The blackbox project

[Westbranch]

    Running of "3V " .... Yeah I guess your right eg fully discharged NiCd @1Vpc x3
    Wow you are really designing for all cases


No guarantee we'll get all bases covered, but to knowingly design without considering them is foolish.

Perhaps dip switches, set by user, to cover the range/max V needed?

[RossW]

    Running of "3V " .... Yeah I guess your right eg fully discharged NiCd @1Vpc x3
    Wow you are really designing for all cases


No guarantee we'll get all bases covered, but to knowingly design without considering them is foolish.

Perhaps dip switches, set by user, to cover the range/max V needed?

I don't like DIP switches. It'd take an 8-way DIP to get the same results as a trimpot, but far less intuitive to set up. A 20-turn pot would be basically  "Turn fully counterclockwise. Now, turn 1 turn for every 50mV"
You want your threshold at 0.25V?  Turn it 5 turns.

[atop8918]

Remember those beautiful precision trimpots you used to be able to get? The calibrated ones with the black and brushed aluminum knobs. One of those would be sweeeeeeeet. Probably can't get them anymore 'cept on ancient equipment off <popular auction site>.

[RossW]

Remember those beautiful precision trimpots you used to be able to get? The calibrated ones with the black and brushed aluminum knobs. One of those would be sweeeeeeeet. Probably can't get them anymore 'cept on ancient equipment off <popular auction site>.

I do, and I've got a few of them.

In the end, I opted for an entirely software solution. No trimpots to drift or take up board space, or add to the cost.
It is simply a command.  Using a terminal, send  S100   (for "Sensitivity, 100mV) or   S50 (for 50mV) etc.
The figure is stored in flash memory so becomes "permanent". It's flexible. It won't drift or be bumped.

[dgd]

It's been near 2 years since this thread was active so has there been any further developments on the black box concept?
I realise I'm a late arrival here but it's just now that time has become available to allow me to become more involved. So it would be nice to hear about further developments, anybody?

Having reviewed everything posted here I have briefly listed what I would like to see, some of this I have already largely coded and it's now in transition from Arduino DUE to Cubie2.

- one second running data from Classic and displaying this in some sort of gauges web page or in a shifting leftwards multi data item graph.
This page should be configurable to use different gauge/graph types, like selecting a skin for the display. This already looks feasible with skins ranging from various text fonts and sizes, different available gauge types and many available moving graph types ( r charts, high charts etc)

- data summary page from 1 to 10 minutes per entry covering at least current days activity
My favourite here is the text table, about 10 minute resolution, web paged with up to 8 hours to 24 hours worth of entries.
A graph version too although higher resolution one minute makes a nice multipoint smooth-ish display
Ten minute or greater resolution looks nicer in bar and column graphs

- half day or day summary, again in text table format or graph covering 10 to 60 days.
The high stock charts seem the way to go here, very similar to the mymidnite graph screen

Although these are the reporting options I wanted to have and thought I would find useful,  a couple of months usage and quite a few ideas from others (mostly email from people not using this forum) have brought up other ideas, The skinning of the live data display being the most popular followed by a display configuration option. This would use a config file to somehow create a user designed web page containing the data, live or historical, the user wants, in a possibe mix of gauge, graphs, text and even user images..
The mixed data page shown by ZB in the first post in this thread is such an example although this looks a fixed design
The issue I see with this is that its more a web page development issue than anything to do with RE/MN Classic application

With the Arduino DUE web server I have installed five of these servers with people/companies I did Classic installations or supplied the RE equipment. Discussing the web page design with each I ended up with about 8 different web page designs
(everybody has their own idea of what is the best design) so although its easy for the developer to make just one design available it becomes a take-it-or-leave it option for the end user, even just a minimal user driven layout change greatly pleases end users, providing multiple display configuation options involves hem in the web page design process.

So for the web side of the Black box a very user configurable page design would be my favoured way to go.

Another black box design concept is NOT a running or historical data reporting box (that information junkies really like) BUT an exception reporting system that operates as a quiet black box, monitoring  various aspects of the RE system and ONLY generating some output when an exception condition occurs that wil need user intervention.
A minimal system example I have seen for this used an RPi that simply monitored battery voltage and if it exceeded upper or lower limits a cellphone text message was sent, a more complicated example had current sensors on each PV string and if
the current between them diverged past a % then again text and email was sent.

Dgd

[dgd]

It appears there is not really much ongoing interest in this project, lots of great ideas and discussion in many of the older postings but just nothing this last year or so.
Perhaps everyone is just too busy, not interested, or can't see any use in this project.
Time for me to give up too 

dgd

[paul alting]

Hi David, I'm still interested to see where the Blackbox might go, but I know for me, I have many things going on right now that I need to work on.

