Blog

Finally, at long last I have managed to get a decent control panel working! This control panel is where you can set the parameters for your station, such as description, warning and alert levels, latitude and longitude for where it is seen on the map etc.

This has replaced the 'Fields' section in users' profile. Previously, the settings for the station were copied across from the user profile 'Fields' when a station submitted a reading. Implementing the control panel has removed the need for some quite complex functions and simplified the whole process and should free up some precious Raspberry Pi CPU cycles!

The control panel as it is right now is simply a start. I plan on adding features there for things like looking at historic readings between a certain date, or removing a handful of false alert readings or whatever else i think of or is suggested. The first feature I will add, and what I am currently working on now, is multiple per user. This would mean that you wouldn't need to sign up for a new account for each station you have. It is going to be a bit of a challenge implementing this at first, not because of complex code or anything like that; the real challenge lies with migrating stations over from different accounts. How to go about that? I could spend a couple of days writing code so a user can do this themselves. I.e. click a button, type in the station name and password that you want to migrate and boom, done. Or I could simply do this manually and would take me probably less than an hour as there are only a handful of users, which I know of, with multiple stations. They are pretty easy to spot as the station names are usually somewhat similar. Then that would leave the old, redundant user accounts, and what to do with those.

There is a lot of cruft that has accumulated from changes in the past to radmon core, implementing Joomla for the front end, users that could never get their stations working properly, just old, redundant things of no worth. So whilst I am right under the hood of radmon.org, I might as well have a good tidy up too. The general plan is to implement multiple stations per user, migrate over stations to one user account, clean out the cruft. We will probably be updating some system components soon also, so we will be taking radmon.org down for a short time to get a full image of the system and make the updates. I'll give you good notice before we do that, and you can keep an eye out on our Twitter page (here) for notifications/service announcements, things like that.

Be good and happy Geigering!
Details
Hits: 5060

A bit of an update.

Hello all! I hope you are well and your stations are ticking along nicely. This is just a quick update on what has or has not been happening lately. First the has not's. The new control panel hasn't progressed much since I last mentioned it over on the forum. I have hit a brick wall with trying to integrate PHP MYSQL HTML forms into Joomla, because.... Joomla. Joomla is basically a re-write engine with tight security and it looks like it requires a very specific and ultra complicated (for me!) way of integrating it all. Writing a Joomla module may be a better option which I yet have to explore. If there are any Joomla aficionados out there that can help and are willing to, especially if you have done this kind of thing before then please get in touch.

Emails are looking good. Better than they were, but still some tweaks to make. We have gone from random emails disappearing into the ether to the emails landing in junk. A very kind user with a lot of knowledge in this area has kindly offered help and sent in a lot of info so we know what needs to be changed, so is just a matter of time now. The main issue was the DNS was improperly configured and that has been solved now, and so far every user that has registered has received the registration verification email.

Email alerts for all stations has been implemented and not just those using Radlog. Any station that submits to radmon.org can receive an email alert when the threshold in your profile is exceeded. See this post here: https://radmon.org/index.php/forum/howtos-and-faqs/1331-email-alerts-for-everyone-not-just-radlog-users

We have been working on email notifications for private messages in radmon.org. Previously when users received a private message they weren't sent any notification. After a bit of config wrangling we now have email notifications when a private message arrives in your inbox. It needs tweaks as they are landing in junk until marked as 'not junk'. We are currently working to get this working properly. For the time being please check your junk folder for any registration/alert/notification emails.

I have implemented a minimum submission interval of 30 seconds for all stations. Some stations have been logging every 5 or 10 seconds and it does nothing more than bloat the database. If a station now submits in less than 30 seconds it just drops the submission. More about that here: https://radmon.org/index.php/forum/radmon-org-news/1332-minimum-submission-time

Users that have kindly donated to radmon.org now have a data retention period of 5 years. Users that have not donated have a data retention period of 2 years. This doesn't mean much right now until something is written to drill down into past records, which will be done all in good time.

The server moved two months ago and now sits on the end of a Gigabit fiber connection. The server and network hardware all seem to be very stable with the new connection. The server did have a little wobble yesterday that was due to it overheating. Dan made some adjustments to the cooling system and that seems to have solved the issue.

There have been some great posts over on the forum lately. Users writing custom firmware for commercial Geiger counters, some quite impressive iterations of ESP8266 and ESP32 counter firmware and custom hardware too, more posts and information of counters/tubes and radioactive sources. And if you are a new user then head over to the forum and say hi!

Be good and happy radmonauting!
Details
Hits: 5216

@Radmon_org
We're on Twitter!

As requested by some users we have setup a Twitter account where we can send out service alerts and updates. We will use this for service status alerts and to announce major updates to Radmon.org, as well as this blog and forum.

You can follow us @Radmon_org on Twitter, or go to https://twitter.com/Radmon_org and clicky on the follow button.

Primarily this will be used to inform you of server down time and outages, as some users became a little worried after the last outage (as did I). But fear not, Radmon is here to stay and despite what will come to challenge us, we will endevour to keep Radmon running for as long as people want to use it. So hop over to Twitter and follow @Radmon_org. (That's an underscore, not a dot ;-) )

Happy radmonauting!
Details
Hits: 6425

I would like to introduce myself to those that don't know me here, and give an update to everyone about Radmon.org.

I'm Simon, or Simomax (my username here.) Dan (mw0uzo) asked me to come and do some work with Radmon.org, which, as you can see from this post, I eagerly agreed to. I have a good skill set with plenty of experience and I am looking forward to working with Dan and giving Radmon.org some love it deserves. There are some new features we would like to implement, some bug fixes we would like to fix and some improvements to be made. Some of the things we have discussed are MQTT implementation, performance improvements and some bug fixes. If you have any ideas of things you would like to see within Radmon.org, then please head over to the forum and let us know your thoughts!

It is going to take some time for these things to be done, and hopefully a lot more on top of those I have already mentioned. Both Dan and myself have life commitments that vary the time we can allocate towards those goals. But, Rome wasn't built in a day, and there is plenty of time ahead. I am particularly interested in improving the performance of Radmon.org and it is one of the things I will be looking at. There is a massive load put on the server under certain operations and these could be optimized. In some cases it may be that parts of Radmon.org are completely re-written, but that is for another day.

As always, feel free to post in the forum. If you have questions, ask away.

I would also like to thank the 260+ stations for simply being here and choosing Radmon.org as a place to send their readings. And of course, thanks to all the forum members for being here also. It is all of you members and stations that makes Radmon what it is, for without you, it is just a server!

Simomax

Details
Hits: 6408
Everything's free. Please support us by considering a donation. Log in first!
Solar powered Raspberry Pi 4 server stats: CPU 68% Memory 15% Swap 0% CPU temp=55.5'C Uptime 3:27, Days