Suggestions for improvements

[offgridQLD]

First of thanks for restoring the classic's that vanished. I got to play with Mymidnite for the first time today. Overall I like it (Great being able to check my system on my I phone when I am out and about ) and I'm sure it will only get better with a few tweaks.

Improvements.

Voltage needs to be more defined. At the moment its scaled to round out in 1.0v increments. It really needs to be in 0.1v scale. For example my system voltage settles down to around 51.0V in the evening and by 11pm or so I like to see 50.7V or so to know things are in check. So that range from 50 - 51V can tell me a lot about what my system is doing.

On a 12v battery the difference between 12.8v and 12.00v is just 0.8v but the to voltages would signify roughly 100% SOC and 50% SOC condition. Seeing your system at 13v one moment  and 12v the next could be alarming 

2nd issue more of a bug I think.

Even though I can see that every day my battery has spent several hr's in float by checking the local app and the classic its self. When I get mymidnite to display.( time in float) and looking at the little window on the left and in the graphs it always shows zero hrs float time. So something is wrong there.

3rd perhaps a bug as well.

The data shown on the log looks to be a day behind.

Keep up the good work

Kurt.

[atop8918]

Thanks, Kurt,
These are al great catches and exactly what I need to help get the site locked up.

I think I've got my offline version handling the decimals properly now -- your point is well taken about battery SOC.

The float time is a known bug: it's on my list though and I should be able to get that working when I get back into the database module.

As for the data being a day behind -- I made some poor timezone correction decisions that I'll be working on once the bigger bugs have been squashed.

Again, thanks for your help on these bugs,
-Andrew

[atop8918]

I just released the latest changes to the website. Please let me know what you think.
Major features include:
- sticky settings for chart values and widget states
- improved charting performance
- full resolution on larger chart
- "improved" device badge incorporating instantaneous values from the most recent data read and re-arranged icons

There are still a lot of bugs, but I'm trekking through them now. Please let us know when you find any issues.

Thanks!
-Andrew

[dgd]

Andrew,  excellent improvements, the graphs look much more refined and useful. I like the classic status info too, much neater. Good work, thanks...

Dgd

[dgd]

A couple of suggestions.
On the actual graph window is included upper left the colour boxes and what they represent, watts, PV volts etc..
These appear to be in a sub-window that encroaches half way over the main graph window and will obscure any data below.
I would suggest removing these from the main graph window as it is fairly evident what the different colours represent from their scales and the text displayed in the Classic ID window at left.
The graph does not auto refresh so what about a refresh button, perhaps up where the daily, weekly etc buttons are.
The ? button removes the description text. Whatabout a similar button above each Classic so thatit can be made visible/invisible in its system display.

Nice to see ongoing fixes, my main graph display now updates when the slider moves to a different time period.

Still wishing for a button associated with each Classic display that just displays the qnode/14 screen for that Classic. Graphs are nice but its still nice to see a good text list of connections and data.

dgd

[offgridQLD]

+1 on the idea of just raw text data option . In the end its the text numbers that are more handy - to me anyhow.

Kurt

[boB]

OR, maybe, be able to export a CSV file for the tabular text data ?

boB

[dgd]

More suggestions.
I see about 4 connections per hour so graphic resolution is about 15 minutes,  I would find a higher time resolution more useful, 5 minutes would be good.
Month and year graphs, are these not wishful thinking?  I cannot see how realistic or useful these would be, week maybe but barely, daily or a few days certainly. I would forget the long term storage and increase the number of data points to 5 minute intervals. If anyone wants to get long(er) term reports then that CSV file dump that boB suggests would allow users to collect and save short term data.

Can we get the Classic's ID back into the  Clasic panel on LHS?

Dgd

[atop8918]

Good ideas all, thanks for the feedback.

I am working on a download option so that csv data will be available. There will also be a firmware update which will increase the datapoint resolution somewhat.

[dgd]

suggestion.
Where multiple Classics are displayed it would be nice to have the time horizontal scale of each Classic graph box line up so that time events are in the same vertical axis.
Difficult since each Classic seems to make its data calls to MyMidnite at different times.
So could there be a FOLLOWME setting that aligns all Classics to make these MyMidnite connections at the same time?

dgd

[TomW]

Just curious if it might be more sensible to get the basics rock solid and then do the tweaking to "features"?

I guess My simplistic view is the car needs to drive properly before you add the air conditioning, heated seats, blue tooth and GPS?

Just from the peanut gallery.

Tom

[dgd]

Just curious if it might be more sensible to get the basics rock solid and then do the tweaking to "features"?

I guess My simplistic view is the car needs to drive properly before you add the air conditioning, heated seats, blue tooth and GPS?

Just from the peanut gallery.

Tom

Ok, not sure if you mean rock solid MyMidnite or rock solid Classic.
If its MyMidnite then the advances made in the last week or so have transformed this reporting system.

The 1401 release fixing the sparse data issue and the graph improvements, not least the width size change, have moved MyMidnite into being a very useful graphic reporting system. All of the background fixes Andrew has acheived have also made it closer to rock solid reliability. I really feel we are at the stage of having a worthwhile MyMidnite and cosmetic changes as well
as aditional features are really useful fine tuning and greatly enhance the user experience.

I, probably like you and others, gave up with the local app, the only part of it that interested me was the meter dashboard,
the reporting was too little, gappy and needed the app to be running reliably for extended periods to gather data, even now I get 'Connection Closed error box after I leave it for a while - hence gaps in data.  The config stuff was only necessary for the LITE classics and even then one of the most important config setting DATE and TIME was not there.

This is where MyMidnite is proving an excellent reporting system, albeit only graphical at the moment, but I am hoping Andrew will get the node14 text/numerical list into it then we can get a complete data report.

I, for one, am definitely encouraged by this progress, and it must be a significant addition to the Midnite Classic system, hopefully encouraging others to become Classic users...   

dgd

[unyalli]

An app for Android, Ubuntu/Debian, Raspbian, etc... that would run via cron job polling all information into a text file then let me design the display would be beyond awesome.

- Jeff

[TomW]

dgd;

I guess my view is "overall" and not any specific piece of the puzzle. I agree there is a LOT of improvement lately and I meant nothing negative by my comments.

Bottom line for me is the ability to grab data and process it locally. The local app is cute and all but I still have issues with the live data and disconnects. Probably related to the severe lack of support for Linux by Adobe and the ancient version I have to use.

I am also likely one of very few users more interested in the raw data to process locally than the online buzzers and bells.

To be brutally honest we have our system in place for if / when power is unavailable via the grid and if / when the grid  fails the internet will be one of the dependent systems that will fail. When / if that day comes I want to be able to monitor my system here without the need for outside systems. No, I am not paranoid, just practical and I know I can only truly rely on myself.


Just my situation.

Just sayin..

Tom

[TomW]

An app for Android, Ubuntu/Debian, Raspbian, etc... that would run via cron job polling all information into a text file then let me design the display would be beyond awesome.

- Jeff

Jeff;

Some users are already doing this, thanks to RossW. Check out the "Black Box" thread for binaries to do just that for Raspbian on a Pi, Ubuntu 11.10 on a PC  and OSX on a Macinsquash:

http://midniteforum.com/index.php?topic=1094.msg9695#msg9695

Tom