First Focustronic Mastertronic ESS Review !!

[Reddie]

For those looking for a Mastertronic Essentials review the first is Sat 28th June down under and 27th!! For you guys on top of the world !!

 

[Rocks reef]

Looking forward to this!

 

[David Cher]

any more reviews ?

 

[Dannyboy402]

Anyone know when we can buy this?

 

[HeliJMK]

Anyone know when we can buy this?

BRS has it for sale now. Just received mine yesterday.

 

[Gone Reefin’]

Interested and following. Let us know how this does!

 

[Dannyboy402]

BRS has it for sale now. Just received mine yesterday.

Yep I got the email and bought it. I set it up on Friday and it’s been working well. Only time will tell!

 

[Gone Reefin’]

Yep I got the email and bought it. I set it up on Friday and it’s been working well. Only time will tell!

Are you using the focustronic reagents? Or something else?

 

[Dannyboy402]

Are you using the focustronic reagents? Or something else?

I’m using a combo of api and Red Sea. I confirmed with my Hana checkers and salifert test and they’re within range so I’m pretty happy. The setup was a little clunky but I got through it and it’s been working fine. I’ve never had a focustronic so I’m still getting used to it. I noticed that if I manually start a test that it takes a few minutes for it to actually start. I wish it was a little faster in response.

 

[KoiTang]

did you buy two packs of the api and red sea test kit to fill up each 40ml vial or does it require more?

 

[CBonito]

Yep I got the email and bought it. I set it up on Friday and it’s been working well. Only time will tell!

That's good to hear. I wanted to get the alkatronic, but A few people have posted their frustrations on here about it and I refrained. LOL

I still want a reefbot. I think I may have to go there.

 

[Dannyboy402]

That's good to hear. I wanted to get the alkatronic, but A few people have posted their frustrations on here about it and I refrained. LOL

I still want a reefbot. I think I may have to go there.

Yeah I don't have a need for an alkatronic. The mastertronic can do 1 alk test automatically but you can tell it to do more tests if you wanted just not scheduled. The mastertronic does all I need for now.

 

[CBonito]

Yeah I don't have a need for an alkatronic. The mastertronic can do 1 alk test automatically but you can tell it to do more tests if you wanted just not scheduled. The mastertronic does all I need for now.

That's actually fine. I think just running autonomous tests every day when the changes will only be minimal can probably be more a waste of reagents than anything else.

 

[Dannyboy402]

That's actually fine. I think just running autonomous tests every day when the changes will only be minimal can probably be more a waste of reagents than anything else.

I agree. Right now i'm having issues with keeping nitrates and phosphates up so for those test I'm having multiple tests done per day so I can see the trend and find out where I can adjust to keep the levels constant.

 

[CBonito]

I agree. Right now i'm having issues with keeping nitrates and phosphates up so for those test I'm having multiple tests done per day so I can see the trend and find out where I can adjust to keep the levels constant.

For someone who needs to do something like that with maybe even multiple data points per day, this is the way.
Just learning the mechanics or trends in your own tank behavior without sitting there with test kits for hours pays for it really.

 

[m.kristoff]

Are you using the focustronic reagents? Or something else?

I just got the focusetronic reagents delivered. I started with the FT Alk reagent . its measuring close to my alkatronic. The red sea test was way off compared to my hanna and alkatronic. So far the API NO3 is right on compaired to my Hanna. THe Red sea Pro PO4 test is a bit suspect but seems close to my Hanna

 

[static416]

Anyone with the Mastertronic Essential have any early comments on it's performance, accuracy, and reliability?

I'm considering buying one. But $2k CAD is a lot to gamble on something where the prior version wasn't very good from what I hear.

 

[Dannyboy402]

I just got the focusetronic reagents delivered. I started with the FT Alk reagent . its measuring close to my alkatronic. The red sea test was way off compared to my hanna and alkatronic. So far the API NO3 is right on compaired to my Hanna. THe Red sea Pro PO4 test is a bit suspect but seems close to my Hanna

Where did you get the reagents I just wanna try them out but I can't for the life of me find it haha. I swear I've pulled up the page before to order them haha.

 

[m.kristoff]

Where did you get the reagents I just wanna try them out but I can't for the life of me find it haha. I swear I've pulled up the page before to order them haha.

I emailed Eric and he set it up. Eric Tang <[email protected]>

 

[static416]

So I decided to pull the trigger, and I've had my Mastertronic Essential for about a week now, with a full set of the Focustronic reagents.

TLDR: I'm pretty happy with it, but the app sucks. They badly need a good software engineer.

Pros:

• The hardware is pretty well designed from what I can see.
  • I never had the first gen, but from a hardware perspective this seems very well thought out.
  • The multi-pipette is a great idea, and should keep cross-contamination to a minimum.
  • The drip-counting approach seems far more reliable than anything involving a doser directly.
• The accuracy seems reasonable
  • It's not quite as consistent as my Hanna Checkers, but close enough that I don't mind.
  • Alkalinity fluctuates more than the Hanna, but about the same as my Hydros X10.
• The purely visual part of the UI design is nice.
  • The Mastertronic page displays key parameters pretty clearly.
  • The parameter-specific pages are good
• Chemical calibraiton is pretty easy. Though does require about 4-5 bottles of Fauna Marin Reference.

Cons:

• All of the cons are just that the software is pretty bad.
• Fundementally, the app (iOS or Android) does not show real-time or detailed data from the device. It's just a way to almost-blindly send commands.
  • You MUST watch the screen on the front of the physical device to understand what is actually happening. And even then it's not always clear.
  • Status updates very slow if you are on the same wifi channel, and almost unusable if you are on a different wifi channel or cellular.
• Many times you will send a command and nothing happens and it's unclear why.
  • Unless the machine is in an idle state, the command is basically ignored.
  • There seems to be no way to cancel an existing task on the machine, even one requiring interactivity like calibration.
  • The status of the machine is updated late and slowly, and only at a very basic level.
• The Android app is worse, and barely useable for some tasks. Most critically, setup.
  • The stepper doser calibration flow seems to use the wrong Android UI components, such that they reset/disappear if the screen goes off. Which happens easily because of how long the calibration takes.
  • If they disappear, you essentially have to restart the calibration. But there is no ability to cancel it, so you have to power-cycle the machine.
• Even basics like settting the schedule seem to work inconsistently.
  • I suspect this is because when you update the schedule, it takes some time before it's propagated to the machine. There is no way to see the status of this, or if the machine can receive the updates.
  • Seems like if you send two updates too close together, the data can be corrupted. Not even just overwriting each other, but actually generating other weird configurations you didn't choose in either update.
  • Not being able to atomically handle race conditions in a system like this, with massive command latency of multiple seconds, is a big problem.

If you don't mess with it much, and have a ton of patience, it will do the job. Once setup, you can mostly ignore it and let it pump out results for you daily.

But they badly need a significant update to the app, and a proper server-side implementation that relies on websockets and pushing status from the device to the app, rather than whatever is happening now.

Right now I imagine that the support volume has to be pretty significant for them, just from people trying to follow the instructions in the manual to do normal things. Even that is challenging.