# Digital Thermostat Recommendations



## Saladmander (12 mo ago)

I'm looking to potentially upgrade my habistat and microclimate analog dimmer stats.
A couple of online shops have very good deals on Microclimate Evo Lites, but reading around, it seems a lot of people have had issues with them? Possibly not worth the risk

Is there a particular brand anybody here would recommend?
Would you bother switching to digital at all?

I mostly keep colubrids/lamprophids


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## al stotton (Jul 27, 2008)

My 2p worth......I actually find the Evo lite to be fine , seems the first run were sometimes faulty. The latest ones seem to have better firmware.


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## Malc (Oct 27, 2009)

Saladmander said:


> Would you bother switching to digital at all?
> 
> I mostly keep colubrids/lamprophids


Depends on why you are looking to change. If the current setup works then why change. If you are using plug in timers to turn heat off between certain times which is performing well then there is not much to to gain by changing to a digital thermostat. If you want to simplify the wiring, or have other requirements (some units have the means to log the conditions and power used etc) then upgrade to a digital unit. One thing, as far as I know there is no true digital thermostat that uses a one wire protocol sensor on the market. From my limited research the thermostat is still analogue using a thermistor to read the temperature. The difference is that the digital units use a microcontroller to do the conversion rather than a comparator circuit. The Microcontroller then drives an LCD display and switches the output drivers, be they solid state switches or old fashioned relays.


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## Tarron (May 30, 2010)

Personally, I'm about ready to convert back to analogue on everything.

The Evo Lites are good, they have amazing functionality, setting multiple temps through the day and such, but the clocks drift stupidly fast. If i'm working odd hours, I can sometimes find them up to 2 or 3 hours out in the course of a week. Apparently the problem is that neither thermostats or arcadia UVB aren't properly earthed or shielded, so electro-magnetic interference messes with the timing circuits. The solution is to plug them in to totally separate outlets as far away from each other as possible. Like we all have a million plugs in our rooms,.

I'll prefer to put the analogues on smart timers instead.


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## LiasisUK (Sep 30, 2019)

EVOs are fine, not had any issues with them really. But as Tarron said, I prefer the analogue ones.

I actually mainly use EVOs for the incubators as they track temperature fluctuations.


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## ian14 (Jan 2, 2008)

I had a digital dimmer. It was OK, but very fiddly to set up. If the bulb blew then it also blew the internal fuses so they had to be changed.
I then had a power cut which led to the entire unit packing up. 
Never had any of those issues with an analogue dimmer.


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## Malc (Oct 27, 2009)

Tarron said:


> Personally, I'm about ready to convert back to analogue on everything.
> 
> The Evo Lites are good, they have amazing functionality, setting multiple temps through the day and such, but the clocks drift stupidly fast. If i'm working odd hours, I can sometimes find them up to 2 or 3 hours out in the course of a week.


That's crazy... digital chip timers such as the DS1307, whilst not a precision clock only drifts a few minutes over the course of a month or two. I use one in my own design of thermostat and its still in sync with the PC clock that was used to update it when the clocks went back last month.

Wonder what they are using to generating the clock pulses


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## QWERTYOP (Apr 5, 2021)

I LOVE my Microclimate Evo Lite. I’ll always use this or similar going forward. First time user, and it’s one of the best upgrade choices I’ve ever made. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now. No going back to a dial for me.


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## Tarron (May 30, 2010)

Malc said:


> That's crazy... digital chip timers such as the DS1307, whilst not a precision clock only drifts a few minutes over the course of a month or two. I use one in my own design of thermostat and its still in sync with the PC clock that was used to update it when the clocks went back last month.
> 
> Wonder what they are using to generating the clock pulses


I've no idea, but I've swapped them out for others, moved things round to check its not just faulty items or something. I've probably got 30 between in use and storage, and they've all done it to some degree or another.


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