Will BRS Now Charge Subscription for Neptune Apex Fusion?

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PeterC99

PeterC99

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I'd rather not waste the time to type out the literal plethora of reasons this make zero sense. But here is a very brief list you can think about, there's probably a dozen more too.


-Fusion has been around forever, and its always been free. Waking up tomorrow and trying to charge for it without adding a SIGNIFICANT amount features is going to tank the user base.

-Every single competitor to the Apex offers free access. Good luck keeping users when I can flip to GHL or Hydros and not pay a dime for access.

-Nothing BRS is doing or has done in the past 15 years would even remotely hint and the notion they are interested in extorting Neptunes user base. It's literally the antithesis of the ethos of the company.
Thank you for clarifying.

Looks what I’m looking for - intelligent discussion about what may or may not happen!
 

landlubber

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1. I am a self employed contractor and I am rarely at home. (not retired)
2. I have a whole house generator. I would never have a tank without one.
3. An Iwaki pump has 2-3 moving parts.
4. That little grey box has a whole bunch of little micro chips in it made by 13 year old girls in a sweat shop in South East Asia. What could possibly go wrong?
At some point in the near future all aquarium equipment will be designed to rely solely on one mother brain of some sort. You won't be able to turn something on/off with a flip of the switch. And thats when they gotcha! You will have planned/programmed failure points, and planned obsolescence

Just like our automobiles with their check engine lights. Convince me that those check engine lights are not programmed from the factory to trigger after so many key starts. This way you have to bring it in for service and get told you need a $500 sensor. The dealerships make their money on service not on selling new cars.

I am not against technology. And even if I was, I know It can't be stopped. I am just from a generation that is still capable of doing critical thinking on my own. And not buying into whatever some glitzy youtube commercial or R2R pop add tells me I need, to somewhow make my life/tank/ home better, easier, safer.
you don't have to have a controller manage every system in your tank but in the case of some equipment it can definitely be helpful. to that point it's beyond me how a person can criticize those that do employ a controller and then go on to whole-heartedly trust an 0.11 cent thermostat in a $40 heater (likely made in the neighbouring sweatshop in china that you pointed out) that has the ability to upend an entire tank in a matter of hours lol.
 

Midrats

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You have a big rig as an avatar and you don't understand how a check engine light works? W O W.

You do realize there is a little COMPUTER from china called an OBDII scanner. You can scan the CEL, and verify the problem yourself.
Big rig LOL! I guarantee that old truck doesn't have a check engine light.
 
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ScottB

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1. I am a self employed contractor and I am rarely at home. (not retired)
2. I have a whole house generator. I would never have a tank without one.
3. An Iwaki pump has 2-3 moving parts.
4. That little grey box has a whole bunch of little micro chips in it made by 13 year old girls in a sweat shop in South East Asia. What could possibly go wrong?
At some point in the near future all aquarium equipment will be designed to rely solely on one mother brain of some sort. You won't be able to turn something on/off with a flip of the switch. And thats when they gotcha! You will have planned/programmed failure points, and planned obsolescence

Just like our automobiles with their check engine lights. Convince me that those check engine lights are not programmed from the factory to trigger after so many key starts. This way you have to bring it in for service and get told you need a $500 sensor. The dealerships make their money on service not on selling new cars.

I am not against technology. And even if I was, I know It can't be stopped. I am just from a generation that is still capable of doing critical thinking on my own. And not buying into whatever some glitzy youtube commercial or R2R pop add tells me I need, to somewhow make my life/tank/ home better, easier, safer.
I have a whole house generator and 2 APEX systems. I would never reef without both. All my livestock would have been dead 3-4 times over the last 7 years without the APEX not to mention ruined hardwood, ceilings, rugs, marriage.

I guess you opted against an automatic transfer switch. I hear those things have chips, sensors, relays, capacitors all made by girls in southeast Asia. I have one of those too. And when it breaks, or the 2.4 ltr Cummins doesn't fire, I am going to know about it right away as long as I have a phone and a signal.

All good. Just having fun. Happy reefing!
 

