APEX Alert - Not Working

[shaywood]

I'm sure it's something I'm doing!

I had to take my skimmer off line for a couple of days, which is used to increase pH with a Soda Lime air scrubber. My pH dropped below 7.70, but I didn't get an alert or any record in my alarm log.  I'm including below screenshots of my settings.  Where should I check?

Inputs screen:

pH probe configuration:

Alarm log for yesterday.  The reading dropped by 7.70 at 11:20pm and was much of the day today.

 

 

[obrien.david.j]

I compared your settings, they match mine.   I can't see any issue with your configuration.

Question, how long was pH below 7.7 alarm limit.. and how far below?  Might there be delay in triggering the alarm?

[shaywood]

Thanks for checking.  The pH was below the set point for several hours.  It's odd there's nothing in the alarm log. I just rebooted the APEX and got an a separate alert about a pump being off. Weird. Maybe it's just related to pH.

Edited March 7 by shaywood

[SuncrestReef]

17 hours ago, shaywood said:

Thanks for checking.  The pH was below the set point for several hours.  It's odd there's nothing in the alarm log. I just rebooted the APEX and got an a separate alert about a pump being off. Weird. Maybe it's just related to pH.

Please post the program code from the EmailAlm output.  Also, did you verify your EmailAlm dashboard slider was set to AUTO?  That's required for any alarms to be processed, even the ones that are defined on the probe settings.

[shaywood]

Hello. Thanks for the reply.  My EmailAlm is set to Auto.  I think below is what you are requesting.  I see no reference to the pH.  If I need to include it here, why are there options to toggle alarm settings in the Inputs screen?

[SuncrestReef]

1 hour ago, shaywood said:

Hello. Thanks for the reply.  My EmailAlm is set to Auto.  I think below is what you are requesting.  I see no reference to the pH.  If I need to include it here, why are there options to toggle alarm settings in the Inputs screen?

It's no problem that the code under the EmailAlm output does not mention the pH.  The Apex can trigger alarms both from the program code as well as the settings on the probe itself.

The reason I wanted to see the program code is in case something there might override what you had set for pH, but that does not appear to be the case.

Hopefully a reboot will resolve the missing alarm issue.  You could try a quick test by changing the pH threshold to be higher than the current reading, then see if it reports an alarm.

[shaywood]

THank you.  I did a reboot and tested the temp and pH, both are now working.  I also you Home Assistant, so I'll be sure to setup some redundant alerts. 

[SuncrestReef]

One more thing I'd like to point out:  The Apex is only capable of reporting on a single alarm condition at a time, which I consider a major design flaw.  When using alarms defined on the probe settings screen, there's no way to prioritize which alarm is more important when multiple conditions exist, and it will only report one issue.  For this reason, I prefer to place all the alarm conditions in the program code under the EmailAlm output.  Because the Apex processes all those commands from top to bottom with the last one that's True being the condition that is reported, this allows you to place the low-priority conditions at the top and the high-priority conditions at the bottom.  I explain this strategy in my Apex Alarms tutorial:

https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/neptune-apex-programming-tutorials-part-6-alarms.707/

I'd highly recommend you convert your current alarm settings to program code rather than using the probe settings.  It's a small pain to make the change, but is a safer approach in my opinion.