@schmebulock
Alright, think I've got a solid analogy for you.
Ppm is basically data. Too little data, there's no sustenance to feed the system to operate. Too much data, there's an overload and it can't be sorted fast enough to process. Simple enough, I know you understand this.
Now, since ppm is just data, it is fairly useless in its raw form. It needs to be sorted, organized, collected, and stored. Luckily, the plant does all of that for you, you just input the data.
To make this easier, you provide an amount of data that can be easily handled, without lacking enough to function or without overloading. This is why I have you top off with fresh, as opposed to traditional hydro. It allows you to take information from the data and store it, to remove it from the equation. If you constantly bombard the system with data, eventually you are going to need to do a dump to offset the overload, or reservoir reset.
Sometimes you will encounter incomplete information, generally from a lack of needed data. This usually displays as a deficiency in your plant. This could be from too much data to easily extract the information smoothly, or from a lack of data entirely.
As your plant grows, so does the amount of storage in the database, along with the analysts to log it. More data in, more info out.
Next, we need to move into what data should be logged versus what is irrelevant, or even harmful, and how to fill your database with the right data at the right time. Pretty sure I didn't tell you anything you didn't know yet, just making sure we are on the same page. Tracking?
