High Tide Aquatics

"DIY" Apex Dashboard for iPad

phatduckk

phatduckk

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Hi folks,

Not sure if this fits the spirit of DIY so mods please move/remove if it doesn't fit...

As I put my frag tank together I really wanted to mount an iPad above the tank so I could easily see my tank's parameters at a glance. I didn't see any existing solutions so I built an iPad app to do it:

Here's a few screenshot:

IMG_0001.jpeg
1619319937420.png

Thought some folks might be interested in checking it out. Its totally free; i'm not trying to make... just seemed like a fun project. Its available on the iPad. just search the App Store on your iPad for "Reef Tiles" (not linking so this doesn't come off as self promo spam)
 
phatduckk said:
Hi folks,

Not sure if this fits the spirit of DIY so mods please move/remove if it doesn't fit...

As I put my frag tank together I really wanted to mount an iPad above the tank so I could easily see my tank's parameters at a glance. I didn't see any existing solutions so I built an iPad app to do it:

Here's a few screenshot:

View attachment 28886View attachment 28887

Thought some folks might be interested in checking it out. Its totally free; i'm not trying to make... just seemed like a fun project. Its available on the iPad. just search the App Store on your iPad for "Reef Tiles" (not linking so this doesn't come off as self promo spam)
Click to expand...
Well now I need to buy an ipad...
 
You should talk to the folks at Neptune about this! @Vhuang168

They're working on and using tiles similar to these when I saw it on Terence's phone a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully they'll push it out when SKYs are out on the market, which should be in ~1 month from now.
 
I’m going to try it because work gave me a work iPad but honestly I never use it and leave it at home, instead I use my work phone. So no I have an iPad laying around at home. And was thinking about how annoying it is to keep unlocking them entering credentials on phone every time I need to use the apex app.
 
Ibn said:
You should talk to the folks at Neptune about this! @Vhuang168

They're working on and using tiles similar to these when I saw it on Terence's phone a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully they'll push it out when SKYs are out on the market, which should be in ~1 month from now.
Click to expand...
Ya I saw that on one of the live streams. Looking forward to checking that out
 
svreef said:
AWESOME!!
How are you communicating with the Apex? I want to build something similar but using https://tidbyt.com/
Click to expand...
It's all over the local network using the export URLs outlined in the manual. The slightly tricky bit is that the endpoints return (or did at the time I coded up the client) different data when you request JSON vs XML. I honestly cant remember which fields were missing but I can try and rack my brain & report back if I remember the details

The current swift code is:

URL(string: "http://\(hostname):\(port)/cgi-bin/status.json")!
Click to expand...
and
URL(string: "http://\(hostname):\(port)/cgi-bin/datalog.xml")!
Click to expand...
 
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phatduckk said:
It's all over the local network using the export URLs outlined in the manual. The slightly tricky bit is that the endpoints return (or did at the time I coded up the client) different data when you request JSON vs XML. I honestly cant remember which fields were missing but I can try and rack my brain & report back if I remember the details

The current swift code is:


and
Click to expand...
OK I figured it out @svreef ...

/cgi-bin/datalog.json does not have the Trident's data but /cgi-bin/datalog.xml does. So for the graph's im using /cgi-bin/datalog.xml in order to have access to Alk, CA & Mg. However those values are present in status.json... so for the main UI I'm hitting status.json (I could standardize on one but whatever, it works)
 
thesassyindian said:
@phatduckk This is awesome!!
I wish I had learnt iOS / Android programming when I had the chance.
But never too late, eh?
Click to expand...
Nope, never too late! If you know how to code its not a huge learning curve. This is actually my first iPad app... I'd done an iPhone dev back about 8 years ago so it was mostly familiar except I opted for Swift over ObjC this time.

The proof of concept for this app I did as a quick hacked up PHP script that actually scraped ApexFusion... for various (obvious) reasons that's a bad idea. LOL so I then wanted to see if I could do it all in client side JS but the CORS settings on the apex wouldn't allow XHR requests from the browser to hit apex.local. So, finally, I thought "hey it would be fun to just make an iPad app".
 
phatduckk said:
Nope, never too late! If you know how to code its not a huge learning curve. This is actually my first iPad app... I'd done an iPhone dev back about 8 years ago so it was mostly familiar except I opted for Swift over ObjC this time.

The proof of concept for this app I did as a quick hacked up PHP script that actually scraped ApexFusion... for various (obvious) reasons that's a bad idea. LOL so I then wanted to see if I could do it all in client side JS but the CORS settings on the apex wouldn't allow XHR requests from the browser to hit apex.local. So, finally, I thought "hey it would be fun to just make an iPad app".
Click to expand...
Will def give it a shot - I'm limited to embedded code, electronics, mech design and fabrication for now.
 
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