Ok, so I got this bad boy on Friday and had a little time over the weekend to start playing with it. It's still not fully set up yet but here's my initial thoughts.
1. First and foremost, the instructions supplied with it are HORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIBLE. I mean it goes through and gives you a decent idea of what the different settings do, but it doesn't go into much detail or explanation. Thank god for their support forums. But even on the forum with stickies like "basic setup" I'm still totally confused so you need to rely on other users or the owners to answer your questions one by one.
2. Now that that's out of the way.... the equipment itself is top notch. Everything is built very well, great fit/finish, everything feels and looks to be good quality stuff. The screen on the main display/control panel is easy to read and the interface is intuitive. Once you manage to figure out what does what and HOW to setup your equipment to do what you want, the actual programming is really freakin easy.
3. My set up so far.
Right now i have my actinic t5's set to come on first, controlled by channel one. Channel 2 turns on my daylight bulbs an hour later. Channel 3 is turning my lunar leds on and off at night (if you have actuall lunar modules you can control their intensity with the lunar cycle). Channel 4 runs my heater, keeping it at 78 degrees with a variance of .2 degrees. That's it for the first PC4. The second PC4 is running my main pump on channel 1 and 3 of my powerheads on channel 2 (i have a 2' extension cord plugged into channel 2 that splits into 3 plugs on the other end). These 2 channels are programmed with Standby, so when it's time to feed the tank they will shut off for however long I want. I programmed it for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes they will automatically turn back on. I also programmed channel 2 to turn off at night. So those 3 powerheads will off from 11pm to 6am. The remaining 2 powerheads i have will continue to run 24/7. I figure this will help my fish sleep a little easier.
That's it for now. I have not setup the ph monitor yet and not sure how I'm going to use the last two available channels. I could use one for my skimmer but i tend to leave that running all the time unless I need to clean the injector. Everything else I can leave running off a standard powerstrip. The only other thing I'm not sure of is my ATO setup. It's running ok now as is but I need to see whether or not I can gain anything by running it through the RKL.
I'll post some pics as soon as I get everything permanently installed and cleaned up. Right now it's a mess of wires.