REEFTIDE

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Were it a subscription model(Which I can honestly say I doubt) we would probably just switch over to hydros. We have 8 apex systems so a 4.99 subscription would start to add up and eat at my bottomline.
That being said, Neptune has so many products that it would make more sense for them to push the sale of additional products and further limit the compatibility of other products rather than charge already existing customers. If they make it hard for one to use non-Neptune products more people would consider converting
 

piranhaman00

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I would like it so I would have a reason to switch to Hydros
 

KarlsReef

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This is a bit ridiculous demonising a company for something that would be commercial suicide, plus there is no evidence that this could happen. People crapping on these announcements is unproductive and unfair especially when they are swaying opinions with unsubstantiated predictions and rumours. What's the point of commenting? Sick of the bloody negativity
 

RobB'z Reef

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you don't have to have a controller manage every system in your tank but in the case of some equipment it can definitely be helpful. to that point it's beyond me how a person can criticize those that do employ a controller and then go on to whole-heartedly trust an 0.11 cent thermostat in a $40 heater (likely made in the neighbouring sweatshop in china that you pointed out) that has the ability to upend an entire tank in a matter of hours lol.
Boomer mentally to be sure lol. For some of us having a controller or not is the difference in being able to participate in this hobby or not based on travel requirements and other life time constraints.
 

saltyhog

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Boomer mentally to be sure lol. For some of us having a controller or not is the difference in being able to participate in this hobby or not based on travel requirements and other life time constraints.

That's profiling mister!!!! :D

As a proud "Boomer" I wouldn't think of running a reef tank without a controller.....My Apex Classic (it wasn't called that when I got it ) is 8 years old and has worked flawlessly for me that time. I love to travel to scuba dive several times a year and would not be comfortable with that without a controller.:p
 

RobB'z Reef

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That's profiling mister!!!! :D

As a proud "Boomer" I wouldn't think of running a reef tank without a controller.....My Apex Classic (it wasn't called that when I got it ) is 8 years old and has worked flawlessly for me that time. I love to travel to scuba dive several times a year and would not be comfortable with that without a controller.:p
there's always fine exceptions to the rule good sir!
 

Silvas

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This is how most companies have worked for decades. It's only been in the last 10 years or so that subscription models have started to come online.
I don't know if it's ever been mentioned what kind of overhead or how many employees Neptune has so maybe selling a couple thousand Apex's and Tridents a year is enough for them to get by. I know they don't have a ton of new products each year or product refreshes so one could assume they have a relatively small R&D budget. Hence Ryan talking about how this will make more things be able to happen faster.

Not really going to get into the speculation on whether they will or not, but...
Well, to be fair, things are a fair bit different now than they were back then.
Now, obviously, for basic local control there's no need (or, frankly, justification) for a subscription model - you bought the hardware, using its functionality on your local network shouldn't cost extra as it doesn't saddle neptune with any additional expense.

Where that changes is with cloud access and control. That requires servers for the apex and the app to connect to, which requires bandwidth and electricity and rack space (as it would be less than ideal for BRS to self host servers in their HQ in an area known for winter storms and power outages) in a data center. Those ongoing (and rising, as the userbase grows and higher powered or more servers are needed) costs have to be offset. You can't just sell an $800 piece of equipment once and then never receive any more revenue from that customer, while continuing to run the servers forever. Eventually, no matter how much gross profit margin you had on the sale, the ongoing costs with no revenue turn the sale into a loss. The more users, the more load, the more bandwidth, so it's not even a case of "well we're running these servers anyways, the people accessing them doesn't cost any more"

Honestly, as long as any sub model was fairly priced and ONLY affected cloud access, but did not affect local network access... I wouldn't consider it to be unreasonable. If you don't want to pay it, don't have cloud access. Setup a VPN or other means of remoting into your network or a machine on your network, and do your remote access that way. If you don't know how, learn how or find a friend or family member who can help you set it up.
 

RobB'z Reef

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Not really going to get into the speculation on whether they will or not, but...
Well, to be fair, things are a fair bit different now than they were back then.
Now, obviously, for basic local control there's no need (or, frankly, justification) for a subscription model - you bought the hardware, using its functionality on your local network shouldn't cost extra as it doesn't saddle neptune with any additional expense.

Where that changes is with cloud access and control. That requires servers for the apex and the app to connect to, which requires bandwidth and electricity and rack space (as it would be less than ideal for BRS to self host servers in their HQ in an area known for winter storms and power outages) in a data center. Those ongoing (and rising, as the userbase grows and higher powered or more servers are needed) costs have to be offset. You can't just sell an $800 piece of equipment once and then never receive any more revenue from that customer, while continuing to run the servers forever. Eventually, no matter how much gross profit margin you had on the sale, the ongoing costs with no revenue turn the sale into a loss. The more users, the more load, the more bandwidth, so it's not even a case of "well we're running these servers anyways, the people accessing them doesn't cost any more"

Honestly, as long as any sub model was fairly priced and ONLY affected cloud access, but did not affect local network access... I wouldn't consider it to be unreasonable. If you don't want to pay it, don't have cloud access. Setup a VPN or other means of remoting into your network or a machine on your network, and do your remote access that way. If you don't know how, learn how or find a friend or family member who can help you set it up.
Well articulated, you're not wrong
 

