kameo
12/18/2015, 04:05 AM
Hi dear fellowship of the reef,
I granted myself with a reeflink from Ecotech and wanted to provide you with feedback. I use it for my pumps only since I chose a Pac.sun lightning rig and not a ecotech one. No clue about the efficiency of ecosmart for the radeon. But for the pumps...
For a better understanding, I'm an IT engineer, so not totally clueless about IT/SaaS software and embedded devices. I code in several language and assembled quite some few automation system for my tank, based on a raspberry pi.
Pumps are great, not so loud as I was told (and I'm very sensitive to noise in my living room) well engineered and seems sturdy. But, beyond the hype, the "modes" are basic scheduling of how much power, when and is it synchronous with other pumps or not. The reefcrest, lagoon blablabla is just a variation of speed of the engine. IE the feedmode is just a constant speed lowered in value to allow the fish to move in a smaller current, when the lagoon is a variation of speed with a pattern. Ok, leave the hype, it's nothing more than this. A motor, moving the head through induction at various speed. The pumps includes a RF system to communicate between them and with the reeflink. Reeflink itself is a basic gateway between the RF wave used by the pumps and your local wifi or lan.
Now about the Ecosmart APP & website. I tried on Iphone 6, Ipad 4, Windows + firefox, windows + chrome, Macbook + chrome, all ended up with the same deceptive experience.
It's plainly a disaster. This thing is impossible to properly configure.
1/ The app is very old style, not scaling on an ipad (mode 2x)
2/ The XML export of the configuration is super buggy and not reimportable in the software (mess up everything)
3/ The website drag and drop thing is awfully unprecise and doesn't allow for precision timing. Among other bugs, you can't fine tune things, the drag & drop doesn't work in most cases, some modes are unavailable, it's terrible.
4/ The app is buggy like hell and sometimes you just make configuration and it's simply ignored. Also, you can't choose any feedmode in the app, which was the main purpose of this acquisition to me.
I could go on for hours, and sincerely in less than 2 hours of use, I found at least 5 other major bugs.
This thing, beyond the hype, is nearly unusable and crappy to the last degree, avoid at all cost.
The only way I found to make the thing work is to try vaguely to put the various modes in the timeline on the website, export it, rename the evg file in XML (it's XML format) and redo the whole XML myself. After few test / try, I could figure out the parameters and their meaning, establish a proper schedule (I switched in impossible to add feedmode with a constant speed at 15% to give my fish some rest) and reimport it in the pumps.
I hope, dearly, that at least the parser sending the commands & schedule to the pumps is not buggy itself and that the pumps will indeed respect the uploaded schedule and not go nuts, but that is another chapter of my Vortech experience...
@Vortech: just restart from scratch your app, with a modern framework. for the website, drop the fancy drag & drop thing, it's useless and totally buggy, it's just marketing. Let people input the precise time, modes and else with a basic and working editor. I don't give a damn about seeing a fancy yellow/green/blue bar, I want to configure my pumps without headache, a precision to the minute and be able to access all modes. Put just numbers, drop the marketing useless stuffs. I don't care about the app in the end, total gadget, wether it works or not (and actually not) doesn't bug me. But at least provide one access, the one you want, that works and is not bugged.
For the interested people, having the same troubles, here is my schedule : (it's XML, but save it in a .evg file to import in the ecosmart website)
(my setup : Red sea reefer 350, 2 vortech MP40wQ)
Basically, my schedule is : midnight to 8 am, constant speed 30%, 8 to 12 am : reefcrest at 41%, 12am to 12:10 : feedmode (emulated with a constant speed at 15%); 12:10 to 5pm : Tidal swell 60%, 5pm to 5:10 pm : emulated feedmode, 5:10 to 8pm : Lagoon 50%; 8-8:10 pm : emulated feedmode, 8:10 to 10pm : constant speed 40%, 10-10:10pm : emulated feedmode, 10:10pm to midnight : constant speed 40%. Both pumps have the exact same schedule.
see attached file.
