to do multiple days of 100% water changes! My whole house smelled of vodka at first then of dead rotting organisms. The slimy bacteria was very very bad.

Thanks to the options suggested in this thread here's what I've come up with.

Created a virtual switch for each of my dosers. Here's an example of my programming for my KH virtual switch named khdosing

Fallback OFF
Set ON
If Alkx10 > 9.20 Then OFF
If Output PUMP_SUMP = OFF Then OFF

Then add a line of code to the DOS to turn off if the virtual switch is off. example

if output khdosing = off then off

I did this for each of my dosers

Finally take the DOS switches set them to auto and take them off your dashboard. Stopping me from accidentally turning them on.

This way if I accidentally slide the virtual switch to on, the doser will just run its normal program.

 

[chicago]

thanks for the additional input. sorry to hear about your disaster. Push forward. been there myself.