The Wireless Wave Driver is Coming

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Tom-

Regarding functionality, I don't agree with your statement that the devices will not be useful on large tanks. The thing to remember is that the slaves can be set to sync or anti-sync, meaning that you can get some serious back and forth movements within your tank, as well as simple standing waves, or more complex standing waves. In a more complex standing wave, the wave is not just going left and right; you would have multiple waves going in a variety of directions, interfering or building upon one another to create truly random movement.

Any pump can be set as a master, a slave or an autonomous pump (meaning it will neither send nor receive signals). You can have up to 10 masters and 10 slaves for each master. This number could go up or down in the future.

It is likely that over time the code on the pumps will change. Assuming that a code revision is not required for any pump on the market, we will likely offer code upgrading for those customers who want a feature offered on a newer revision.

As for the Sept 1st date. The point was to state that pumps will ship after the beginning of September. As has been pointed out, that's a Saturday. Moreover, Monday is labor day. So it looks like September 4th now. I don't think anyone should be so concerned about the specific date. You've waited long enough; it's here. What's a few days?

-Tim
 
We can address this aspect...

We will ship the drivers the day they arrive to us. They will arrive on a weekday and we will ship it on a weekday. Also keep in mind they are engineers not distributors :D Also what Tim said above ^^^:)
 
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<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10643832#post10643832 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by EcoTech Marine
Tom-

Regarding functionality, I don't agree with your statement that the devices will not be useful on large tanks. The thing to remember is that the slaves can be set to sync or anti-sync, meaning that you can get some serious back and forth movements within your tank, as well as simple standing waves, or more complex standing waves. In a more complex standing wave, the wave is not just going left and right; you would have multiple waves going in a variety of directions, interfering or building upon one another to create truly random movement.

Any pump can be set as a master, a slave or an autonomous pump (meaning it will neither send nor receive signals). You can have up to 10 masters and 10 slaves for each master. This number could go up or down in the future.
Click to expand...

EDIT : We already get decent random flow patterns from just having the pumps running opposing each other (two on the back and and one on each end). So I don't doubt that they would impove with these new drivers, I was more referring to an overall "wave solution", but even that I am having to back down off of my previous statement. But I did not mean to imply that Vortecs were not effective on a larger tank, just the new drivers, but again, I made that assessment without all of the information that I needed.

Tim, After closer reading of your first post I would have to agree that there are multiple flow opportunities, even for a large tank. I had not seen the fact that the pumps could be set to autonomous posted previously, I probably just missed it. I also had not caught the multiple master/slave "networks" aspect prior to my above post, and that obviously changes things dramatically :). But it also introduces other issues and concerns. Feed mode for example would then require interacting with two or more drivers versus just the one to enable feed mode on all of the pumps. This brings me back to my question about a central wireless controller. That would resolve this concern as well as provide a central view into how the tank/pumps are configured and make changing them easier. For those of us with larger tanks it could become increasingly difficult to keep track of what our current setting for each pump was (without visiting each driver and interpretting the LEDs), which in some cases may be easier said than done. Granted that is just a small subset of your customer base, but still I wanted to pose the question about the master controller.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10643832#post10643832 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by EcoTech Marine

It is likely that over time the code on the pumps will change. Assuming that a code revision is not required for any pump on the market, we will likely offer code upgrading for those customers who want a feature offered on a newer revision.
Click to expand...

Will these upgrades be user applicable ? IE: if we have a PIC programmer can we DL the code and upgrade ourselves ? Does this dovetail in with the previous statements about users being able to "write their own programming" for wave creation ? Thanks :)

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10643832#post10643832 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by EcoTech Marine


As for the Sept 1st date. The point was to state that pumps will ship after the beginning of September. As has been pointed out, that's a Saturday. Moreover, Monday is labor day. So it looks like September 4th now. I don't think anyone should be so concerned about the specific date. You've waited long enough; it's here. What's a few days?
Click to expand...

Thanks for clarifying, I was just trying to understand if there was some other business, customer base or manufacturing motivator driving the Sept 1st date. :)


Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions. We can't wait to get our hands on these to see what we can get them to do for our tank. I do like your ideas about slowly building wave patterns interacting with each other. Would that be from the pulse mode (for all pumps) ? Would you consider starting a sticky thread for placement, usage and settings exchange amongst the user base ? To facilitate the sharing of what does and doesn't work for flow settings, etc ?

