ecosmart live, software issues and factory resets needed to update graph?

[Radionquestions]

Hi,

I was wanting to check the experience that others are having using ecosmart live, as I'm finding it quite frustrating and unreliable.

I'm late in to work again this morning as I have had to do a factory reset and redo my graph again. I'm going to work apprehensive that the light is going to cook my plants today, and glow lots of algae for me. Also didn't have time to go through any of the calibration process so I'll have e to do that tonight.

I must point out that the light is a radion freshwater, but it seems the fault is with software engineering rather than the light model, so I wanted to check wether this was normal? I'm thinking it can't be, as that would be unworkable your a lot of folks.

I bought the light due to the controllability it seemed to offer, as I was setting up a tank, and wanted to have some flexibility, but it seems like the ecosmart live is a bit of an afterthought rather than a n integral part of the product, or it is being under resourced in terms or software engineers / web developers etc.

The above might seem a bit harsh, but I've spent a couple of months with the light, and it's consistently a problem.

Can I ask;

Do others find ecosmart live to be unable? As I have the following issues;
- connection to, and updating of the radion can be very hit and miss
- the radion will often need a factory reset, perhaps once out of every three times I update the schedule.
-the graph becomes distorted, it hates being scaled by the global percentage slider on the left, this causes particular points to spike or be left behind.
-there is no clear relationship between this global slider and the intensity of the points, I can set it to 100, but if I bring down the intensity of the graph point by point, it will suddenly decide that the global slider needs to be at the value of the brightest point - so is it a scale g factor for the graph or the result if the graph? At different times it acts like both...
-is there a known function for the graph? Like colour channel x point intensity x global scale slider = overall Intensity?

I'm trying to get par values, and it would be great to have a calculator as part of the software, rather than a watt value (or as well as). There is a par calculator on another non ecotec site, that has good features like light selection, lens selection, light height and tank depths, in my opinion th is functionality should be copied immediately by ecotech and verified by then with testing of lights, and integrated I, n to ecosmart live.

Do I have a faulty light?

Are people find one particular is and browser to be the most reliable way to control the light?, I don't want to drag my windows desktop across the room to update the schedule, but maybe that's the only way of having the light live up to the marketing.

I hope the above does seem grumpy, but I feel like I've given the system two months of patience before posting frustrations

Thanks.

Tom

 

[Alex Y EcoTech]

Tom,

Are you using Google Chrome when accessing EcoSmart Live? Also, have you contacted our customer service directly for more advanced troubleshooting?

 

[Radionquestions]

Hi Alex,

I am using safari on a mac mainly, but have also tried chrome on a mac, both seem to have issues.

Do you have a most stable platform, e.g. 'chrome on windows', Iknow you support both mac and windows and chrome and safari, but I'm wondering if there's a 'most usable' favourite?

I did contact support directly about some issues I had a reply saying it had been passed on to someone, and I have followed the resolution procedures and connection orders turn light off for 30 seconds then reconnect etc. sometimes it works and sometimes not. I was wanting to find out what other users were doing and whether they'd had the same issues.

I installed a wide angle TIR lens last night and then made some changes to the graph to turn the power up a bit to compensate, everything seemed fine, except this morning the light didn't come on. it wasn't following the schedule, even though it had reported to update the scehdule last night.

This morning nothing would make the schedule kick in, apart from factory reset then set up new aquarium again, and make a new graph... thankfully I only have 1 light and a simple graph otherwise this would presumably take even longer, still made me late for work though, which is frustrating.

There are two issues in my mind:

reliability --> this may be down to my particular light being faulty, or my laptop / browser combo not being catered for

Software issues --> these are presumably issues for others as well?

It would be great to have this functionality -->

http://www.aquaticlog.com/radion

verified by ecotec and incorporated in ecotec live. at the moment I'm using it to try to see roughly what par I get for the amount of watts, but the freshwater model isn't listed, and even then, I have to multiply the settings here, by the global slider settings in ecosmart live to arrive at a similar watt, I'm not sure how reliable this is and it would be helpfull to have a par output built in to ecosmart live in the following way:

- in aquarium setup you enter height that the light is above the water
- in aquarium setup you enter how deep substrate is from water surface

in the schedule graph each point has a par estimation (e.g next to the watts, that shows something that's a fairly reasonable estimation for your aquarium.


Thanks for responding,

Cheers

Tom

 

[Radionquestions]

Hi Alex,

Sorry to bump this, but are there any recomendations around OS and browser?

I'd like to test my light in the most favourable setup, so I can maybe tell if the light itself is faulty rather than the computer setup.

Many thanks

Tom

 

[serenity]

Mac User myself.. please don't tell me I have to use some windows machine just to make things work right... I find the EcoSmart Live to be a joke, I can't even get it to set the right time, so if I didn't turn off the Apex, I would light from 9pm until 7am.. Great software!