New IceCap Gyre 2K with Dual Pump Wifi Controller... First impressions.

[Garcia2460]

I received last night the new IceCap Gyre 2K with wifi controller. Purchased from Aquarium Specialty who was the only online store that had them in stock and always offered great support. The pump came in a nice box

The box contained the gyre pump with an orange impeller installed, an additional set of black impellers, the wifi controller and the power brick which is nice and beefy for this size pump, however, this is to be expected as this brick will drive 2 pumps. The brick has a max output of 4 amps @ 24V which is 96W.

The controller is nicely made, connecting to wifi was easy, however, there is a small glitch with the cloud connection. Called tech support, spoke with Carlos Chacon, he was extremely responsive and competent. It would appear the problem is with an old version of the iPhone app on the apple store which is getting upgraded as we speak. Carlos was kind enough to offer to email me as soon as the app is updated and offered to walk me through the setup process if needed. That is great tech support, kudos to Carlos and IceCap.

The status light seems to have 4 possible states: pulsing blue, meaning the controller is not connected to wifi but is in setup mode, broadcasting its own SSID.
Pulsing red, meaning the controller has been paired to a wifi network but it cannot connect to it. Pulsing yellow, which means the controller is connected to a wifi network, has an IP address but it is not connected to icecap cloud servers. Finally green light, meaning it is connected to wifi and cloud. Green is the desired outcome and I hope to get there soon.

The app is nice and fairly functional. It can control the pumps both from your local network, and once the cloud connection is fixed, you can control the pumps away from home. It can send limited alerts to your phone if the pump stops for some reason. The interface is fairly intuitive, you can set different modes of operation of the pump and tie them to some specific voltages on the 0-10V control port so that you can switch to different modes (including feeding mode) and presets from a controller. I thought this was neat. Clicking on the gauge let you override the pump speed set by the current preset, however, you can choose only OFF, AUTO, 25% speed and 100% speed. I wish in a future iteration of the app to be able to drag the desired override speed on the gauge without being limited by those choices.

Now the new gyre itself seems very nice and robust. I never had a previous gyre to compare, so people who had previous models and different brands may chime in.
Sorry, I do not have a picture of the pump, dry out of the box, as I was eager to put it in the water. Here it is on the back wall of my tank. I run 2 mp40 on each end and I wanted some flow back to front. The pump holder is rated for a maximum glass thickness of 1/2", however, the magnet is quite strong and is holding fairly well on the 3/4" thick glass of my tank. The pump attachment is not super firm with this thickness, but with the pump partially supported by the wire, it is just fine.

The pump itself is nice looking, fairly quiet, with only a whine at high speed. The pump moves a lot of water. I like the fact that the direction of rotation is reversible and in several modes the pumps reverses direction of water flow. Here are a few more pictures of the pump in the tank...

Overall a great addition to the tank. I am using this to create more randomness and diverse flow than the mp40 alone will provide. Awaiting for delivery of the second "pump only" gyre to connect to the same controller and provide flow to the other half of the tank.

Very happy with this gyre.

Hey do you know if you can control this gyre without the WiFi controller? Like if you hooked it up to an apex? Or would it just blow a constant current without the controller?
Thanks