Today on BRStv we have our sixth episode of the Neptune apex series.
In this episode we are going to explore the display unit.
Hi, I'm Ryan host of BRStv where each week we go over something related to reefing.
In today's episode we are going to explore the display.
While it is nice to see the visual display of how everything is doing I am going to be
honest, you can use the display to view and program basically everything it's just a hell
of a lot easier to do it in the browser on a pc or fusion.
For purposes of this video I am going to forget all that and just show you around.
You start with what's on the display by default which is date, time, Temp, pH, ORP, AMP usage
and a bunch of icons that indicate what is currently turned on and off.
If you take the time to assign each icon, remember what each one and the different states
this can be useful but a lot of people will start their Neptune experience by turning
them off and reducing the clutter on the interface.
Something we will show you later in the video
Quick overview of what each button does.
From the home screen the top three buttons including the up arrow do nothing.
The left and right buttons cycle through different homes screens.
You may have the desire to set up different screens to see different elements.
the down button initiates a feed cycle which depending on how you have it set up might
turn off your return to keep food from going down the overflow, also common to turn the
skimmer off for an hour or so after feeding to prevent it from going crazy as the return
fills up from the return getting shut off.
When you hit the feed button it will show feed mode A.
You can cycle through different feed modes but hitting the button and then waiting for
it to initiate.
If you hit feed by accident and want to turn it off just hit it again and let it select
the same mode and it will display the seconds left.
Hit the cancel button and everything will turn back on.
The center button is both a menu button as well as a enter button.
Push it once and it will bring you to the main menu.
This is a good time to discuss button mashers.
The system is designed to make things quick which means if you hold it down it will register
as a series of quick selections.
When I say hold it down, I mean if you tap it for more than half a second.
Let me show you a quick example.
From the home screen tap the menu or enter button once and it brings you to the main
menu , tap on the first selection which is control slash status, then tap again on the
first selection which is feed and boom you activated feed mode.
If you are button masher you hit it hard which the Apex basically measures as holding down
and it immediately cycles you all the way to end of that and triggers the feed cycle.
Now if you knew the menu structure like the back of your hand that might be helpful but
I think we could all have a pretty healthy debate if this is a helpful feature for the
majority of users.
I only bring it up because if you are having problems navigating the menu system it is
probably because you too are a button masher.
Ok so back to the main menu.
From here you have control slash status which is an area where you can trigger food mode,
Manual control which allows you to cycle through all of your available outlets.
Say if you had a hot date over and you wanted to show off the tank but the day light cycle
was done, this is where you will scroll through all the outlets, find lights and change them
from auto to on.
Feed cancel is pretty self-explanatory.
If you want to turn off a feed mode that's running this is just another way to do it.
Module status lists all of the modules are running and there current state.
You can see here my WXM is old which means I will have to update it.
Something we will probably do in a future episode.
The last option says display lock with the option of off.
If you want to lock the display because you did want your kids mashing the buttons or
something this is where you would do it.
Be aware that the moment you switch it to on the system is now locked and you are no
longer going to be able to do anything unless you know the password.
I am sure the password is somewhere in the 140 page user guide so you could find it there
however ill save you the effort and tell you that it is xyz.
Enter that and hit ok and you will be in.
Going back to the main menu you will data log, which are basically graphs of your tank
parameters.
If I hit it I can see a chart of my temp, pH, ORP and even power usage.
The left and right buttons allows you to scroll through different days.
The power fail log tells you when the last power outage was and the log interval dictates
when it takes readings probably not something most people will change sense most people
don't need a finer look at tank history than ten minute intervals provides.
The next option from the main menu is set up.
This is where the heart of the programing will be done if you were going to do it on
the display.
I am going to reiterate at this point if you program your entire apex from the display
like this it is because you are an absolute gluten for punishment, this is a billion times
easier using the browser interface or fusion.
For this video I am going to skip this process of explaining how to program outlets, profiles
and modules because it deserves its own video.
But know if this is what you want to do this is where you would do it.
The pH, temp, ORP, conductivity and dissolved oxygen set ups are primarily areas where you
would calibrate and enable features for each probe.
This is one of those things that are actually easier to do using the control pad.
Because you are at the tank when you are doing this and there are no internet latency issues
to deal with.
We are going to go over the calibration process with each one of these in some episodes coming
up very soon.
Clock set up is pretty self-explanatory, more or less just setting the time and date.
The networking and email set up are one of those things that people have the most challenges
with and a somewhat advanced topic this absolutely deserves is own video down the road.
I will say that when this video was shot the cloud based fusion was weeks from being released.
Once people move to fusion this area will become much less relevant.
The one thing I would like to point out is the IP address option.
This will display the current IP address of your apex.
If you type that number into your browser that's on the same network it should bring
up the apex browser based configuration system.
As I mentioned a second ago based Fusion system is going to be even easier to use so the browser
based configuration probably be something most of you won't be using very soon.
Next in the system menu is the display set up.
the home display is that area i promised we would come back to.
Go ahead and select home display and then page one.
In there you will see various lines you can enable or disable.
I am going to disable the last two which are outlet icons and save.
Now my ORP and Power Usage are much larger and easier to read.
Say I had a PM2 and wanted to see my salinity on the display home page rather than amp usage
I can do that my selecting the probes line two, right which is currently amp 3 and changing
it to conductivity which is the salinity probe.
I also could make it even cleaner By turning off that Line.
This is also where the other home screens come in.
Say I had my apex running multiple tanks I could use page two - four to view them from
the display I could also set up a second page to show me some secondary things like the
PH of my calcium reactor or maybe I was using a second temp probe to measure the ambient
temp of the room or hood.
Display password allows you to change the password on your display from xyz to something
else.
Honestly, I would leave it as is if you can just because the password screen defaults
to z and it is an increasingly large pain in the butt to type in the password the further
you get from z.
By setting day time you can change the brightness for the display to be brighter during the
day and dark at night which might be nice if your tank is in your bed room or somewhere
else you like it to be dark.
On newer systems, Apex Fusion will be the next option in the main menu after system.
If fusion is working properly, in this case it says ok so I am in good shape.
Self-test runs script which presumably runs a short test of functions and tells you the
current version of firmware you are running on and serial number.
So if you have any questions about how best to use the display or advice for your fellow
reefers check out the comments area down below.
If this is your first time with us hit that subscribe button because we do this every
week, see ya next week with another episode of BRStv.