Way forward

[TerryJC]

Having completed construction of the Lady Hanham SAC, I need to decide what I should be doing next. Currently we have working SACs in the Sump and Wendy Butts Zones, with one working Gate Valve in the Wendy Butts Zone.

In addition we have the following devices installed but not in use; Stage Butts SAC and Stage Butts Gate Valve. These are awaiting restoration of the plumbing behind the Stage and updates to the Software Framework to manage the Stage Butts Gate Valve. Add to this the Lady Hanham SAC, which should work OK once fitted, we therefore will have deployed all but one of the SACs specified for the final system, but only two of the Gate Valves.

In the Workshop, I believe we have four working Gate Valve Assemblies which are simply awaiting fitting and three or four Gate Valve mechanical assemblies awaiting electronics. Apart from those I have one SAC and one Gate Valve here, along with three working Hall Effect Probes. The SAC and Gate Valve were removed from the Wendy Butts Zone some time ago because the connectivity method used (viewtopic.php?p=2673#p2673) had proved to be unreliable.

I can refurbish the SAC and Gate Valve that I have here. The only requirement for another SAC is for the Gazebo Zone and I'm assuming that is still low priority. Therefore I will upgrade the Gate valve that I have here and bring it back into WMT along with two of the three Probes that I have. I'll retain the last Probe for testing SACs if needed.

Does anyone disagree with this plan? Looking forward, I'm assuming that installing the three Lady Hanham Gate Valves is a higher priority than installing the Matrix Pump (both will need changes to the Software Framework).

Any thoughts?

[Penri]

Terry

I think you are right on the money with your suggested plan of action.

The Stage Butts are a few week away from re-plumbing,
I need two additional barrels before I can plumb the Gazebo.

Hopefully I will have completed re-routing the network for the Lady Hanham control box by the end of the coming week. I'll need your help to make down the network, change over the connections and re-start the network Terry, we can discuss when I have everything in place.

With that control box in place we can then commission the probes, float switches and gate valves in place.

With all that done then we can look at the matrix.

Hwyl

Penri

[TerryJC]

OK. Just let me know when you need me. I'd prefer sometime when it's a bit quieter.

[hamishmb]

I need to do some work on the NAS box stuff before we can realistically control the matrix pump. I believe Ian is working on some database-related code as well. I'll see if I can finish up my cross compiling next week. If I'm lucky, I'll get it done, but it just depends on how awkward the particular things I need to build are gonna be.

The NAS box shouldn't be needed to add the Hanham Pi and associated stuff into the system though

[TerryJC]

I need to do some work on the NAS box stuff before we can realistically control the matrix pump. I believe Ian is working on some database-related code as well. I'll see if I can finish up my cross compiling next week. If I'm lucky, I'll get it done, but it just depends on how awkward the particular things I need to build are gonna be.

The NAS box shouldn't be needed to add the Hanham Pi and associated stuff into the system though

The Matrix Pump is the lowest priority element of the system (with the possible exception of the Gazebo), so it doesn't really matter at the moment. The system will work under gravity, we just won't be able to return water to the Stage and Lady Hanham Butts if we get too much in the Wendy Butts.

Before that we need the new algorithms for the Stage and Lady Hanham Pis, to implement the zoning, and the conversion from storing Readings on the SD Card to the NAS Box. Patrick is working on the former and Ian on the latter parts of the project.

[TerryJC]

In the Workshop, I believe we have four working Gate Valve Assemblies which are simply awaiting fitting and three or four Gate Valve mechanical assemblies awaiting electronics. Apart from those I have one SAC and one Gate Valve here, along with three working Hall Effect Probes. The SAC and Gate Valve were removed from the Wendy Butts Zone some time ago because the connectivity method used (viewtopic.php?p=2673#p2673) had proved to be unreliable.

I have now completed the refurbishment of the Gate Valve that I had here and will bring it into WMT as soon as this dratted lock-down is over (that may well be later for me because we are all shielding for at least 12 weeks).

The remaining SAC that I have here is partially refurbished and can probably be finished off in a day or two if needed. That's not likely of course because we still have the Stage SAC and the Lady Hanham SAC to integrate, together with Gate Valves V1 - V3 and V6. The remaining SAC will only be needed in the event of a major failure or if we get round to doing the Gazebo Butts installation. Nevertheless, I will finish it in the coming days and weeks to ensure that it doesn't hang around any longer.

[TerryJC]

The remaining SAC that I have here is partially refurbished and can probably be finished off in a day or two if needed. That's not likely of course because we still have the Stage SAC and the Lady Hanham SAC to integrate, together with Gate Valves V1 - V3 and V6. The remaining SAC will only be needed in the event of a major failure or if we get round to doing the Gazebo Butts installation. Nevertheless, I will finish it in the coming days and weeks to ensure that it doesn't hang around any longer.

I will have to stop making these kind of predictions. It's going to take more than a day or two.

When I started work on this, I found two things that needed addressing first. The least serious only put a delay into the process, but the other issue needs a bigger rework than I anticipated.

First of all the minor issue. When I printed off the SAC composite document, I realised that after I completed the build of the Lady Hanham SAC I had forgotten to update this to reflect all the changes. That has now been done, but it took me about a day to add the changes and review it.

The second issue was more serious and I only discovered it a few minutes ago when I attempted to check out the Veroboard. This assembly was one of the first that I ever built and as such, the Veroboard ended up with a number of errors that I had to correct by adding links to replace tracks removed by mistake. Worse, this Veroboard has no provision for the dual function Float Switch and adding it means that I need to remove the screw Terminal Strip and reposition it elsewhere. I doubt that the Veroboard will survive this treatment since it has already been abused when I corrected the earlier errors. I will therefore have to salvage the components and rebuild the Veroboard from scratch. I doubt that I will finish that today.

I will keep you posted.

[hamishmb]

That's unfortunate, but these things happen

[TerryJC]

The remaining SAC has now been completed and tested. The (lack of) up to date documentation let me down again because when I had built this item, using the update SAC Composite Document, I found that I'd inadvertently left some Veroboard track cuts out of the drawing. This held me up for a while, but the build has been completed and all of the hardware Unit Tests have passed.

I then coupled this SAC (with a SumpPi SD Card) to the Gate Valve previously completed and both devices booted and executed the standard code correctly.

I will retain both of these devices so that we can have a hardware test harness to use when testing updates to the Software framework.

[hamishmb]

Good to know