Hydros Maven

[bob88884]

And even if it does line items 1 - 6 extremely well and affordable hobbyist will demand it perfectly match their Hanna, Nyos, Salifert, or ICP results.

I hear good things about ReefBot Lab. I have never used them.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Ughhhh I thought I had found The Answer.

I think the relevant question is, the answer to what?

 

[BeanAnimal]

I hear good things about ReefBot Lab. I have never used them.

Meh

Nice idea but very rough around the edges.
I had several issues with the device, some big, some annoying.

Repeatability
- The hardware is okay, but there are a lot of variables. Results wander.

Accuracy
- Fixed color tables do not account for variances in reagent batches. Fine, but you can't calibrate by any means. If you complain, they will adjust your calibration on their end. They don't admit to this but it is obvious.

Dosing pump accuracy
- the sample size is set by a dosing pump. It is not repeatable as evidence by doing repeated chamber fills. It can be off by a ml or two. This affects results.

UI
- only SaaS. It is pretty bad, honestly.

Reagent access
- A fixed needle depth limits usable volume. Once the liquid level drops below the needle tip, the remaining reagent is inaccessible. They limit usage to a level far above this, saying it reduces support interactions. So a 20ml vial may only have 8-10 ml of fluid that is usable. Constant refills.

Kit fragmentation
- Many of the "good" kits come with large and small reagent bottles, Tropic Marin for example. You have to buy 5 or 6 kits to get enough of the smaller reagent bottle to fill a vial. At the same time you accumulate surplus bottles of the reagent in the larger bottles.

Waste
- Titration tests do not STOP at the endpoint. They empty the whole syringe. It may not be ideal to dump it back into the reagent vial, but it is a huge waste of reagent, and time. Again, see above regarding kits like Tropic Marin phosphate. It is untenable.

Cloud lock
- No offline execution. PERIOD.
- No local interface
- No API
- No structured export or programmatic control.

Notification design
- The event model is not tiered. Every action generates email. There is no batching or digest mode. Just a full in your face HTML email for every event. No per-event filtering. I was getting 25 email a day from the thing. Even stirring reagents on a schedule generates an email for each scheduled stir for each reagent stirred.

It is a very nice idea and not all of the problems are easy to solve, but those that are have not been.

The support was not great and the only positive side to the entire product for me is the attentiveness of their marketing person (Hady) to get issues resolved.

 

[areefer01]

I hear good things about ReefBot Lab. I have never used them.

No idea. I know there are several options out there.

Me personally, I'm not looking for any of these devices as I am already in the Neptune ecosystem and use the Trident ACM and NP.

 

[BeanAnimal]

..

 

[BZOFIQ]

..

Are you ok? This never happens.

 

[Brewski4u1]

i spoke with them at reefapalooza they claim end of this year but we've heard that the last 3 years!

 

[afboundguy]

i spoke with them at reefapalooza they claim end of this year but we've heard that the last 3 years!

The new LaMotte Pulse looks pretty awesome and I am guessing they will have alkalinity sooner rather than later and eventually get phosphate and nitrate testing seeing how their spin tester tests those parameters...