# Unboxing and setting up the Prime (Microclimate Prime Review Part 1)



## LFBP-NEIL (Apr 23, 2005)

Just read a comment about there being no reviews on the microclimate prime, thought i would share the one i did a few weeks back...


*Microclimate Prime 1 – Review – Part1 – unboxing and setting up!

Neil Reed – Livefoodsbypost.co.uk*

Unboxing and setting up the Prime (Microclimate Prime Review Part 1) | Livefoodsby post.co.uk Blog


I have finally got round to buying a Microclimate Prime to play with, they were launched around February time this year and are billed as the most advanced bit of environmental control kit available in the UK at the moment. So it was high time we had a play with one…

First impression is that this is a leviathan, a beast, a monster of a thermostat, it kind of looks like it should be the black box flight recorder on a Russian spy plane, it sort of reminds me of an 8 track cassette player (for those of us old enough to remember). Actual dimensions are 13 x 13 x 5 cm. Sporting a blocky LCD display that back-lights green, it wouldn’t look out of place controlling some equipment next to a hospital bed. Not that these are criticisms it certainly feels and looks well built, you could probably use it to chock up your car next time a wheel needs changing and it would probably do the job admirably.

Not a lot more can be said about appearance, it looks quite smart in black with green graphics panel and buttons, you have two plug sockets coming out of the back and two thermostat probes, a socket for a USB cable and a mains plug.. One criticism on the mains plug however, you only get about 2ft of cable. this is probably down to some EU health and safety regulation so you are either going to have to get your house rewired so that the plug socket is directly behind the vivarium you wish to control or the easier option – buy an extension lead.

Being a man impatience takes over.. I plug the monster in, it wakes itself up with a nifty little tune

proudly displays the name “microclimate” and then goes back to sleep… Ok lets try this again, unplug the beast, plug him back in (yes its become a him), this time nifty little tune, proudly displays “microclimate” and then reverts to displaying the time.. yes we are in..

Now there is a “quick start guide” that gives you a brief, and i do mean brief, guide to setting it up. As although this monster can be plugged into the PC to set up, you can also do this via the front panel using the buttons located on the front panel.

Quick word of advice.. dont bother trying, I tried, and gave up, until you become “au fait” with Y channel, R channel, Heating, fixed, cooling, constant, day and night, multi, periodic.. You will just drive yourself nuts and remind yourself of your grandparents trying to set the timer on the VCR circa 1987.

So just skip to the next step, right the beast works through USB cable to your PC so you can interface with the thermostat and change its settings.. that sounds more like it..

Step one, go to Microclimates website and download the software, no disc is included so you do have to have internet access. Now once on microclimates website you do need to do a little bit of searching but it shouldn’t be too head scratching, first of all look in the download section… you just wasted your time, its not in there, If like me you just clicked on the button that said “prime software” .. thats not actually the prime software, thats the PDF file for instructions on how to install the software. Back to finding the software.. go back to the homepage and click on the product details for the Prime thermostat on the left, from here you will find the link to download the software.

Downloading and installing was very easy, worked first time and when the prime was plugged into the PC it instantly recognised it so that was the first big hurdle easily overcome.

Mission control, we are in, we are greeted by a display on the PC that reads – Status, Y channel, R Channel and options.

Status Gives you the time, Y Set point (temp), Y Temp, Y % power output, R set point, R temp and R output.

“Options” enables you to change the name of the device.. Handy if you have more than one, it also allows you to rename the channels Y & R to something easier to recognise such as Heater & UVB etc etc. You can also select if you want the display to keep scrolling, the units of measurement C or F and the Data Logging period.

Confused yet?.. stick around you will be…

Right so at this point, lets just take five minutes, relax and try and recap and get our heads around exactly what this beast is supposed to be capable of..

so the Prime 1 (this model) has two channels, 1 (Y channel) is a thermostat and 2 (R channel) is either a timed output or a on/off thermostat.

The Prime 2 (next model in the range) has three channels 2 are thermostats (Y & B) and the the third (R channel) is a timed output or on/off thermostat.

Still with me?.. so how can we use this model, the Prime 1, we can either control 2 vivariums using one output as a dimming/pulse thermostat and the other vivarium with the second output as a on/off thermostat…. I cant see the point in doing this though, that really is like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut, a bit like renting a spaceship and flying to the moon and back just to pop to Aldi down the road.

So how else can we use it, we can use channel one (Y channel) as a thermostat (dimming/pulse or on/off) and the second channel (R channel) to control another component on the same vivarium such as lighting or mister etc etc.

Now at this point i would like to point out, Microclimate you have missed a trick, if the Prime 2 had 2 x timed output and one thermostat or the option to switch the second thermostat between timed output you would have created a far more versatile machine. If that was possible I would be able to use it to control the temperature, lighting and misters But as it stands all we can control is a heater (or two, or three) and either Lighting or misting… Anyhow back to what this machine can do and less of what I want it to do…

Back into Mission control and lets have a play with Y channel.. for easier to understand purposes I have now renamed it Heater…

How do we set this thing up, first option is Mode, this should be self explanatory, options are Heating, yep got that one, Cooling, OK i guess it can be used to switch a cooling device on like a reverse thermostat would do and Fixed..Huh? Quick consult of the quick start guide.. “Fixed – fixed output (used for on/off timed control) or Constant output level” hmmm no still dont get it..

