running 2 or more seperate controllers with same phone app

Request new hardware or ideas for the controller
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army_boy_justin
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 10, 2013 8:22 pm

running 2 or more seperate controllers with same phone app

Post by army_boy_justin »

i have multiple tanks throughout my house with multiple RA controllers. i also have another house with a tank in it that also has its own RA controller. it would be sooooo much easier to control different RA controllers with the same phone app. set it up so that you can name the tank and then choose which tank you are controlling from your mobile device.
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00Warpig00
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Joined: Wed May 16, 2012 9:52 pm

Re: running 2 or more seperate controllers with same phone a

Post by 00Warpig00 »

You can kind of do this with the Android app. Set up one controller on one port, the other on the next port. Then use the Home and Away profiles in the Android app (one for each controller) and point everything to your public internet IP address. as long as your router supports NAT loopback there really is no need to use a home profile anyway.
I have NAT loopback and I cant remember the last time I intentionally switched to the "home" profile in my Android app.

Nick
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binder
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Re: running 2 or more seperate controllers with same phone a

Post by binder »

That's the closest there is to doing this, using the Home and Away profiles inside the Android app. I had thought about updating the app to allow for control of multiple controllers but haven't done it yet. It would be somewhat involved to allow for this and allow for all the existing customizations for each controller.
army_boy_justin
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 10, 2013 8:22 pm

Re: running 2 or more seperate controllers with same phone a

Post by army_boy_justin »

okay guys, im a complete idiot. just to start this off. i can build a tank all day long, but i leave the computer stuff to others. i just had to have a guy STEP BY STEP walk me through setting up the wifi, cuz i couldnt figure it out to save my life. still cant figure out how to access it through the computer, but my ipod shows everything.
so when you start talking about that "NAT loopback"...... i have no clue.....
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army_boy_justin
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 10, 2013 8:22 pm

Re: running 2 or more seperate controllers with same phone a

Post by army_boy_justin »

well, i just figured out the portal on here, so now i can access my main tank from work at least.
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cypho
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2012 11:01 am

Re: running 2 or more seperate controllers with same phone a

Post by cypho »

binder wrote:That's the closest there is to doing this, using the Home and Away profiles inside the Android app. I had thought about updating the app to allow for control of multiple controllers but haven't done it yet. It would be somewhat involved to allow for this and allow for all the existing customizations for each controller.
Binder,

As a temporary fix (or just the lazy solution) you could export the existing android app with a few different package names so people with multiple tanks can install the app multiple times.

___

Or for the more technically advanced users - since the source to the android app is available online - https://github.com/curtbinder/AndroidStatus - it is very easy to do this yourself for no cost. It would take less than 10 minutes (once you learn how to compile an android app) to download the source, change the package name to permit it to be installed alongside of the official app, and to change the icon and label so you can distinguish between the two and install it on your phone. Equally easy to repeat as many times as needed for all of your aquariums.

The only downside is would be no automatic updates from the play store for your custom versions of the app.

If anyone is interested in doing this and does not already know how to compile an android app, you can find all of the info you would need to learn how here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
binder
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Re: running 2 or more seperate controllers with same phone a

Post by binder »

Yes, that is a possibility on being done. So for the time being, if somebody really needed that done, I "could" do that for them and they would have 2 different reef angel apps installed side by side. Long term though, this is not ideal...more or less a pain.

Long term fix though is something that I've been thinking about since this topic was started. I don't know when it will happen but I have been thinking of how I can (and should) clean up the code. So there will be a future release that will have some pretty big improvements and one of which will be the ability to communicate with multiple controllers (although not simultaneously). You will be able to switch the app between controllers and should be able to auto update each controller at a specified interval as well.

Like I said, this will take some reworking of code and improvements in the user interface but will allow for great expansion.
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