Hincapiej4

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1. I am a self employed contractor and I am rarely at home. (not retired)
2. I have a whole house generator. I would never have a tank without one.
3. An Iwaki pump has 2-3 moving parts.
4. That little grey box has a whole bunch of little micro chips in it made by 13 year old girls in a sweat shop in South East Asia. What could possibly go wrong?
At some point in the near future all aquarium equipment will be designed to rely solely on one mother brain of some sort. You won't be able to turn something on/off with a flip of the switch. And thats when they gotcha! You will have planned/programmed failure points, and planned obsolescence

Just like our automobiles with their check engine lights. Convince me that those check engine lights are not programmed from the factory to trigger after so many key starts. This way you have to bring it in for service and get told you need a $500 sensor. The dealerships make their money on service not on selling new cars.

I am not against technology. And even if I was, I know It can't be stopped. I am just from a generation that is still capable of doing critical thinking on my own. And not buying into whatever some glitzy youtube commercial or R2R pop add tells me I need, to somewhow make my life/tank/ home better, easier, safer.
You say you are "from a generation that is still capable of doing critical thinking on your own"?

Tell me, when Nasa sent astronauts to the moon, how power was that machine they used to calculate trajectory.
Now, tell me how that compares to your cell phone.

Now, tell me how much knowledge goes into programming something in say...python.
Please, don't try to talk down to people in the IT world about critical thinking and then in the same sentence talk about being against technology. "BUT BUT BUT, I SAID I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH TECHNOLOGY". Maybe, but you sure don't understand it, and your critical thinking is flawed. Just say you're old fashioned and with a closed mind, instead of trying to act like you know techology with people who ACTUALLY know technology.
 
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Hincapiej4

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Honestly, as long as any sub model was fairly priced and ONLY affected cloud access, but did not affect local network access... I wouldn't consider it to be unreasonable. If you don't want to pay it, don't have cloud access. Setup a VPN or other means of remoting into your network or a machine on your network, and do your remote access that way. If you don't know how, learn how or find a friend or family member who can help you set it up.
Exactly. But you know that's for us "Gearheads" to know how to do........
 

saltyhog

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So I've had cloud access to my Apex forever, has Neptune been footing the bill for that all this time? Why would that suddenly change since they "merged" with another company? Forgive my ignorance of exactly how that all works.
 

Cabinetman

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I highly doubt brs will start charging for fusion. It can’t be that expensive to provide a service like that. Example, I bought a cheap dlink camera about 5 years ago and it had a cloud based service so I could log in and watch a video feed from my camera. It doesn’t cost me a cent. It was sold with this service. I’m sure the little bit of data we get through the cloud is not hard to provide. Plus we were sold these units with this free service included. I doubt Ryan at brs is going to take that away for a few bucks and month and the risk of driving not only apex users away but also potential sales. He just doesn’t come across as that kind of guy. Give this a chance guys. Brs has been great for the hobby up to this point and I don’t doubt they will continue to be. Them getting behind Neptune will take Neptune to the next level. Think of the things Ryan talked about producing already. These are exciting times. Nothing more.
 

Hincapiej4

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So I've had cloud access to my Apex forever, has Neptune been footing the bill for that all this time? Why would that suddenly change since they "merged" with another company? Forgive my ignorance of exactly how that all works.
They sure have. But, the thing is, the amount of data each person uses is probably not much.
 

Hincapiej4

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I was playing Men Of War: Assault Squad II yesterday. I decided to take a look and see if people were still playing online. Looks like it's still being hosted and it's an old game....

Fusion probably isn't going to be a paid service.
 

Silvas

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So I've had cloud access to my Apex forever, has Neptune been footing the bill for that all this time? Why would that suddenly change since they "merged" with another company? Forgive my ignorance of exactly how that all works.
Yep. The servers the apex and the app connect to are either rented by or owned by apex. They may be doing virtual servers and running on a cloud platform like AWS or Azure, or they could be physical servers hosted either in a datacenter or by Neptune themselves, I really don't know. There are monthly costs that they have to pay to keep that running though.
They sure have. But, the thing is, the amount of data each person uses is probably not much.
True, the amount of data each user adds is probably miniscule; up to a certain point, the biggest cost is just the baseline running the service. After the userbase hits a certain level, then electricity and bandwidth costs alone can become larger than the baseline itself. I don't know what the apex userbase is, but if it's sufficiently large such that the baseline cost is spread thin, a $10-20 a year sub would probably cover their costs. It wouldn't be a profit stream, but it would be a revenue stream that would cancel out the cost center.
 

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