Hi everyone. Author here. Gotta say I loved all the comments. My blog followers are all so nice. It feels good to get some real criticism for once :)<p>Relying on Twitter was a truly bonehead move, to be sure. Truly a "bang head here" kind of moment.<p>However, if trusting Twitter was the only "poor engineering decision" I had made I'd be a very happy man. It was just one of dozens of bonehead mistakes I made in building and operating my first aquaponics system.<p>Aquaponics is one of those things where the path of least resistance is definitely following a set of plans that are known to work. You can find one of those on my site, and some other places too. But I've never one to follow the path of least resistance (eg. Screw the round wheel - I'm making mine with fractals).<p>In case anyone's interested, I'm a former electrical engineer who used this as my first attempt at something with Arduino. More of a power-systems and lighting guy, software development was and still is a foreign land to me.<p>I could have tested and researched the reliability of different notification platforms, but at the time I was building it I was already staying up late fixing plumbing problems and trying to get those d*&$ one-wire sensors to work consistently.<p>Thankfully I eventually got my plumbing and sensors working, and bungled along into into Zapier which has been absolutely bulletproof.<p>I think the truly useful lesson here is that if you ever meet anyone in aquaculture who can tell a good story at a party, plop yourself down and ask them if they've ever killed fish in any bizarre and interesting ways. Don't get up for drinks either because you won't want to miss anything. You'll be there all night.
From the Twitter terms of service:<p>"The Twitter Entities make no warranty and disclaim all responsibility and liability for: (i) the completeness, accuracy, availability, timeliness, security or reliability of the Services or any Content; (ii) any harm to your computer system, loss of data, or other harm that results from your access to or use of the Services or any Content; (iii) the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any Content and other communications maintained by the Services; and (iv) whether the Services will meet your requirements or be available on an uninterrupted, secure, or error-free basis."<p>Clearly it was never meant as a reliable communications channel for any sort of M2M application where failure could result in significant economic loss or a threat to human health or life.
And that is a fine example of why you don't rely on such a Rube Goldberg machine for stuff like this...<p>A poor engineering decision killed the fish.<p>I see all sorts of crazy contraptions people have rigged up over the last 5 years since the appearance of the 'maker movement'. Surprised that fish are the only victim so far!<p>Sure you can wire up your coffee machine to listen for a tweet and have coffee ready for when you get in... then when you get there your flat is on fire...<p>Excuse the cynicism but as a professional engineer it scares me how dangerously and poorly thought out some of this sort of stuff is.
More like how not having a heartbeat message that confirms Twitter-based notifications are working killed the fish. And why Twitter? Seems like any of email, IM, or SMS would be a better choice.<p>This is like not starting your emergency generators on a regular schedule and then being surprised that the fuel filter clogged.
This is just the beginning. Connecting things to the Internet is a whole new kettle of fish and there is lots for the novice developer to learn. There will be disasters of all scales. So we need a new school of thought.