Thanks again :)
 
I don't know why people like feed mode so much, as I've never found it beneficial to my reef. When I pour in the food each night, I allow the pumps to blast it all over the reef. The fish are in hot pursuit, and all my corals have the opportunity to capture floating particles in their polyps. What I always do is turn off the return pump so the food stays in the reef and not down in my sump. With this method, everything gets a meal, including my BTAs.

I didn't realize the feature of having more than one master controller. That is WAY cool. So when I do buy that forth VorTech, I'll be able to cause all kinds of chaos. :D Thanks for asking about that Tom.
 
I agree with you regarding the feed mode Marc. I don't use it in my system either. Spreading the food around gives all the fish a chance to eat, regardless of personality/aggression issues, and I like the corals to get food too. Turning them down seems to be OK, but most of the time I just let it rip.

You are going to have 4 in your tank? That's a lot of flow dude. :D
 
I like the idea of putting one on the back that will just pulse some random burst of water occasionally. :D
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10646393#post10646393 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
I don't know why people like feed mode so much, as I've never found it beneficial to my reef. When I pour in the food each night, I allow the pumps to blast it all over the reef. The fish are in hot pursuit, and all my corals have the opportunity to capture floating particles in their polyps. What I always do is turn off the return pump so the food stays in the reef and not down in my sump. With this method, everything gets a meal, including my BTAs.

I didn't realize the feature of having more than one master controller. That is WAY cool. So when I do buy that forth VorTech, I'll be able to cause all kinds of chaos. :D Thanks for asking about that Tom.
Click to expand...

I actually wanted the feed mode for when I need to reach into the tank for whatever reason. It would beat unplugging all of the pumps just so I could cut back on the surface agitation and see into the tank to see what I was doing :). I agree with you an Jonathan, I wouldn't use feed mode for feeding the fish, I like to see the food swirling around feeding everything in addition to the fish :)

EDIT : Yea, Marc, having multiple master/slave combinations does really open up the possibilities alot :)
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10646678#post10646678 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
I like the idea of putting one on the back that will just pulse some random burst of water occasionally. :D
Click to expand...

I was thinking something similar :), that is what I was considering the 5th Vortec for.. just for a "pulser" :)
 
When I work in the tank, I just turn off all these switches. And unplug the battery backup wire.

new_wiring4.jpg
 
Feed mode for me is for feeding specific LPS. Dendros, balanos, duncans, micromussa - etc do much better when direct fed - especially when frags. I try to spot feed them twice a week - with flow its absolutely impossible. But when I'm feeding the fishies, I don't use feed mode - I like to keep a lot of flow for dispersion and to keep the food in the water column. It also comes in handy here & there, when you're doing something and a lot of flow would make it more difficult - adding a coral, lifting rocks - whatever. I use it on the 7095 all the time for those purposes. Gives me about 10 minutes of calm and unlike unplugging - I don't have to remember to plug it back in.
 
that IS a problem though in the sense that when I need to turn them off to lower the surface turbulence, I have to unplug them and the battery back-ups. If I understand Tim correctly, there will be a low-end with the wireless controllers that will just be a few rpm, so we should be able to avoid the unplugging. But going back to Tom's point, those of us with larger installations would have to at least go to each master pump and hit feed, unless the feed option will communicate from one single unit to all units in the room regardless of its setting of master or slave. Again, I think this is an area to be discussed as I certainly expected a centralized wireless controller with the feedback one would assume would be present in such a system.

And I certainly would like it linked to my AC III Pro or Aquanotes so I could track trends and get alarms via email etc. I know Eco-Tech is working hard to present the best possible product, so I hope they take what we are saying as constructive ideas and not criticism. I had a vision in my mind when I first purchased the MP-40 but that was based on what I assumed it would develop into, and not neccessarily what the market will actually demand.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10647114#post10647114 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jnarowe
I had a vision in my mind when I first purchased the MP-40 but that was based on what I assumed it would develop into, and not neccessarily what the market will actually demand.
Click to expand...

Two very scary thoughts coming from you...vision in your mind and assumption. :lol:
 
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<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10647114#post10647114 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jnarowe
so I hope they take what we are saying as constructive ideas and not criticism.
Click to expand...

I most definitely hope that they take my posts as constructive and not critical. They may or may not have considered all of these aspects of the day to day usage that we have brought up, or more likely that they already have and have a solution already (or have one planned). Either way I am just trying to foster some good two way communication with them about the new drivers (and the future) :)
 
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