Controller Question

[intarsiabox]

Originally Posted by reefgirl189

Oh the things a controller can do are almost endless...

Just for the lights:

- Gradually brighten or dim your lights to simulate sunrise and sunset so as not to blast your tank with a sudden bright light first thing in the morning or go into sudden blackness last thing at night.
- Simulate cloudy skies or lightning storms using the lights.
- Turn certain lights on and certain ones off at whichever times you "tell" it to. Great for power consumption or to simulate peak daylight times with your MH's while your T5 are doing the sunrise sunset.
- Most importantly: It can turn off lights in the event of the temperature going to high (safety measure that most of your $15 hardware store light timers can't do for example), or turn on fans to cool the lights before it needs to turn them off at all.

It can measure temperature, ph, orp, at very reliable readings (if you properly calibrate the probes). It can send you alerts and text message you (certain brands) in the event of a potential tank crash.

It can top of your evaporated water, turn off your pumps and turn on your automatic fish feeder all by itself every day if you go on vacation.

It can allow you to check your tank's status from anywhere in the world.

It can fold your laundry, walk your dog, put your kids to bed. Okay just kidding here. But seriously, It can do almost everything and make your job a whole lot easier. It could even do you water changes for you if you were so inclined to set up a system for it to do so.

It's a great solution for someone who can't or doesn't want to constantly fret over their tank every minute of the day.

I know what they can do but my lights, ATO and pumps are already controlled by their own controllers. Are the after market controllers going to operate these things any better than the controllers that already come with the units? I'm looking more for suggestions on what a good unit would be that can do the basics and if further control is even required. Email alerts on tank status would be cool though! There are lots of "lite" models out there, are any of them any good and ugradeable or are the full feature units any more expensive with probes and power bars being added to lite controllers?