Deciding on controller: What do you hate most about Apex, GHL, and HYDROS?

[csund]

It’s happened to me (indirectly) before with GHL. The power supply failed and the head unit turned off. This actually tripped the circuit breaker in my house and I lost everything in the tank.

That’s actually a good point. I included a “main” circuit breaker to feed my power distribution panel at the aquarium - if that were to trip I would end up in the same boat as you. I may add additional circuit breakers sized appropriately to the individual components. If one were to trip it would isolate the issue to that component alone. If the GHL power supply were to fail the powerhubs would still have power and switch to fallback states. I may add a diode module to have dual source power to critical components.

 

[n2585722]

That’s actually a good point. I included a “main” circuit breaker to feed my power distribution panel at the aquarium - if that were to trip I would end up in the same boat as you. I may add additional circuit breakers sized appropriately to the individual components. If one were to trip it would isolate the issue to that component alone. If the GHL power supply were to fail the powerhubs would still have power and switch to fallback states. I may add a diode module to have dual source power to critical components.

My tank has been without power for over 4 hours several times. In fact we had rolling blackout that lasted almost a week in February. They would go form on 4 hours to off 4 hours. That was for a 24hr period. The off on time did vary but it was alway 50/50. It was below freezing for the whole week and during the blackouts. My tank did get down just a hair below 70 at one time. It took almost 2 day to get back up to76 once the blackouts stopped. I did not loose anything during or after the incident. I do have a battery backup for my 2 MP10's, but when power was out nothing else was working. There were quite a few people that lost everthing in their tanks due to this. I would invest in some kind of way to maintain some flow in the tank when there is no power for several hours. That is most important. Everything else is secondary.

 

[csund]

My tank has been without power for over 4 hours several times. In fact we had rolling blackout that lasted almost a week in February. They would go form on 4 hours to off 4 hours. That was for a 24hr period. The off on time did vary but it was alway 50/50. It was below freezing for the whole week and during the blackouts. My tank did get down just a hair below 70 at one time. It took almost 2 day to get back up to76 once the blackouts stopped. I did not loose anything during or after the incident. I do have a battery backup for my 2 MP10's, but when power was out nothing else was working. There were quite a few people that lost everthing in their tanks due to this. I would invest in some kind of way to maintain some flow in the tank when there is no power for several hours. That is most important. Everything else is secondary.

I ran a 20 amp circuit to isolate both tanks from the rest of the room. My plan is to place a 2-3000 watt inverter charger in-line connected to four 8D batteries. They have a built in automatic transfer switch. If grid power fails it should be a seemless transfer to inverter power. I have the batteries just need to decide on inverter. I’ll have GHL monitor power before inverter so I can have it turn off non essentials like lighting. My goal would be to keep heaters, return and power heads going for the better part of a day so I have time to get gen online without having to rush home from work.

However, none of this matters if something trips the single breaker at the aquarium. Panta Rhei looks like they have battery backups but you have to inquire about pricing. Maybe I don’t want to know..

 

[i_am_mclovin]

Ok hydros users. Ever have an issue where you can’t make any config changes such as add an output or etc? You click upload and it fails says upload failed please wait with the red bar?

But I can do everything else. I can turn outlets on or off, go into feed mode etc. That all works fine. I just can’t change any configs. I’ve rebooted my router, the hydros, and both wifi bars. My hydros LED are breathing blue so it’s happy. When I click upload changes it does the fast spinning blue LED but the upload fails.

 

[n2585722]

I have a collective of 8 controllers and when that happens it is usually one of the control units that the upload failed on. I can reboot that single controller and it usually will fix the issue. Whatever fails the upload will have a red X when the upload is happening. Have you watched the progress to see if it is the cloud or your local controller?

 

[i_am_mclovin]

I have a collective of 8 controllers and when that happens it is usually one of the control units that the upload failed on. I can reboot that single controller and it usually will fix the issue. Whatever fails the upload will have a red X when the upload is happening. Have you watched the progress to see if it is the cloud or your local controller?

It’s the 3rd step, updating the controller itself. I only have a single hydros x4. I did a reboot from the app, which does work, and that did not fix.

 

[n2585722]

Have you submitted a support ticket here https://support.coralvue.com/submit_ticket . Let them know it errors out on the controller itself. It could be something simple but I don't want to have you do something than might prevent them from troubleshooting the issue. As long as it will run things and you can manually control things it is best to wait for them to reply. Rebooting fixes that when it happens to me but you have already tried that. The only other thing I can think of would be powering down the controller and powering it back up and see if it will fix the issue. I have had to do that a time or two.

 

[i_am_mclovin]

Thanks ticket submitted.

 

[i_am_mclovin]

Huge thanks to Carlos who responded to my ticket over the weekend. My SD card went "bad". I just had to remove the 6 screws on the faceplate, get to the SD card and replace it. Didn't have to save or restore any settings. It made me realize that my items were not "logging" either, and my graphs were not updating as well. I had a spare SD card and that did the trick. 5 minute fix.

