Check it out, WiFi power strip - time/energy saver

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Hey I'm not totally old school, I use a camera to watch my tanks remotely while I am draining and most importantly refilling. I added that layer of redundancy after a few 'minor' overfills while preoccupied in another area of the ranch. lol
I only trust it as working, as I can see the fish moving around.

What?! Camera, nonsense. I set up a wind up alarm clock to remind me because I know how long it should take. For redundancy I know where the sun should be this time of year and can tell the time +- 30 secconds. Don't need no fancy camera.

Sarcasm aside, those cameras do come in handy to go do other things while waiting for the water to filll. ;-)
 
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LOL, yup, it's all fun and games until someone gets poked in the eye with a sharp stick. Having been poked a few times over the years, I trust very little when it comes to low cost/low quality electronics. The last items I purchased for my tanks on Amazon arrived directly from Guangzhou, Guangdong province, People's Republic of China, and both failed right out of the box. ?
 
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I have a Red eared slider, so I have a tank light, heat lamp and UV lamp on separate timers. I also have a timer to shut my pump off for auto feeding time so it doesn't all go down the overflow. I just recently set up two Circ powerheads to turn on and off periodically throughout the day to help keep a random flow going. All this can be done with simple dial timers but it gets bulky and messy.
I treat my tank simaler to a reef to help clean up after my messy turtle.

I believe this will monitor power usage also, so it could help tell you when pumps are starting to struggle and might fail and or need cleaned.
 
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It may not be for everybody, I’ve got co2 in places, auto feeders, some non Fluval lights with no timers, wave maker power heads used to kick up bottom waste... it just organizes the symphony ?.

My auto feeders go off at 630 am, I’ll shut down filters for 30 minutes ...

It does show energy consumption via an additional unit. I thought my tanks were making our high electric bill... water heater ( probably all those water changes) it’s nice to see how much energy stuffs using...

This image shows how much energy plug two uses - it’s a small canister filter

42988B69-7A40-423A-89EB-9F1FC3660D56.png
 
Sure, for those that can't be bothered reading some of the comments that might seem impressive. But 400 positive reviews, and 80 critical, isn't exactly a glowing review on a product. Do the math, not exactly what I'd call a home run. lol

But hey, don't let me rain on anyones parade. Good luck.

In a market where everything is mass produced there is no single item that can have "perfect" reviews. The amount of people that purchase products and actually do reviews is extremely low, and most of the time a consumer won't fill out a survey or review unless they have a neagative experience. I myself purchase 10+ orders off Amazon per week and have never left a positive review on something, only negative when I have a bad experience. You see 80 bad and 400 good, when in reality there's probably 1000+ good experiences just with people purchasing that one item off Amazon.

9 times out of 10 I won't even read reviews / ratings, especially on Amazon where companies will switch products and keep reviews from old items just to skew the numbers. If I do bother looking up a product, I'll stick with ratings and info on forums and look for consistent patterns for a large number of people.. Take the Eheim Jager heater for instance.. 4 star rating on Amazon, but if you take 20 minutes to research it on aquarium forums, it's the highest rated and reccommended heater out there.


All that being said, I run this exact power strip on my 180 and have had 0 issues. I've also been running two of the single outlet versions on my reef tank for 5+ months, with again, 0 issues.
 
Take the Eheim Jager heater for instance.. 4 star rating on Amazon, but if you take 20 minutes to research it on aquarium forums, it's the highest rated and reccommended heater out there.



Wow, horrible example to prove your point. Jager's dropped in quality when Eheim purchased them years ago and they began sourcing lower cost parts. Like the majority of heaters currently on the market, overall they are unreliable pieces of junk. One of the largest online vendors of aquatic dry goods in Canada, a former customer of mine, told me a number of yrs back that Eheim Jager is the most unreliable heater that he has ever carried, and the most frequently returned heater due to failure. He still sells them, but has the following at the top of the page they are listed on.

Jager

Despite their former reputation for a quality product Jager heaters are now the most unreliable heater we offer. Jager heaters are prone to highly irregular temperature fluctuations.


I remember when the old green Ebo Jager's lasted 20+ yrs, some 30+ so maybe I am simply spoiled by the reliability of old school engineering, when products were built to last decades, not months.


But please, don't let me stop anyone from using one of these power bars to control whatever on their tanks. I was simply tossing out my thoughts on the subject. If you are pleased with what you have read from fellow owners/users, and from your own experiences within a few months of using it, then all good by me.


Carry on
 
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Wow, horrible example to prove your point. Jager's dropped in quality when Eheim purchased them years ago and they began sourcing lower cost parts. Like the majority of heaters currently on the market, overall they are unreliable pieces of junk. One of the largest online vendors of aquatic dry goods in Canada, a former customer of mine, told me a number of yrs back that Eheim Jager is the most unreliable heater that he has ever carried, and the most frequently returned heater due to failure. He still sells them, but has the following at the top of the page they are listed on.

Jager

Despite their former reputation for a quality product Jager heaters are now the most unreliable heater we offer. Jager heaters are prone to highly irregular temperature fluctuations.


I remember when the old green Ebo Jager's lasted 20+ yrs, some 30+ so maybe I am simply spoiled by the reliability of old school engineering, when products were built to last decades, not months.


But please, don't let me stop anyone from using one of these power bars to control whatever on their tanks. I was simply tossing out my thoughts on the subject. If you are pleased with what you have read from fellow owners/users, and from your own experiences within a few months of using it, then all good by me.


Carry on

And yet this is a perfect example of how skewed reviews can be.
I spent several hours scouring through hundreds of posts across numerous freshwater and saltwater forums, Eheim was named and reccommend 4x more than any other branded heater. Cost wasn't a factor.

I run a temp controller regardless so fluctuations in temperature are a non-factor.
 
Of course online reviews will be skewed, but if one takes the time to actually read through an assortment of them, you can often read between the lines enough to get a feel of what the actual pros & cons are regarding the item being reviewed. That, and having enough years of hands on experience to understand that reviews alone won't tell you everything. Some people complain because they can't follow simple instructions. No one said that it's a perfect science, but they can still be a useful tool.

As far as Jager heaters, it wasn't just temperature fluctuations, many of them simply fail. In fact I have known many people who have had them fail right out of the box. Great heater 30+ yrs ago, today no better than most of the aquarium grade heaters on the market.
 
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