Handy Tool?

[reiverix]

I wrote a small program when I was setting up my new 75g in October. It's a heavily planted tank and I was determined to get the correct fert dosing as quickly as possible. Anyway the program helped a lot so if anyone wants to try it out, here's a link.

http://www.classiccycleparts.com/john/H2OSetup.msi

You will also need the .Net (dotnet) framework runtime files installed. Most people already have this. If it's in your Add/Remove programs list you are fine otherwise download it here.

http://www.classiccycleparts.com/john/dotnetfx.exe

Now I've only tried it on XP (pro) but it should work fine on any version of Windows except Win95.

Here's a link to an info page
http://www.classiccycleparts.com/john/h2o.htm

Cheers,

John

 

[happychem]

First User Agreement I ever read from start to finish!

 

[reiverix]

Yes, my lawyer wrote it for me :laugh:

 

[Slappy*McFish]

Nice little program. :bowing:

 

[happychem]

Didn't work on win98.

 

[reiverix]

Did it give you any kind of error message?

 

[reiverix]

aha my bad. I had this problem a few years back. Should have remembered.....

There's a component missing on Win98. Basically it's the database provider. It ships with XP or later only.

I've set up a download here http://www.classiccycleparts.com/john/mdac_typ.exe

It will install the needed files.

 

[happychem]

Problem solved. Nice utility, it'll take me a little while to find my way around it, but I like it!

Only comment for the next version would be to have units on the boxes for user input, like lengths and doses are they in tsp, grams, etc.?

 

[reiverix]

Units of measure was something I thought hard about and concluded that it's really up to the user to decide. The program is totally unaware of anything except the actual values entered, except when it calculates CO2 - that relies on dKH. My reasoning behind this is that there is no international standard. Some people use inches/gallons/tsp while others use cm/liters/grams.

So as long as you know what your measuring units are, and stick with them, it's fine. However, I do see your point. At the moment I'm using TSP to dose my ferts but I'm going to get myself a gram scale. When I was writing the program I realized just how much easier it is to work with grams and liters.

 

[happychem]

Gotcha, cool. I haven't had much time to play with it yet, so I didn't really know if the program was doing something with those numbers or just saving them for me, so I was wondering if I was using the right units or not, guess I was.