Nitrox/Trimix blending Software - need testers.

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blacknet

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Hello,

I am working on a blending software package that does nitrox, trimix, cost of fills, blow off, cubic ft of fills, mod/ead/ppo2/hypoxic and supports overfilling. When it is finished i'm going to release it as freeware.

Currently it is still in 'beta' and I was wondering if anyone would like to give it a spin and let me know of any errors, updates needed, new features and the like.

Thanks,

Ed
 
What's it written in? Dos, window, PDA ?
Rob
 
Hello,

Visual basic, nice GUI interface.

Ed
 
Hmm...

1. Check the MOD entries under 'Logistics'
It looks like the 1.6 and 1.4 lables should swap positions.

2. Make the calculated fields font darker. Dark grey on light grey is prety hard to read.

3. Something looks odd with the tri-mix Hypoxic fsw calculated field when you set the target mixes o2 to 16. It should be zero (or close to it), not 6.86950... Check for multiplication or division by zero in the formula maybe? Try always adding the constant 0.000000001 to the offending value if that's what it is (I've fudged this way myself on occation :wink: ).

4. Maybe change "Use one Price for Air" to "Use flat rate for air". I'm not sure that's really any better though. There's probably a better way to say it but I can't think of it right now...

5. Maybe make a new area 'Best Mix' and move the desired depth there instead of target blend?

Maybe a checkbox to automaticaly carry the calculated mix into the 'desired results' area?

Here is an example of what I mean:

http://members.aol.com/dc4bs/stuff/best_mix.xls

It's a small part of a set of Excel spread sheets I built to do basicaly what you're doing here.

If you want to be really fancy, let the user enter the Max END as a ppN2 OR fsw/msw... I ponderd that with the spread sheet but have been too lazy to actualy figure out how to do it neatly so far.

------------------------------------
That's all I see so far.

Let me know if you have any questions on anything above.

I'll keep fiddling with it and see If I come up with anything more.
 
dc4bs once bubbled...
Hmm...

1. Check the MOD entries under 'Logistics'
It looks like the 1.6 and 1.4 lables should swap positions.

For MOD I am using the following formulas:

If Fo2FinalMix.Text <> "0" Then
MaxOperatingDepth16.Text = Format(((1.6 / (Fo2FinalMix.Text / 100)) - 1) * 33, "#,###")
MaxOperatingDepth14.Text = Format(((1.4 / (Fo2FinalMix.Text / 100)) - 1) * 33, "#,###")
End If

2. Make the calculated fields font darker. Dark grey on light grey is prety hard to read.

The font is black on grey but when I disable the fields, from user input, it goes to dark grey. I'll see what I can do about that.

3. Something looks odd with the tri-mix Hypoxic fsw calculated field when you set the target mixes o2 to 16. It should be zero (or close to it), not 6.86950... Check for multiplication or division by zero in the formula maybe? Try always adding the constant 0.000000001 to the offending value if that's what it is (I've fudged this way myself on occation :wink: ).

for what depth? For Hypoxic I'm using this formula.

If Fo2FinalMix.Text <> 0 Then
HypoxicTest = ((0.16 / (Fo2FinalMix.Text / 100)) - 1) * 33
If HypoxicTest <= 0 Then
Hypoxic.Text = 0
Else
Hypoxic.Text = HypoxicTest
End If
End If

4. Maybe change "Use one Price for Air" to "Use flat rate for air". I'm not sure that's really any better though. There's probably a better way to say it but I can't think of it right now...

Done. I changed it to "Flat rate Air Price"

5. Maybe make a new area 'Best Mix' and move the desired depth there instead of target blend?
Maybe a checkbox to automaticaly carry the calculated mix into the 'desired results' area?

Here is an example of what I mean:

http://members.aol.com/dc4bs/stuff/best_mix.xls

It's a small part of a set of Excel spread sheets I built to do basicaly what you're doing here.

If you want to be really fancy, let the user enter the Max END as a ppN2 OR fsw/msw... I ponderd that with the spread sheet but have been too lazy to actualy figure out how to do it neatly so far.

I have been toying with the idea of a 'best mix' and the 'max END' boxes. The 'best mix' would include both nitrox and trimix.

Also wil be adding metric for our friends across the great pond.

The print button, when it's active, will print an invoice with a user setable 'dive shop name' on it.

Ed
 
Hello,

I just added a "Max END" field and 2 buttons, "Best Mix @ 1.4" and "Best Mix @ 1.6", both of these sets the desired mix accordingly.

Ed
 
Hi Blacknet,

I'll grab the new version when I get home from work after 11 tonight and check it out.

If I remember correctly from this morning, having the max depth at 80 and o2 at 16% is where the 'hypoxic' depth gave the odd reading. If I set o2 to 17 it was 0 as it should be and if I set o2 to 15 it calculated to 2.2 fsw if I remember correctly. max depth should have no effect on the hypoxic depth though. I know the 6.86950 number is what I got because I had netscape (scubaboard) open along with your mixing screen and simply copied the numbers as I saw them on screen...

Manualy calculating from your code below, it SHOULD come out as 0 not 6.86950

Maybe I have an odd/old .dll file causing a math problem with '((.16/.16)-1)*33' for VB on my system? I don't normaly use VB apps and had to enable sume stuff under XP-Pro and download one .dll file I didn't have to get it to work at all this morning so that might be it as well - I'll see if I can find anything from that angle.
The MOD formulas you are using look right. It was probably my brain not keeping up with the rest of me at 5 this morning... :wink: I'll check that as well when I get home.
 
OK,

My brain WAS seeing things backwords at 5 this morning... The MOD listings are correct.

One thing though, the MOD appears to be rounding the results up. EG: for depth 250, 16% o2, I get a MOD of 256 for PPo2 of 1.4 in the Mixer screen. The math works out to 255.75

Based on conservative principles, you may want to think about adding 'TRUNCATE (MOD formula)' into the code so it will always display the shallower (more conservative) value by default.

For some reason, the newer version does not have the 'hypoxic' problem at 16% o2 and displays '0' as it should.

If you didn't change anything in the code there, I dunno what is different on the new one... I can email you a screen shot showing the odd numbers on the old one if you want it for some reason.

The black on grey number displays look much better. There are 2 more entries to update though, FN2 and N2 on the left hand column are still the older grey on grey color scheme.

If you click on either 'best mix' button more than once, it recalculates the mix percentages and diplays as ##.##% instead of ##% for He and N2 under 'desired results'. Is that intentional?

Nit picking, I know, but the 'Best Mix' buttons will sometimes give a final PPo2 greater than the number on the button... EG: 250 fsw and 'Best Mix' of 1.6 ends up with a final 'Nitrox/PPo2' of 1.63 Again, conservativism should be to force that it never goes over 1.6 but can fall a bit under it. Posibly more rounding going on somewhere?

----

Keep up the good work. 'Mixer' is looking quite good.
 

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