 

[n2585722]

Huge thanks to Carlos who responded to my ticket over the weekend. My SD card went "bad". I just had to remove the 6 screws on the faceplate, get to the SD card and replace it. Didn't have to save or restore any settings. It made me realize that my items were not "logging" either, and my graphs were not updating as well. I had a spare SD card and that did the trick. 5 minute fix.

I was thinking it might be that but was not positive it was the issue. Glad to hear you have it fixed. I assume they all use the same type SD card.

 

[YOYOYOReefer]

Coralvue has tons of issues if you dont use a dedicated 2.4ghz once they fix that im going to get a hydros since the tech seems newer, besides the part that connects to the internet of course..
i bet they figure it out eventually everybody is 5 ghz nowadays, why would the newest controller come out working with only yesterdays routers and most people dont want to learn to program anything , they expect it to work out of the box./

 

[i_am_mclovin]

I was thinking it might be that but was not positive it was the issue. Glad to hear you have it fixed. I assume they all use the same type SD card.

Yea. Carlos mentioned a firmware update is coming that can better handle corrupted blocks on an SD card.

 

[i_am_mclovin]

Coralvue has tons of issues if you dont use a dedicated 2.4ghz once they fix that im going to get a hydros since the tech seems newer, besides the part that connects to the internet of course..
i bet they figure it out eventually everybody is 5 ghz nowadays, why would the newest controller come out working with only yesterdays routers and most people dont want to learn to program anything , they expect it to work out of the box./

For what it's worth, I have both 2.4 and 5 in my house and have no real issue. Maybe 2 times a day the power bars go "offline" for a minute or two, but that's it. It's never caused any actual problem. If not for the alert I wouldn't even know.

 

[kenchilada]

Yea. Carlos mentioned a firmware update is coming that can better handle corrupted blocks on an SD card.

A lot of SD cards now are cheap crap counterfeits. Get a good one from Sandisk from a reputable store (NOT Amazon and eBay). If it looks fake it is. If it doesn't look fake it might fake.

 

[i_am_mclovin]

A lot of SD cards now are cheap crap counterfeits. Get a good one from Sandisk from a reputable store (NOT Amazon and eBay). If it looks fake it is. If it doesn't look fake it might fake.

It wasn't my SD card, it was the card that came with the hydros that was bad.

 

[n2585722]

Coralvue has tons of issues if you dont use a dedicated 2.4ghz once they fix that im going to get a hydros since the tech seems newer, besides the part that connects to the internet of course..
i bet they figure it out eventually everybody is 5 ghz nowadays, why would the newest controller come out working with only yesterdays routers and most people dont want to learn to program anything , they expect it to work out of the box./

I just found out the the router 2.4ghz channel has to be 802.11b for it to work correctly with the Hydros. I checked my router and it has no setting like that. It must be just on newer routers.

They used 2.4ghz because of the range and the controllers don't use a lot of bandwidth anyway. It is usually more reliable but not good for applications that require a lot of bandwidth. A lot of IOT is still using 2.4ghz.

 

[Sean Clark]

My main complaint about the Apex is the limitation of having a single Alarm condition reported at a time. I have worked around this by placing individual virtual outputs on my dashboard which monitor each condition so I can see the status at a glance, but I would prefer to receive text or email notifications for each alarm condition if there are multiple concurrent issues. I explain this in my Apex Alarm Programming tutorial.

My only other complaint is the frequent failure rate with the DDR. The optical sensors fail frequently and/or the circuit board is easily damaged by liquids since it's not sealed properly.

You will probably see a lot of complaints about the Apex salinity probe. Mine has worked perfectly for 3 years because I have it mounted upside down so no air bubbles get trapped inside. This simple technique solves the problem experienced by so many people.

Other than that, I'm completely happy with my Apex and have no intentions of switching platforms. See my entire series of Apex articles here:

Articles by SuncrestReef

www.reef2reef.com

This was going to be my complaint for Apex. Only one alarm condition reported at a time. It would also be nice to see different levels of alarms like yellow, orange, and red that had different alerts to go along with them. I don't need to freak out if my ato reservoir is low the same way that I need to freak out if there is water on the floor.

 

[FishyFishFish]

The first evolution of 802.11b was introduced in 1997. It is one of the oldest 2.4 GHz standards there is. If Hydros is only 802.11b, then it’s old technology.

Even the $15 Raspberry Pi has 802.11b/g/n; I would be surprised if Hydros wasn’t the same.

 

[n2585722]

The first evolution of 802.11b was introduced in 1997. It is one of the oldest 2.4 GHz standards there is. If Hydros is only 802.11b, then it’s old technology.

Even the $15 Raspberry Pi has 802.11b/g/n; I would be surprised if Hydros wasn’t the same.

It could be but a user had to go to that on his router to even see it and set it up. I am not sure what all his options were on the router but that what he had to choose to get it to setup.

 

[kenchilada]

It wasn't my SD card, it was the card that came with the hydros that was bad.

Yeah, they’re probably cheap crap. Use a good card and put the controller on a battery backup. Most corruption happens when a device loses power while writing data.

Also a bad power supply will cause SD card problems.