Author Topic: Live truck data feed  (Read 4868 times)

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Offline MadScientist267

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Live truck data feed
« on: September 25, 2015, 10:02:24 am »
Whenever I'm connected to the internet, the system puts a copy of the graphs online. Up until now, I've used this solely to help let me keep an eye on what's happening on the occasion that I wander away from it... but now that the solar is live, I'm making it available so that those interested can follow it too.

When functioning correctly, it updates every 5 minutes, automatically. You can click (or tap as the case may be) on any one of them to view that and 3 other graphs associated with that particular plot. From top to bottom, they are daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. There is a mild averaging algorithm that rounds out the data a little, more noticeable in the "aged" plots, particularly weekly and yearly. Monthly... I'm not really sure exactly what goes on under the hood there, as you'll see, it's a little different in appearance at first glance because of the "width" of a day. Maybe Ross could shed more light on how the monthly graph is calculated...? I've been meaning to ask for myself, just haven't gotten around to it yet... Many things fit that description LOL

Please note that what you'll see here is what I call "the pool", and is where the local application that is used for control pulls the plots from. There's not necessarily a whole lot of rhyme or reason to how they're organized, and some may seem obnoxious and useless; they are used as placeholders so the system keeps track of everything whether I've chosen to pick on one or not ;D

Much thanks goes out to RossW for providing me with the backbone software that generates the plots, and to Rover for providing a place out there where everyone can see all of my silly little (or not so little) mistakes that I make along this journey.

Some of the keys may be more cryptic to some than others, I'm happy to provide some insight as to what specific metrics are or how they relate to something. By all means, ask away...

http://madscientist267.rovr1.com/truck/graphs/

And of course, thanks goes out to everyone who has participated in their own way... Too many to list here, you know who you are ;)

Maybe a dedicated thread... hmm

Steve
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #1 on: September 27, 2015, 05:06:37 am »
I may cut the feed from time to time when there's less power available for extended periods... Half of my base load is non-critical network related and only serves for local access/control and my internet access, which of course provides the feed. Soooo...

Sync issues or missing plots littered throughout here and there are network issues on my end... If they're in sync but not updating, I'm likely in conserve mode; the need for such being visible in the stalled plots.

After final tests are complete and I head out into the wild, they'll stall for a different reason; no web access. But in the mean time, I'll strictly be trying to save power ;)

Steve
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2015, 03:57:15 pm »
The feed is disabled for the time being due to network issues and system response as a result of those issues. It will hopefully be resuming here in the next few days.

Steve
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2015, 08:38:52 pm »
Ok, it's back... for the time being...
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #4 on: December 18, 2015, 03:12:40 am »
Uplink will begin to get sporadic... at the moment, an (inaccessible) mechanism is preventing update even tho I'm connected. Soon the control will be (internally) accessible, but not long after that, I will be basically on 4G, and tho I can tether, it still eats bandwidth (which even @ 5GB/month has become precious during some aspects of testing). I'll try to keep it sync'd at least once a day when that time comes.

 
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #5 on: January 24, 2016, 09:08:28 pm »
Been off grid for a week now... updates are generally once a day around late evening eastern.
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #6 on: March 08, 2016, 12:29:59 am »
Coming up on the 2 month mark (already?!) off grid... only 6 genset runs in that time frame, total 36.5 hours... More on that elsewhere tho...

Main reason for post is that there are 2 new sets of plots, a suite of boolean, and the other for more comprehensive battery monitoring. The kinks are pretty much worked out of the boolean stuff... the monitoring, well, YTBD, as I ran up against an issue with the hardware (ADC) earlier, which might make it unsuitable for the purpose. Time, graph observation, and sanity checks at various points throughout with the good ol' fluke will be the only way to tell, so who knows for the moment.

There is a known issue with bank 2 (battery 3/4) and as of this writing, the data appears accurate. We'll see, hmmmm?

Steve
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Offline Wolvenar

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #7 on: March 08, 2016, 05:42:33 am »
As per the discussion in the IRC, what are the pros and cons of opamps or a different ADC ?
Trying to make power from alternative energy any which way I can.
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #8 on: March 31, 2016, 05:22:42 pm »
Eeek, somehow this slipped thru and I missed it...

Well, I don't recall the exact conversation, however it has matured now (with some help from those more experienced with DAQ than myself)...

There was indeed a problem with the way I was trying to use the board, but there was a minimal effort fix for it involving the voltage dividers for the high side blocks. At ~50/50 ratio (not exact because I didn't have enough of one value), the input was going outside of the range of the ADC's op amps. The inputs are differential, but that was only part of the puzzle... even divided, the two upper blocks (batteries 2 and 4) were taking the input past what the amps could reference, causing some strange inversion effects that at first I thought could be covered with some magic math. As proven time and time again, there really never is a such thing... while it looked good when they were discharging, voltage during charge proved that I was dead wrong about *some* aspect of the ADC.

