The Reef Factory pH Meter is one of the newest and modest modern pH monitoring solutions to arrive in the aquarium hobby in a very long time. As important as pH is in all types of aquariums, it’s quite surprising that there have been very few options for truly smart pH monitoring features, short of investing in a fully fledged pH controller that can cost as much as a complete (small) reef aquarium setup.
Far too many companies throw around the ‘smart’ adjective as a marketing term to promote products that fall well short of what modern consumers have come to expect from their smartphonesand other connected devices. But Reef Factory’s entire catalog of aquarium products fully adopt what it means to have a device with smart features and we recently got our hands on their simply-named pH Meter which we’ve been putting through its paces for a couple weeks now.
Right out of the box it’s clear that the Reef Factory pH Meter is not the same clunky old digital monitoring device that we’ve been plagued by for decades, as the entire unit consists of little more than a small LCD display with one wire for power, and another wire for connecting to the included pH probe, it couldn’t be more streamlined than that. Also included in the box is a basic white probe holder which is long enough to accomodate high sump walls, matching velcro strips for mounting the main LCD and hub, and pH 4.0 and pH 7.0 calibration solutions.
盒子中没有手册，但是用各种语言快速启动纸牌将用户引导到QR码，以下载与礁石工厂pH仪表进行编程，校准和接口所需的应用程序。LCD枢纽上没有物理按钮，与pH仪表的唯一直接交互是通过使用小磁体来重置监视器的情况下，如果用户需要使用它。
Setting up the Reef Factory for remote monitoring is not the most streamlined we’ve ever seen, it takes a little bit of a roundabout approach by directly connecting to the meter’s own wifi network, navigating to a special website, then after logging in and a few clicks the pH Meter is ready to be used and calibrated. Despite the few extra steps it takes to get the Reef Factory pH meter up and running we will say that it worked the first time for three separate meters and they all were clearly usable in the Smart Reef hub of the Reef Factory website.
When it came to the calibration, it was nice to see included calibration solutions however we were disappointed to see that there are only two calibration points, for pH 4 & 7, with no option for either 3-point calibration of even simple 2-point calibration at pH 10. The lack of a pH 10 calibration seems like somewhat of an oversight from a company called REEF Factory wherein reef aquarium pH should pretty much always be above 8.0, so the calibration point at pH 4 is not helping with the accuracy of using this pH meter in alkaline seawater reef aquariums.
Furthermore, after initial setup we struggled to get the pH Meter to match our ‘reference’ Hanna Halo bluetooth pH probe using the included calibration solutions and it wasn’t until we关于用Hanna解决方案校准了探针，即pH读数变得更加接近我们对礁石水族馆的期望，并用几种pH测量设备引用了交叉。One small but important detail that is missing from Reef Factory’s pH meter is the lack of temperature measurement for automatic temperature compensation, perhaps not affecting pH measurements too much under a narrow range of temperatures close to the 25?C/77?F calibration point, but the accuracy of pH measurement will certainly suffer if used in tanks that are colder or warmer without automatic temperature compensation.
We recognize that longer cables can negatively impact the accuracy of pH readings but the 34″ overall length of the BNC dongle and the pH probe included with Reef Factory’s pH meter severely limits where you can install the pH meter itself, as it will require being mounted close to the point of measurement be it the sump or the aquarium itself. We really strive to mount all of our aquarium electronics as far away from the water and moisture buildup as possible but the short cable precludes this kind of precautionary installation.
尽管批评了这些小小的批评，但我们感到非常高兴的是，pH值成功地执行了测量pH值并在Smart Reef Hub中记录这些价值的主要目的。We’ve been using one unit to monitor the pattern of acidic pH drops in our CO2 injected planted freshwater aquarium, another one in our main reef system which fluctuates from pH 8.1 to 8.3, and another unit in our kalk reactor to monitor its effectiveness over time as it starts at pH 12.4 and slowly decreases over time.
这三个不同的装置代表了我们在各种水族馆中体验到的最广泛的pH值范围，在登录Smart Reef应用程序时，最终可以从我们的手机或任何Web浏览器中读取良好的读取，这是令人难以置信的令人耳目一新的。Costing around€245约285美元,珊瑚礁工厂酸度计是革命制度党ced at a significant portion of what a fully fledged aquarium controller currently costs, and all the additional features it would come with, making it hard to bolster the value proposition of a standalone, smart pH monitor.
珊瑚礁工厂可以证明其智能pH仪表非常可靠，超准确，并以一年或更长时间的智能珊瑚礁服务以无需额外费用来记录值。但是，我们希望看到将来的更新，该更新能够使用pH 10.0进行三点校准，甚至可以进行两点校准，以便我们可以对碱性海水进行的测量准确性更加信心。