My personal interest will still be with QuadlogSCADA and progressing the development of this, using the Cubieboard II as my test-bed for a low power consumption system.
I'll need to go back over what and where Blackbox was heading to have that clear in my mind again.
I like that there are a few clever and passionate folks over here, such as yourself, working hard into the early hours on bettering systems, and I would very much like to know that this would continue.
____
Paul

[zoneblue]

Ive still got energy for it, just swamped at work this year. With the AXS port now sitting in its box, support for Outback stuff is on the cards. Ive also been working on independent SOC, and thats meant a few changes to the core library in order for the current day to know something about yesterday. Also google code  is being closed so ill have to move the SVN someplace else.

[dgd]

I would like to have made some major progress withe BB project but have run into some major issues with the Classic reliability. (next post)
Also I'm getting more enthusiastic about constructing my Oztules 6Kw sw inverter using big toroid transformers from deconstructed InspireSolar GTIs (rewinding two to make one) and Chinese PowerJack inverter electronics. I'm all the time thinking about getting a cpu into it, lots of sensors and making inverter data available via ethernet (but no modbus!)
This project came along at the right time as I was just about to purchase a Schneider SW 48volt 230v 50Hz inverter or an OB 3648.
I'm also seriously looking at designing/constructing a 120 to 160 amp PWM solar controller.
So perhaps later this year others may have more time to get back to the BB project

dgd

[RossW]

Agreed, time has just been completely consumed with other, critical/important tasks....

[dgd]

Perhaps by the time people can look at the BB project again, MN will have managed to resolve the Ethernet issues with the classic.
This one major issue has probably been the most significant in preventing realistic progress with this project (which should have progressed to completion a year or two ago).

I have not managed to get a classic SL yet, can't find anyone selling them. It will be interesting to see if it has a new design of CPU circuit board without the Ethernet hardware etc or if it's the same pcb just different firmware.
If it's firmware then has it been rewritten or just a hacked down version of the existing firmware, meaning that it's likely non-Ethernet related random resets, watchdogs resets, random clock instability, mngp randomly losing its ID (eg unused address X messages), stats/counters corruption on resets (like kWH total being annoying zeroed despite a simple solution of storing it EEPROM etc..),  will continue to show up on the SL

I'm getting more of the opinion that just a total rewrite of the classic firmware is the only long term solution but then this could be impractical as the Classic may be on the downhill side of its product life cycle.

Dgd

[danda]

Hi, I recently purchased a midnite classic and as I'm a linux guy and unwilling to send all my data to a 3rd party service the blackbox project is a good fit for me.  It lets me monitor my classic from home or away.  So thanks for building it guys.

btw, I'm a newcomer and I'm not sure what the ethernet problems are about.  It's been working well enough for me for a couple months, though I do notice it seems kind of slow reading, and I had to fix an issue with the graph not generating sometimes due to php default script timeout of 30 secs.   I'm even accessing it via ethernet over powerline to my solar shed.

I submitted a minor patch for the blackbox project installer several months back.  As far as I know it was never reviewed or accepted.  Then about a month ago I tried to submit another small patch but google code wouldn't let me because it has been discontinued.

I am hoping that the project maintainer (dgd?) can move it over to github, and at least accept some patches, even if no time for active development.

[zoneblue]

For some reason i didnt get notification of your patch, but then google seems to have decided to kill off its code hosting....

The raw data is stored in the classiclogs table, and there is a running agregate maintained in classicdaylogs. At the end of the day the last entry wins, and remains as a long term daily datapoint. I dont think theres any need to agregate further, the week, month and year agregates can all be derived from the daylogs in realtime. So relatively little code is needed to produce the summary graphs, built in the same user definable manner as the per day graphs.

For the graphing there are uncommitted changes that implement flot, which removes the overhead of the raster graphing, which as you found is rather cpu intensive on the small boards. If you like i can email you my trunk version.

I only used google code because of their SVN support, which as an old timer, im more familiar with. Maybe theres some adapter or something. Re git, you seem to have some experience with it. Maybe youd be interested in helping with the move.

[danda]

So exporting to github appears to be super-easy.  On the google-code page they have added a button "Export to Github" which apparently anyone can use, since I see it and I am not a project member.

Basically, one clicks that button, then "Start Export".  An existing github account is needed, which is also very easy to setup.

I have a github account and am happy to do it if you wish.  The only thing is that you are much better qualified to review and accept patches than I am, so it kinda makes sense to me that the first "official" blackbox repo on github would be yours.   Anyone else with a github account (like myself) can then fork it, make changes, and then submit a pull request for each change.   The pull requests contain a nice visual diff.    I find it easier/smoother than using svn once you get used to it a little.

Vice-versa, if I export it, you could always fork my repo, and continue on.

Let me know how you would like to proceed.

[zoneblue]

Well the preminary migration is done.

https://github.com/zoneblue/theblackboxproject

When i can figure out how to commit using tortoise ill bring the code up to date.