I granted myself with a reeflink from Ecotech and wanted to provide you with feedback. I use it for my pumps only since I chose a Pac.sun lightning rig and not a ecotech one. No clue about the efficiency of ecosmart for the radeon. But for the pumps...
For a better understanding, I'm an IT engineer, so not totally clueless about IT/SaaS software and embedded devices. I code in several language and assembled quite some few automation system for my tank, based on a raspberry pi.
Pumps are great, not so loud as I was told (and I'm very sensitive to noise in my living room) well engineered and seems sturdy. But, beyond the hype, the "modes" are basic scheduling of how much power, when and is it synchronous with other pumps or not. The reefcrest, lagoon blablabla is just a variation of speed of the engine. IE the feedmode is just a constant speed lowered in value to allow the fish to move in a smaller current, when the lagoon is a variation of speed with a pattern. Ok, leave the hype, it's nothing more than this. A motor, moving the head through induction at various speed. The pumps includes a RF system to communicate between them and with the reeflink. Reeflink itself is a basic gateway between the RF wave used by the pumps and your local wifi or lan.
Now about the Ecosmart APP & website. I tried on Iphone 6, Ipad 4, Windows + firefox, windows + chrome, Macbook + chrome, all ended up with the same deceptive experience.
It's plainly a disaster. This thing is impossible to properly configure.
1/ The app is very old style, not scaling on an ipad (mode 2x)
2/ The XML export of the configuration is super buggy and not reimportable in the software (mess up everything)
3/ The website drag and drop thing is awfully unprecise and doesn't allow for precision timing. Among other bugs, you can't fine tune things, the drag & drop doesn't work in most cases, some modes are unavailable, it's terrible.
4/ The app is buggy like hell and sometimes you just make configuration and it's simply ignored. Also, you can't choose any feedmode in the app, which was the main purpose of this acquisition to me.
I could go on for hours, and sincerely in less than 2 hours of use, I found at least 5 other major bugs.
This thing, beyond the hype, is nearly unusable and crappy to the last degree, avoid at all cost.
The only way I found to make the thing work is to try vaguely to put the various modes in the timeline on the website, export it, rename the evg file in XML (it's XML format) and redo the whole XML myself. After few test / try, I could figure out the parameters and their meaning, establish a proper schedule (I switched in impossible to add feedmode with a constant speed at 15% to give my fish some rest) and reimport it in the pumps.
I hope, dearly, that at least the parser sending the commands & schedule to the pumps is not buggy itself and that the pumps will indeed respect the uploaded schedule and not go nuts, but that is another chapter of my Vortech experience...
@Vortech: just restart from scratch your app, with a modern framework. for the website, drop the fancy drag & drop thing, it's useless and totally buggy, it's just marketing. Let people input the precise time, modes and else with a basic and working editor. I don't give a damn about seeing a fancy yellow/green/blue bar, I want to configure my pumps without headache, a precision to the minute and be able to access all modes. Put just numbers, drop the marketing useless stuffs. I don't care about the app in the end, total gadget, wether it works or not (and actually not) doesn't bug me. But at least provide one access, the one you want, that works and is not bugged.
For the interested people, having the same troubles, here is my schedule : (it's XML, but save it in a .evg file to import in the ecosmart website)
(my setup : Red sea reefer 350, 2 vortech MP40wQ)
Basically, my schedule is : midnight to 8 am, constant speed 30%, 8 to 12 am : reefcrest at 41%, 12am to 12:10 : feedmode (emulated with a constant speed at 15%); 12:10 to 5pm : Tidal swell 60%, 5pm to 5:10 pm : emulated feedmode, 5:10 to 8pm : Lagoon 50%; 8-8:10 pm : emulated feedmode, 8:10 to 10pm : constant speed 40%, 10-10:10pm : emulated feedmode, 10:10pm to midnight : constant speed 40%. Both pumps have the exact same schedule.
see attached file.