I use a bunch of home brew development currently. So not a Reef-Pi user. What I have found though is that MQTT is very effective to solicit communication and cooperation between disparate systems.
This got me to wondering of any thought had been given to setting up a MQTT standard schema that could be implemented by the various community efforts (Reef-Pi, Robotank, Levianthan, etc.) to share operational data?
If the schema were comprehensive enough and flexible, then perhaps it could become ubiquitous in the community efforts, and provide a path for the proprietery controller and device manufacturers to implement. Lack of openness and the walled garden of the proprietary controllers is their biggest failing point in my view. So by having the community based controllers take the initiative and define a public schema may be enough to get the manufacturers to open up. It would only take 1 manufacturer to decide to support it, to make it difficult for the resistant manufacturers to not follow. E.g if Hydros decides to add support, then Apex becomes even less attractive.
Even if the manufacturers don't add it, the community efforts will still gain a competitive advantage by supporting it.
However I suspect that many manufacturers would be interested. Take the Alkatronic from Focustronic. It contains an RPI Zero W that doesn't do a whole lot, other than communicate with the App and cloud. Their current offering uses a custom BNC port to send dKH readings to other devices through a pH interface. This takes up hardware resources and could be supported in a much more flexible way by having the Alkatronic publish the latest dKH reading to MQTT for any other device or system that requires knowledge of the current alkalinity. All that is required on Focustronic's part is the addition of 1 package and a couple of scripts. Having this support, would make the Alkatronic a more useful device and help it to maintain it's market position.
Thoughts?
This got me to wondering of any thought had been given to setting up a MQTT standard schema that could be implemented by the various community efforts (Reef-Pi, Robotank, Levianthan, etc.) to share operational data?
If the schema were comprehensive enough and flexible, then perhaps it could become ubiquitous in the community efforts, and provide a path for the proprietery controller and device manufacturers to implement. Lack of openness and the walled garden of the proprietary controllers is their biggest failing point in my view. So by having the community based controllers take the initiative and define a public schema may be enough to get the manufacturers to open up. It would only take 1 manufacturer to decide to support it, to make it difficult for the resistant manufacturers to not follow. E.g if Hydros decides to add support, then Apex becomes even less attractive.
Even if the manufacturers don't add it, the community efforts will still gain a competitive advantage by supporting it.
However I suspect that many manufacturers would be interested. Take the Alkatronic from Focustronic. It contains an RPI Zero W that doesn't do a whole lot, other than communicate with the App and cloud. Their current offering uses a custom BNC port to send dKH readings to other devices through a pH interface. This takes up hardware resources and could be supported in a much more flexible way by having the Alkatronic publish the latest dKH reading to MQTT for any other device or system that requires knowledge of the current alkalinity. All that is required on Focustronic's part is the addition of 1 package and a couple of scripts. Having this support, would make the Alkatronic a more useful device and help it to maintain it's market position.
Thoughts?
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