Ross found the issue in the schematic/datasheet for the ADC/opamps respectively, and suggested some changes for it. I think I really ended up somewhere in between what was suggested and where it was, as the full mod meant redoing both ends of each set of leads (I think LOL). I found it sufficient to only involve the positive lead from each pair in the modified divider, and change the mode the board operates in.

The end result meant not having to touch the battery side connections... They are set up with 680R resistors as bulletproof short protection, heat shrunk and reinforced with a chunk of zip tie embedded, soldered to lugs... a real PITA to redo considering what makes them up. The ADC operates in 0-600mV mode rather than 0-10V, and I actually even gained resolution over the original attempt.

I didn't redraw the original schematic sent up during troubleshooting, but here's what that first drawing looks like...

5376-0


... what it looks like battery-side (1-4 from left to right)...

5378-1


... and the mods made on the ADC side (replace the simple 560R across the inputs of the above schematic with the pairs as shown here)...

5380-2


All said and done, it's now working well, and the limitations of the fluke were even clearly visible in the "departure" plots during calibration!

There's a single issue remaining, hard to track down, it's either a ground loop or EMI that so far only seems to happen during generator operation while they're charging. Still investigating this, but it's rare enough to need to run the genset that it hasn't taken any priority. The more pressing issue is the balancing between battery 3 and 4 (at the moment I suspect 4 has a capacity deficit).

As for op amp vs different ADC etc, that really wasn't much of an option at the time, I had to either make this work or forge on with the fluke and single delta plot (which showed when there was a problem but pretty ambiguous as to exactly where).

One other note on "Method 1" vs "Method 2" in the two departure plots...

Method 1 was intended originally to give finer and exaggerated details about what was going on, but the units (set as "mV" because that's the closest representation) - aren't accurate. Each line is the average of the other 3 blocks, less itself... eg, 1 = ((2+3+4)/3)-1 .... 2 = ((1+3+4)/3)-2 ... etc

Method 2 is a true deviation from average... 1 = ((1+2+3+4)/4)-1 ... 2 = ((1+2+3+4)/4)-2 ... etc

Until next time...
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #9 on: April 04, 2016, 07:21:25 pm »
Little change, and then probably just going to end up using only "method 2" as the only version of the plot.

As an experiment I put replaced the data feed for "method 1" with the "Vblock - (classic Vbatt/2)" just for grins. As suspected, it's generating sawtooth patterns because of the difference in resolution between the two... The classic having 100mV resolution, the ADC providing 1mV.
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #10 on: April 07, 2016, 12:35:56 pm »
Back to just the single plot for the departures... while it was cool to look at, it didn't provide useful info because it was so jumpy.

Carry on then.. :)
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Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #11 on: May 16, 2016, 01:16:22 am »
I haven't been doing regular updates to this because I was told explicitly by one person that (paraphrased and simplified), "nobody cares". The lack of overall replies regarding the truck in general reinforces this. If someone wants to see more regular feeds, by all means, speak up... but otherwise I'm not going to go out of my way for something that nobody watches. It catches the updates it does get when I connect to the web to do an off-site software archive, other than that it sits stagnant until someone says otherwise.

Not trying to sound like an ass, but there's a lot going on, and I have no problem whatsoever updating it regularly if someone finds it useful for learning from or whatever, but I'm a bit busier now than I once was, so I've simply let it go.

Let me know :)

Steve
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Offline rossw

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #12 on: May 16, 2016, 03:46:59 am »
I read, and observe. I don't comment unless I have something relevant to say... (and I often catch up in IRC anyway!)

Offline MadScientist267

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #13 on: May 16, 2016, 05:10:23 am »
Nod. I'm guilty myself. I guess when it comes to the plots, I found myself constantly watching yours and others that I'd find, sometimes to the point of catching every update for hours at a time when I was trying to correlate this and that... they were very powerful learning tools and I learned more than I can even consciously recall... even tho the locale is completely different... I eventually got to where I could predict what was going to happen (within reason of course LOL) and only then was I really beginning to feel comfortable with what I was envisioning doing for myself. The environment is radically different, the systems radically different, and the needs likewise to both. But data is data, and in its own context it draws a very clear picture once that context is understood.

I guess I just expected there would be some other whack job out there that's like me and likes to pick things apart until they almost can't be put back together again in order to gain the deepest understanding possible, and "pay it forward".

I also just assumed that the panels were obnoxiously obvious sitting up on top of the truck... turns out, I only see them because I hashed, rehashed, combed over drawing after drawing, eat, breathed, gargled and puked the placement of every square micrometer of the area up there before drawing the first cut that began final assembly.

The average Joe is vaguely aware there's a uhaul with missing decals... LOL

Steve
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Offline solarnewbee

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Re: Live truck data feed
« Reply #14 on: May 22, 2016, 02:05:40 pm »
Hey Mad!

I'm working on monitoring my system like our doing but using Arduino controllers and possibly Raspberry Pi units but i'm going thru basics of coding so it will be a while. any recommendations or sources for such an adventure?

thanks

SN
SN

Any day above ground is a day for potential mishaps