Review on Enhanced Aquarium Light Timer: Fish Tank Light Controller and Dimmer with NICREW by Melissa Brown

Problems start early with this timer. You have a five second window to enter data before returning to the home screen with your meager 4 buttons. But then you get over it and you get what you came for - a half-hour acceleration and deceleration timer or the F3 function. Problem? The device does not have an AM/PM display. To complicate things further, don't just enter time A to start the "on" operation and time B to mark the "off" time. No, you have to enter 4 different values according to the operating instructions. What about acceleration/descent? Tied to a peculiar 1 to 100 meters. Let's say you want the lights to come on at 9:00 am, increase to "full on" at 9:30 for 1/2 hour, and then repeat the process in reverse at 9:00 pm. In this case, you need to enter four values: F1 at 9:00 AM at 50% power, F2 at 9:15 AM at 100% power, F3 at 9:00 PM at 50% power, and F4 at 9:15 PM at 0 % Perfomance . Confusing. Yes. The problem makes it a lot worse - without an AM/PM indicator, you throw the entire timer function out of the window if you get any of these values wrong - and you can't test it unless you keep an eye on it thrown to change the actual time of the timer. And there is no AM/PM function for the timer! Let's assume you got it right. You enter the correct time, you have a linear increase/decrease. Unfortunately, this fails again when the device loses power or encounters some kind of glitch. My timer can't run for more than a few hours without a power outage (despite the fact that my home's electrical system doesn't change), after which the clock needs to be reset. It's not good when the power goes out at midnight and the timer decides - is it morning already? LIGHT ON! Here you will notice two separate problems: the first is the lack of an AM / PM mode and the complexity of programming - this unpleasant feature is inherent in the device itself. Second, intermittent power outages that may be unique to my unit. So, apart from the annoying timer programming, a properly powered device can be good, right? Wrong, there is one more nuance - the device timer itself only goes from 1 to 10. That's right, not military time, not 12 o'clock time, but a time apparently found on a planet with a faster rotation than ours . Do you need to program any aspect of this device to the 11 or 12 o'clock position? Or live on a planet with a 24-hour day/night cycle? Sorry, no dice. I'm disappointed that I love my NICREW LED Plus light and really wish there was a zoom in/zoom out feature for it, but apparently that just doesn't happen.