xr15 and EC customer support.

[Ztrain]

I purchased my first Ecotech product last night an xr15. Got it home opened it up and went through the Ecosmart live setup. Working okay without a hitch. Was looking at the different modes and noticed an electronic burning smell. Quickly realized it was the radion which was now very hot to the touch and was smelling of burning plastic and metal. I could see the fan wasn't moving. Just as I was about to pull the power cable the fan turned on and some what cooled the unit down. But now my hands had that smell on them. I didn't put the light on the XRS mount I had prepared for it because I was going to be gone almost the whole day and didn't want the unit overheating and starting a fire while I was away.

So today after class called up Ecotech and they picked up on the 2nd ring. I described the problem and they offered to send me out a new replacement with a cross ship which was awesome. He went through the speech about if there's water damage we bill you, which for me shouldn't be an issue since it hasn't even been in the same room as the tank yet. However this did give me a moment of pause. I was wondering if well maybe it was just burning in the new solder points or something and and the fan is on a temperature start and is there really a problem with the unit. So I came home and booted it up. I couldn't get the unit to connect to Ecosmart live again to control the light no matter how many times I restarted the computer and the light it wouldn't connect. I pressed the middle button and forced the light in to full on mode off it's program from the previous night. Left it on for about 5 minutes the smell came and the fan didn't start again but I didn't see any smoke this time.

Does any of this sound normal for these units? Should I cancel the cross ship tomorrow and run this one till something fully fails on it? I don't want them to get this one and go nope it's working fine this is just how they are. But I really am concerned about the heat and smell off this one as a brand new LED. Additionally not being able to get it to connect to my computer for programming is also an issue. Dunno possibly related although that was working fine last night while it was smoking.

The last concern I have is they give you a wide angle light which is the light I would prefer to have on the unit. Does opening the light up to swap out the lenses void the warranty since your opening up the unit?

 

[myram]

No, keep the new unit coming..........there is something wrong with that unit you have.

On my XR30 the fan runs constantly, there is a lot of heat generated in these small lights.

 

[Alex Y EcoTech]

Ztrain,

I agree that light has some type of issue. Additionally, you are not voiding your warranty by changing lenses.

 

[Ztrain]

Talked to two guy's there today. Pickup time is amazing and extremely helpful. New light is on the way looking forward to getting it setup. Thanks again for the help! If I didn't know better I'd thought this company was a subsidiary of Apple with the packaging and tech support.

Z

 

[Ztrain]

Okay now dealing with this is starting to become an exercise in frustration. I got the new unit. No smoke seems to be physically working. However I can't get any of the programs to work. Every time I am in ESL and it does the update the lights go off. So now my fish and anemone are really freaking out because my light keeps going on and off. Finally I notice that even though it's 3PM in the afternoon the ESL thinks it's 4AM which of course there is nothing scheduled for. Go back to profile nope I'm listed in central time like I'm supposed to be. I try to reset the time using auto nope wrong. I try to reset the manually not just stay's locked in the wrong time. So I can't correctly control this light with ESL. Welp like I've heard from many different places the software is garbage. So I was trying to decide between the Reeflink and the APEX WXM. Time to go purchase the WXM. Because they can't seem to have a working clock function (and yes tried it on two different computers) figured I'd control it with the APEX.

Nope apparently from what I'm seeing on the APEX forums in this thread https://forum.neptunesystems.com/showthread.php?5547-Apex-WXM-and-EcoTech-products The radions are having issues with APEX controllers however it seems that was fixed by later posts I don't know. But right now I have almost 700 on this light and I still don't have a working programmable light. This is seriously frustrating. At least this one isn't smoking and connects to the computer too bad it can't be correctly programmed with it.

EDIT: With major messing around dunno what exactly I did that worked but I managed to get it linked up with the WXM so it's working through that at least.

 

[Ztrain]

Okay now the next day things are better. Just an observation IE will not reconnect to the light after uploading. It looses connection and I have to go through the whole disconnect and reconnect everything every time. Chrome it reconnects after an upload but because I can't seem to change the time ESL currently thinks it is, I quickly ran out to my LFS and grabbed the WXM. It took a few tries to get it linked up, but with the WXM controlling the light it's doing my schedule perfectly.

The only drawbacks to the current setup is no acclimation which I can do manually no Lunar cycle which I guess can be programmed with some advanced tweaking so I'll mess with that later today and see if it's possible. Otherwise I'll just run a very dim light for a couple hours at the end of each day.

 

[Ztrain]

So now it's Monday and the system has been working. ESL not working actually scored Ecotech another sale. I was seriously looking at the Gyre and planning to use it's controller for the pumps and then the built in controller in the xr15 to control each independently. But the reports of burrs and other manufacture issues that people have been experiencing was not boding well. And since I had to get the WXM to control the lights it was a no brainier to get a MP10 so I could have everything on the APEX.