All,
I would like to setup an alert to notify me if my 'primary' heater fails in the off position, and I think I ran into a snag with how the Apex monitors outlets/outputs in the manual or auto positions.
Details: I have two heaters running my tank which are controlled via the Apex temperature probe. The primary heater is set at the on/off temperatures I want the tank to remain at, and the secondary/failover heater is set about 1 degree below the primary and acts as a fail-over/backup for the primary, plus in the event the room gets really cold, will help maintain the desired temperature.
I was attempting to setup a virtual outlet/output to monitor the power (watts) and have it turn on if the primary heater doesn't turn on within a set period of time. The programming I thought would work is below.
Set OFF
If Output Heater_1_6 Watts < 20 Then ON
Defer 900:00 Then ON
I set the virtual outlet/output to auto, but it never came on. After reading through the Advanced Control Freak Guide I found the following statement.
Important Note: As the Apex evaluates and executes programming, these new alarm options and programming statements will be ignored if the specified output is manually OFF or the output is in AUTO and the output state is OFF due to programming. This behavior prevents false alarms about low watts or amps when an EB832 output is OFF.
I believe this is the reason why I can never get the virtual outlet/output to turn on. My heaters need to be set to auto to work properly, which will cause the Apex to ignore my program I created.
Does anyone know of a way to 'exclude' the ignore option in a case like this for an outlet? Or is there a better way to monitor the health of a heater and alert if it dies in the off position?
Thanks in advance for your help?
Jeff
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