Problem with 3rd Party Device Support for Sicce

[HaulinAshe]

I setup the Sicce SDC 9 return pump using the new 3rd Party Device Support feature and quickly experienced problems. Despite several days of reviewing and revising setups, I found the communications between Hydros and Sicce to be unreliable and often resulted in what appeared to be erroneous data exchanges or missing data.

The recurring problem was Water Temp being reported as 0C/32F in the Hydros 3rd Party Output Device. That could also be missing data (zero value), I don't know. What I do know is my experience thus far was a very unreliable setup that often resulted in error/fallback conditions on something as critical as a return pump.

I have elected to abandon the Sicce support feature for now and gone back to maintaining separate schedules for Hydros and Sicce.

It would be nice if Hydros was able to warn of missing or incomplete communication with Sicce and continue to function in the last valid state, instead of erroring out and shutting down the device as critical as a return pump.

 

[Michael]

I setup the Sicce SDC 9 return pump using the new 3rd Party Device Support feature and quickly experienced problems. Despite several days of reviewing and revising setups, I found the communications between Hydros and Sicce to be unreliable and often resulted in what appeared to be erroneous data exchanges or missing data.

The recurring problem was Water Temp being reported as 0C/32F in the Hydros 3rd Party Output Device. That could also be missing data (zero value), I don't know. What I do know is my experience thus far was a very unreliable setup that often resulted in error/fallback conditions on something as critical as a return pump.

I have elected to abandon the Sicce support feature for now and gone back to maintaining separate schedules for Hydros and Sicce.

It would be nice if Hydros was able to warn of missing or incomplete communication with Sicce and continue to function in the last valid state, instead of erroring out and shutting down the device as critical as a return pump.

Have you submitted a support ticket? If not please do so we can connect with you. CoralVue Support Portal

 

[Danny]

I setup the Sicce SDC 9 return pump using the new 3rd Party Device Support feature and quickly experienced problems. Despite several days of reviewing and revising setups, I found the communications between Hydros and Sicce to be unreliable and often resulted in what appeared to be erroneous data exchanges or missing data.

The recurring problem was Water Temp being reported as 0C/32F in the Hydros 3rd Party Output Device. That could also be missing data (zero value), I don't know. What I do know is my experience thus far was a very unreliable setup that often resulted in error/fallback conditions on something as critical as a return pump.

I have elected to abandon the Sicce support feature for now and gone back to maintaining separate schedules for Hydros and Sicce.

It would be nice if Hydros was able to warn of missing or incomplete communication with Sicce and continue to function in the last valid state, instead of erroring out and shutting down the device as critical as a return pump.

You are not trying to run a pattern other that constant flow are you? There is a command limit on the amount of command that can be sent in a given amount of time. If that is exceeded it will quit responding to the commands. I have not had any issues with mine but I only have two schedules one for regular flow rate and one for feed mode. Both are set as constant flow.

 

[HaulinAshe]

No, I am not running anything more than constant flow with two feed mode changes each day.

The pump speed changes worked great and always matched between Hydros Schedule settings and Sicce ContrAll (within the 5% window). But the reported Water Temp value would arbitrarily go to zero(0) which caused an error on the Output Device and it would go to Fallback.

 

[Danny]

No, I am not running anything more than constant flow with two feed mode changes each day.

The pump speed changes worked great and always matched between Hydros Schedule settings and Sicce ContrAll (within the 5% window). But the reported Water Temp value would arbitrarily go to zero(0) which caused an error on the Output Device and it would go to Fallback.

I have not noticed an issue with temp on mine and have not seen it in fallback. You may want to submit a support ticket so CoralVue can look into it.

 

[HaulinAshe]

I have not noticed an issue with temp on mine and have not seen it in fallback. You may want to submit a support ticket so CoralVue can look into it.

I did submit a support ticket. However, I'm not willing to continue operating my system with an unreliable return pump setup. So I deleted everything Sicce related and went back to the old setup.

Since then I did have one hunch that it may have had something to do with using the two pre-existing Feed Schedules. Instead of adding yet another pair of matching Feed Schedules for the Return Pump, I added the Sicce as a third pump to the GYREs schedule that already existed and called for Constant 0%.

Last night I setup the Sicce again as 3rd party with it's own "private" set of duplicate schedules. We'll see how that goes.

 

[thom_smith]

I did submit a support ticket. However, I'm not willing to continue operating my system with an unreliable return pump setup. So I deleted everything Sicce related and went back to the old setup.