And herein lies a problem with mission control its not very intuitive, it’s not new user friendly, and if you don’t know the answer there’s nothing to turn to for the answer, the quick start guide doesn’t cover the mission control interface and the software instructions on the website simply tell you how to download the software not what each different setting is for, there are some one line sentences on what each basic setting is but not enough to get you started. There is a Microclimate help line you can call, but i’m reluctant to do that, after all i’m not actually trying to achieve anything i just want to play and see what each function does and how to set it up.

Its a bit like starting a new job and needing to go to the toilet, only there’s no one to ask where it is and no signs up telling you where to go, you know its in the building somewhere and you don’t want to phone up your new boss to ask where it is so you just sort of wander around opening doors until you find the right one and then next time you will be able to get to it straight away.

Lets play and open some doors then and see what we can find, within the mission control screen whenever you make a change to one of the settings a box appears to the right which allows you to make some more adjustments, for example…

Change Mode to Heating and change Timing to day/night and the box on the right says..Night (you enter the desired temp), Day start (you enter the desired time), Day (you get the picture) and Night start (youve got it). You can then change the thermostat mode from Pulse, Dimming or On and Off.

In Heating mode you have also got a few more options,

Constant – gives you one box in the right hand side to enter the temperature you want constantly thats easy enough,

Periodic – this gives you a start, finish, interval, duration, off temp, on temp options??? I genuinely haven’t got a clue what this does, I have read the quick start guide which gives a hint to setting up a periodic time on channel 2 and i have read and re-read the download software instructions and neither tell me what these settings are or what they do, answers on a postcard please!! I think it might raise and lower the temps at given intervals but I am only guessing and if it does, then why?

Multi – Again no instructions on what this does or how to set it up, we can have a guess as in the box on the right are now a load of boxes called set points, it starts with “setpoint 1” which you can type a temperature into and then the next box is “Until 1” and then you can type a time into it, now if that is a time that the temperature ends, starts, duration in minutes, I dont know, theres no answers and the only person who does know is on the end of the phone and I dont want to call them, i just want to play.

Desperately wanting to play with this now, I opt for Mode Heating, with Day/night timing and in dimming mode, so I can use it to control a heat lamp in a bearded dragon vivarium. Just a few more options to go…

“Ramp time” – you enter this in minutes and it controls how fast the thermostat switches between the day and night temperature, so on my set up night time kicks in at 8pm so i want it to start ramping down at about 4pm so im going to put in 240 minutes

There is also an alarm delay option so you can tell it how long before the out of temperature alarm sounds and max, min temp settings so the alarm knows when to sound. The last setting is “differential” which according to the download instructions “is used to set how the thermostat reacts around the set temperature”?? I am just leaving these at factory settings as I am not really fussed about the alarm and again god knows what the differential actually does.

Onwards and upwards, one more task to complete in mission control, changing the name of R channel to “lighting” and setting up the light timer, in we go…

I am presented with the options Fixed, Heating or cooling, Wanting to use this output for lighting I opt for “fixed” and then have further choices of constant (can either be on or off), Day/Night (can tell it if the output needs to be on or off at night and what time day and night is), Multi – uh oh! its that list of set points again, this time it has the option off on or off and a list of times, but still no instruction on how to set the damn thing up.. and finally… Periodic, now in this setting it makes sense, Start time, finish time, interval and duration.. so i could plug a mister in instead of a lamp and say that between 9am and 9pm every (interval) of one hour it would spray for a duration of say 5 minutes, but then you have two boxes one called “on” with the option of either off or on and one called “off” with the option of off or on?? what on earth does that do???

This all getting a bit confusing now so i go for the easiest option which is fixed – Day/night, i tell it that day starts at 9am and night starts at 8pm and that day = ON and Night = OFF.

Finally we are all set up, I save my settings in mission control and exit the program ready to actually try the thermostat out on the vivarium. Now I am out of mission control I am making sure I stay well away from the buttons on the front as i don’t want to accidentally mess with anything.

Make sure you set scrolling to ON otherwise all you will get from the front of the box is the time, with scrolling switched on the display cycles between the time and what the temperature is at both of the probes, so although you may not want to use both outputs as a thermostat you can utilise the 2nd probe in the vivarium as a 2nd thermometer.

So far I am impressed by the quality of the build and the fact Microclimate are prepared to back that up with a 5 year warranty, I like the fact you can set it up via PC in fact if you couldn’t I wouldn’t even attempt to use it if I am honest. I do not like the fact the software is not intuitive and there are still elements of it I have no idea exactly what it does or how to use it. I guess once its plugged in and I revisit those settings and have a play it will become clear but i would prefer to know how to get the maximum out of this kit without having to tinker or phone a help line.

When I went to set the thermostat up on my vivarium I plugged everything in and switched on but for some reason the day lights didn’t switch off as programmed so i had to install the software onto my laptop, (which was slightly more troublesome running windows 7 as it did not want to recognise the drivers but after installing the drivers separately it soon worked). After connecting the Thermostat up to my laptop it appears it had forgotten all of the settings I had programmed into it so I had to set it up again, this time leaving it plugged in. Im not sure if its supposed to forget its settings when its switched off or if i did something wrong?.

Second part of this review will be commenting on how well the Thermostat actually performs

You will have to wait for review part two to find out what it actually works like though, as i have only just got over setting it up.


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## Bradleybradleyc (May 7, 2012)

Great review mate, very detailed, will wait to see how it get on.

Just seems like quite a bit of work to get it set up


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## bigd_1 (May 31, 2011)

this is what i going for when i get my new vivs to what i know you can set the different teps frow the day


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