I think this is a great thread to collect all the input from many different sides. I believe manufacturers participating here is a good thing so that you get the answers to your questions as well as get any misperceptions cleared up. So far I believe I have only stated what the Apex can do, and then asked the question when I did not know if something could be done by another company's product. The company can then choose to answer or not.
Mattias in his own thread posited that one does not need more than 5 controllable outlets on a power bar because you can only control up to 15A anyways. Well, in most aquariums these days, the sum of all their equipment is far less than that 15A. We have a large percentage of our customer base owning 2+ Energy Bars connected to the same 15A home circuit - something that would not be possible if the sum of all of the devices was more than 15A. They just like to control things! And even with variable speed or variable dimming products, customers often want to program failsafes that completely power off the device based on some additional criteria that might be monitored. For instance, a malfunction in the pump controller might make the flow rate go to 100% (and in the Apex you could know that via its power consumption) which would make it exceed your overflow/drain and then you might want to cut power completely and send you an alert.
Another point was made that the Profilux has current monitoring. I did not see it posted anywhere if it actually had power (watts) monitoring so some clarification should be made. Due to the power factor, this is the only true way to know what kind of power a device is using. You do not pay for amps, you pay for watts, and due to
power factor the simple electrical equation does not always hold true. Does the Profilux directly measure Watts?
I will reiterate that with the new Apex, no outside computer application is necessary - not even for firmware updates. It has a built-in web server that is cross-platform compatible and then our Apex Fusion cloud service can do about 98% of all the functions as the built-in web interface. Since there is no Mac control software on the Profilux, it might be helpful to the consumers to understand what can only be done through the PC software and not on the myGHL cloud interface. The Apex also has an iOS app and iOS alerts. We do not yet have a new Android app for the new Apex - our approach for android is that our web app works well across many flavors of Android.
Just for clarification, the Energy Bar 832 has Fallback states if communication is lost and it uses our AquaBus standard which is also an industrial control standard. It also has five DC outlets (for a total of 13) for use with other devices. I do believe that customers should look at cost per outlet - it is a very valid metric when two devices are so similar. For those that do not know, the Energy Bar 832 costs $249. Our Energy Bar 8 costs just $159.
