Questions about controller capabilities

[Siffy]

I've been considering the purchase of a controller for my tank, but it doesn't appear that any controller available will do everything I'd want it to do, even the ACIII Pro. My 2 drawbacks on buying an ACIII Pro is the availability of a true salinity monitor and calcium monitoring.

My 2 questions are, can Pinpoint probes be used on the controller if I write the software to translate the probe readings. Is the software even powerful enough to do that? And outputing the information on the controller's LCD.

Secondly, if other mfg probes are not compatible with the unit whatsoever, does Neptune have plans to produce such probes? Salinity, Calcium, possibly Nitrate.

I would hate to purchase over $1000 of monitoring equipment just to try this out and fail and then an AC4 come out with the capabilities and nothing be backward compatible.

[dhoch]

I think they have a salnity probe...

Issue with calcium probes (or at least as I recall) you CANNOT leave them in the water...

I don't know of a nitrate probe at all...

Dave

[clp]

As soon as there is a probe available for Ca, NO3, etc. we'll add support for it to our product line. Currently there just aren't any ISE probes that are reliable and accurate in a marine environment.

Curt

[Double-J]

The ACIIIP does have Salinity but use the conductivity of the water. So you have to use a chart or write a program to read salinity. if you click my red house you will see that my conductivity reads in salinity.

[Siffy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9377636#post9377636 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by clp
As soon as there is a probe available for Ca, NO3, etc. we'll add support for it to our product line. Currently there just aren't any ISE probes that are reliable and accurate in a marine environment.

Curt

Since I can expect that to happen in the lifetime of the controller, will new probes be compatible with current controllers or would it require an upgrade to use them?

Thanks,
Will

[Siffy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9378260#post9378260 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tinytool
The ACIIIP does have Salinity but use the conductivity of the water. So you have to use a chart or write a program to read salinity. if you click my red house you will see that my conductivity reads in salinity.

That's a nice setup. I may be asking to steal code from you in the future. :) Slick webpage design too.

[Siffy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9377375#post9377375 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dhoch
I think they have a salnity probe...

Issue with calcium probes (or at least as I recall) you CANNOT leave them in the water...

I don't know of a nitrate probe at all...

Dave

I didn't know that about Ca probes. I have heard they're not that great right now as they lose their accuracy quickly. I'm sure they'll find a fix for that eventually.

Pinpoint currently makes all the probes I mentioned, Salinity, Ca, and NO3 as well as conductivity. That's why I thought about them on an AC.

[dhoch]

Salinity = Conductivity. (just a different scale... kind saying my car has MPH and KPH, but both are speed)

Those that have the CA probes don't like them, find they go out of calibration to easily and eventually end up selling them... I've never seen the NO3 probe so I can't comment.

Tinytools home page is one I did for him...

You can also see more of my work @:
www.danj.com/reef (my reef web page)
www.coralfreaksreef.com

More coming in the future ;)

Dave