Since then I did have one hunch that it may have had something to do with using the two pre-existing Feed Schedules. Instead of adding yet another pair of matching Feed Schedules for the Return Pump, I added the Sicce as a third pump to the GYREs schedule that already existed and called for Constant 0%.

Last night I setup the Sicce again as 3rd party with it's own "private" set of duplicate schedules. We'll see how that goes.

Unsure what "feed" constitutes. Is it Feed Mode? Or making pumps behave in a similar manner when activating an auto feeder? If Feed Mode, you may be making the schedules more difficult than they need to be. It is not necessary to have a schedule at 0% for Feed Mode. Simply expand Active in Modes below your normal schedule and untick Feed Mode. If no schedule applied during a particular mode or time then the pump won't run. Then upon exiting the pump will restart its normal mode again.

As for temperature, is the Sicce app also reporting the same issue? If so, it could be a legutimate issue with the pump or app on the Sicce side. Realize highly improbable it is actually the temperature issue it is reporting but there may be some other issue it is not reporting accurately. Or is it just the Hydros app reporting this issue? That could be an indication the cloud api side is sending incorrect info or Hydros isn't properly interpreting the correct response from Sicce. Knowing these answers could prove valuable to @Michael and team to properly diagnose and resolve if an issue with their api implementation.

Sorry I can't give more specific Sicce answers other than schedule optimization. I have several flow punps including various Abyzz and Reef Octo models but no Sicce.

 

[HaulinAshe]

Isolating the Sicce pump with it's own set of schedules appears to be working fine. Sharing a schedule(s) with two GYREs and with the Sicce as a third output device is what produced erroneous data/errors.

 

[HaulinAshe]

Unsure what "feed" constitutes. Is it Feed Mode? Or making pumps behave in a similar manner when activating an auto feeder? If Feed Mode, you may be making the schedules more difficult than they need to be. It is not necessary to have a schedule at 0% for Feed Mode. Simply expand Active in Modes below your normal schedule and untick Feed Mode. If no schedule applied during a particular mode or time then the pump won't run. Then upon exiting the pump will restart its normal mode again.

As for temperature, is the Sicce app also reporting the same issue? If so, it could be a legutimate issue with the pump or app on the Sicce side. Realize highly improbable it is actually the temperature issue it is reporting but there may be some other issue it is not reporting accurately. Or is it just the Hydros app reporting this issue? That could be an indication the cloud api side is sending incorrect info or Hydros isn't properly interpreting the correct response from Sicce. Knowing these answers could prove valuable to @Michael and team to properly diagnose and resolve if an issue with their api implementation.

Sorry I can't give more specific Sicce answers other than schedule optimization. I have several flow punps including various Abyzz and Reef Octo models but no Sicce.

I don't manually trigger Feed modes. I use independently timed autofeeders and schedule GYREs (driven by WAVE-LE) along with a Sicce SDC-9 Return Pump (powered by Hydros WiFi Outlet) to shutdown to 0% for 30-minute feeding periods.

Note: I do not shut off the AC power to the Sicce controller. This is difficult to explain in writing.

 

[HaulinAshe]

The revised setup has run error-free long enough for me to say it works. The problem was including a Sicce 3rd Party Device in the same schedule as the Icecap GYREs instead of having a separate schedule dedicated to the Sicce.

I doubt brands have anything to do with the problem I experienced, other than Sicce including Water Temp data in their communications. It was that data value that appeared to generate the errors.

I'm submitting a support ticket to CV.

 

[Danny]

The revised setup has run error-free long enough for me to say it works. The problem was including a Sicce 3rd Party Device in the same schedule as the Icecap GYREs instead of having a separate schedule dedicated to the Sicce.

I doubt brands have anything to do with the problem I experienced, other than Sicce including Water Temp data in their communications. It was that data value that appeared to generate the errors.

I'm submitting a support ticket to CV.

Do the gyres run a schedule that has a pattern other than constant speed? If so that would cause the issue with the Sicce pumps.

 

[HaulinAshe]

Do the gyres run a schedule that has a pattern other than constant speed? If so that would cause the issue with the Sicce pumps.

No, the only schedules I attempted to share were the two feed period schedules where the pattern was Constant and the Value 0%.

Outside of those two periods, the Sicce device had its own three schedules that were also Constant with a Value in the 50s. I was very careful not to send many changes to Sicce.

Again, I will reiterate that I believe it was the Water Temp value that is the complicating factor causing the errors.