Aquaero 5 XT controller review

Software

As we already mentioned, Aquasuite 2012 is still on stage of Beta-version, so there were no CD with the package. To download the latest available version visit software section of Aqua-computer home page. For the time this article was written Aquasuite 2012 has got eight updates on Beta version.

Before you install Aquasuite 2012, make sure you have German version of Microsoft. NET 4 (Client Profile) installed on your PC. Other version of the NET client could lead to the error showed above.

When you first time launch Aquasuite 2012 you notice a totally redesign workspace. All the tabs and settings are organized in a tree-view, which is something similar to what we sat in “Navigator” software for m-Cubed T-Balancer controller (review). On your left there are main section of menu, while the right parts reveals settings corresponding to that particular section. In case Aquaero is correctly connected you will see the following Aquasuite 2012 window:

• Overview pages section contains settings to display information of system parameters: temperature, voltage, amperage, fan speed etc, controlled by Aquaero 5 and dynamically changing within time. (We will get back to this section later)
• aquaero 5 is the main section with all available for this version settings to configure the device, as well as profile management and time/date settings. Besides that, this section also includes firmware update tab
• aquasuite section features language, display units and software start-up settings.

In contrast to Aquaero 4 where you had to download the latest firmware separately, Aquasuite 2012 already contains the latest available firmware for Aquaero 5. This is why you can see a small floppy diskette icon right of section name. If you update Aquasuite,say from Beta 6 to Beta 8, then firmware update is a must otherwise the access to main setting section of Aquasuite is closed. At firsts you will only find only System tab in Aquaero 5 section that will offer you to update the firmware:

Continue with the update and after the process completes Aquasuite will pop-up a window that reports(somehow in German!) of successful firmware flashing, shortly after controller makes a long sound signal and restarts. Close the pop-up window and restart application. Next time it boots you will see the whole variety of available setting tabs in Aquaero 5 section, as follows:

Later, we will take a deep look into each tab settings, but right now we stop at Aquasuite section.

This section allows application interface language change. At the moment Aquasuite 2012 supports only English and German languages. For language change to take effect you must restart the application, moreover this only changes the language for software interface, but display interface language remains unchanged. Later we have found out why.

Apart from localization settings Units offers the choice of displaying alternative units for temperatures and flow rates. The first can be set to Celsius, Kelvin or Fahrenheit, whereas flow rate has a bigger variety of units to choose from:

• Liter per hour
• Liters per minute
• Gallons (US) per hour
• Gallons (US) per minute
• Gallons (Imperial) per hour
• Gallons (Imperial) per minute

Application start-up configuration features settings for Aquasuite to run together with OS or minimize it to system tray on launch.