Jestersix

Reef Demon

BOF?

edit: Oh Birds of a feather? Discussion group?

I'm afraid the speakers will take up all that time, otherwise I'd give you the speaker room for a while. It's also kinda unfair to Neptune who has a booth. I do have a few booths left though ;)
 
GreshamH said:
BOF?

edit: Oh Birds of a feather? Discussion group?

I'm afraid the speakers will take up all that time, otherwise I'd give you the speaker room for a while. It's also kinda unfair to Neptune who has a booth. I do have a few booths left though ;)

Sorry for dropping the acronym bomb. In tech conferences Birds of a feather sessions are informal discussions on various topics. They're great ways for interested parties to meet up and share experiences. Often a separate room is reserved and topics can be pre-arranged of assigned on the fly based on interest of the attendees. I could see topics like DIY controllers, LEDs, Coral propagation, working with acrylic. Maybe something to think about next year.

I'm not sure I understand the conflict of interest with Netptune. One of our speakers is talking about LEDs and Reef Brite is one of our exhibitors. What I'm imagining is in no way a sales pitch for Roberto's controllers. Just a sharing of ideas and experiences.
 
One of BAYMAC speakers is speaking about LEDs, yup, and that only helps the 2 LED companies who paid for a booth (Reef Brite and Nano Customs). Me giving a free room for the development for a competing product that another vendor who paid for a booth and has supported BAYMAC from the start is a great way to ensure I do not get that vendor back next year. I'm concerned about this year and years to come ;) Booths are still available :) If you both pitched in you could have a 8x10 booth to do the BOF in. I can get you extra chairs since the booth only comes with 2 :)

If there is interest in doing such BOF's next year I will look into it but this year I have neither the room, nor capacity myself to push them through. I do like the idea.
 
FWIW I am hardly trying to stifle the development of this project... after all it's I who sent Jake the links on this stuff for a RB posting ;) I also bought one myself :D

DIY? Lest you forget the Reef Angel unit has to be bought (IE. direct competition with a vendor that PAID for a booth) . Only the software is DIY ;) If it truly were a DIY project that would be a different thing.

I still have booths available :D
 
Ok, I am kinda confused, the reef demon is the reef angel hardware with different software or what?

I like the snapshot of the graph, is the the menu?

any new snapshots to throw out?

wish I took electronics instead of networking :( may actually know some of this stuff, lol.
 
Reef Angel is the base unit which has it's own software/firmware. Reef Demon is software(firmware) for the Reef Angel. The Reef Angel is an open source product, virtually unheard of in the MO world :)
 
GreshamH said:
DIY? Lest you forget the Reef Angel unit has to be bought (IE. direct competition with a vendor that PAID for a booth) . Only the software is DIY ;) If it truly were a DIY project that would be a different thing.

I want to preface this with a note that I'm not upset. I certainly harbor no ill will towards you nor do I have ideas that you are trying to stifle anything to do with either of the two projects. I've run conferences before and understand the huge amount of work that goes into them and the compromises that go into pulling them off. I have strong feelings on the subject of openness and supporting the Maker/DIY culture and can't seem to resist stepping onto the soap box for a few minutes....

Roberto has made the schematics and layouts available on his website. With those anyone could manufacture and assemble their own without going through Roberto. That's about as DIY as hardware gets. Hardware costs money to build. So do LEDs and drivers for a DIY LED light project and Meanwell certainly does not publish the designs for it's drivers. Knowing what it costs to manufacture things like this I can tell you that Roberto is making a slim profit, if any.

Take a read trough http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=343 . Roberto also sells Yak Fur. In the future he might decide to move his project in a more commercial direction. Offer warrantees, support, manuals, and all the other things you'd expect from a commercial product. Those things all cost money and time and expect to pay a lot more that you are now for his hardware. If he does do that, I would not be surprised is someone else step up to fill the void of affordable building blocks for a DIY controller project.

What I was proposing for the BOFs was not a discussion about why you should by a Reef Angel controller. Neptune makes a great product. I own one. I highly recommend anyone who's looking of a mature, reliable, proven controller buy and Apex.

What I'd love to see is a discussion with other people making or interested in making DIY controllers. I'm excited to hear about houser's hand wired PH amplifier and how he's using commercial process controllers to maintain tight temperature regulation. Hell, I'd love it for the Neptune people to show up. If they came away with ideas for their next product, great! I might buy that one too.

It sounds like it's a moot point for this year because there's not enough time to set anything up. BAYMAC and like conferences are ideal places for discussions (BOFs) like these because they draw a much more diverse crowd. Another great idea for a BOF is an Apex users meetup where people can share their experiences and tips and tricks. "I'm automating water changes this way, how are you doing it?" or "Here's the easiest way I've found to get email working."

I think BOFs would be a great addition next year and would be happy to help make them work. I'll stop preaching now, but lets grab a beer after the dust settles from BAYMAC and see if we can come up with a framework where we can have discussions like these and not alienate our vendors.
 
Thanks for taking the time to explain it like that to me, I really appreciate it :) It still interests me, I just don't think I can pull it off this year :(

One of the HUGE things that drove me to get the Reef Angel is it's open source. I think that fact alone with push the progress of the controller much faster and bring it to new places we never thought about :)
 
Is there a market for Yak Fur? What is the unit Yak Fur is sold in :D
 
GreshamH said:
Is there a market for Yak Fur? What is the unit Yak Fur is sold in :D
My wife said she wants to shave my back, so I'll have an eco-friendly alternative to Yak Fur available at BAYMAC.
 
I think Yaks have a smaller carbon foot print then humans :lol:
 
hey knokers, got my reef angel today and wanted to try out your software but i'm not to sure how to put it on the controller. Could you tell how it would be done and how to download the code of the site?

Thanks for the help,
Jacob
 
h2odvl said:
hey knokers, got my reef angel today and wanted to try out your software but i'm not to sure how to put it on the controller. Could you tell how it would be done and how to download the code of the site?

Jacob, right now it's not really in a state to use unless you are familiar with AVR development. I've been working on some UI code. Once it's a bit more usable, I'll post instructions on how to upload it to your reef angel.

Cheers,
Erik
 
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