Hi everyone. Author here. Gotta say I loved all the comments. My blog followers are all so nice. It feels good to get some real criticism for once :)
Relying on Twitter was a truly bonehead move, to be sure. Truly a "bang head here" kind of moment.
However, if trusting Twitter was the only "poor engineering decision" I had made I'd be a very happy man. It was just one of dozens of bonehead mistakes I made in building and operating my first aquaponics system.
Aquaponics is one of those things where the path of least resistance is definitely following a set of plans that are known to work. You can find one of those on my site, and some other places too. But I've never one to follow the path of least resistance (eg. Screw the round wheel - I'm making mine with fractals).
In case anyone's interested, I'm a former electrical engineer who used this as my first attempt at something with Arduino. More of a power-systems and lighting guy, software development was and still is a foreign land to me.
I could have tested and researched the reliability of different notification platforms, but at the time I was building it I was already staying up late fixing plumbing problems and trying to get those d*&$ one-wire sensors to work consistently.
Thankfully I eventually got my plumbing and sensors working, and bungled along into into Zapier which has been absolutely bulletproof.
I think the truly useful lesson here is that if you ever meet anyone in aquaculture who can tell a good story at a party, plop yourself down and ask them if they've ever killed fish in any bizarre and interesting ways. Don't get up for drinks either because you won't want to miss anything. You'll be there all night.
Comments
Hi everyone. Author here. Gotta say I loved all the comments. My blog followers are all so nice. It feels good to get some real criticism for once :)
Relying on Twitter was a truly bonehead move, to be sure. Truly a "bang head here" kind of moment.
However, if trusting Twitter was the only "poor engineering decision" I had made I'd be a very happy man. It was just one of dozens of bonehead mistakes I made in building and operating my first aquaponics system.
Aquaponics is one of those things where the path of least resistance is definitely following a set of plans that are known to work. You can find one of those on my site, and some other places too. But I've never one to follow the path of least resistance (eg. Screw the round wheel - I'm making mine with fractals).
In case anyone's interested, I'm a former electrical engineer who used this as my first attempt at something with Arduino. More of a power-systems and lighting guy, software development was and still is a foreign land to me.
I could have tested and researched the reliability of different notification platforms, but at the time I was building it I was already staying up late fixing plumbing problems and trying to get those d*&$ one-wire sensors to work consistently.
Thankfully I eventually got my plumbing and sensors working, and bungled along into into Zapier which has been absolutely bulletproof.
I think the truly useful lesson here is that if you ever meet anyone in aquaculture who can tell a good story at a party, plop yourself down and ask them if they've ever killed fish in any bizarre and interesting ways. Don't get up for drinks either because you won't want to miss anything. You'll be there all night.