New Brultech Energy Monitoring Model (ECM-1240) due in 2009

[moridin1138]

Anybody else have the same experience with delivery times and no response from customer service?

I had a couple of emails that went unanswered, and a couple that were answered promptly. When the 1240 was released I did not receive a shipping notice, so was a little perturbed. I ended up calling the phone number on their website and got a satisfactory response (turns out it was already shipped, and I received it the next day).

Now, that being said, they are obviously a small operation. In fact the Canadian address looks like a house. This isn't newegg or amazon where you have a large, mostly automated system for tracking, shipping, customer service etc.

I suggest "escalating" by calling their phone number and speaking to someone directly.

I agree that there is room for improvement, but I think some patience is in order.

 

[beelzerob]

Ya, I agree with moridin that what you're experiencing is probably more a result of being a small operation than anything else...which given the coolness and price of the hardware, I think it's pretty impressive coming from so small a company.

Paul has mentioned several times that they've been hit recently by equipment and employee malfunctions...so being a smaller company, I'm guessing that Paul has to remove his "customer service" hat and put on his "solder that transistor" hat....or something like that.

All that to say that I think the current state of affairs is temporary, and when things calm down you'll see much quicker responses to queries, both from the website and on these boards. I have every confidence in them and their support, based on my experience with the 1220.

 

[hucker]

Ya, I agree with moridin that what you're experiencing is probably more a result of being a small operation than anything else...which given the coolness and price of the hardware, I think it's pretty impressive coming from so small a company.

Paul has mentioned several times that they've been hit recently by equipment and employee malfunctions...so being a smaller company, I'm guessing that Paul has to remove his "customer service" hat and put on his "solder that transistor" hat....or something like that.

All that to say that I think the current state of affairs is temporary, and when things calm down you'll see much quicker responses to queries, both from the website and on these boards. I have every confidence in them and their support, based on my experience with the 1220.

I would agree that they are a small company and they are having issues with shipping and notifications. I suspect that this 1240 has been very popular and they were swamped when the device shipped a month ago. Also, shipping from Canada sucks for timing. I ordered and verifed shipment and it took 8 business days to get to Seattle from Ontario and the package had 10 bucks of stamps on it! They are small indeed.

That said when you get it I think you will be very happy. The hardware looks weel done, connections were a snap and everything works. I did some simple accuracy checks and it aggrees very well with the killawatt meter.

The fact that Paul has been so active here is a great sign too. Don't hold the shipping awkwardness against them.

 

[moridin1138]

the package had 10 bucks of stamps on it! They are small indeed.

haha, mine did too.

That said when you get it I think you will be very happy. The hardware looks weel done, connections were a snap and everything works. I did some simple accuracy checks and it aggrees very well with the killawatt meter.

The fact that Paul has been so active here is a great sign too. Don't hold the shipping awkwardness against them.

I am in full agreement here. I can't find anything out there that does what the ECM-1240 does and does it well. I am very satisfied with everything but the lack of time I have to play with it. That's my problem though.

 

[will40]

Although the Hardware ECM-1240 wise may be quite good, I can't at least say much for customer service or delivery times (two weeks as of today and no delivery...). Not a peep either from an e-mail to customer service as to its whereabouts...

Anybody else have the same experience with delivery times and no response from customer service?

I agree, their shipping isn't the greatest but their product is top notch.

I have been patient for a 4 pack order of micro-CT's I placed on 3/24 and have not seen or heard from yet. Maybe this week?

 

[mdiehl]

Although the Hardware ECM-1240 wise may be quite good, I can't at least say much for customer service or delivery times (two weeks as of today and no delivery...). Not a peep either from an e-mail to customer service as to its whereabouts...

Anybody else have the same experience with delivery times and no response from customer service?

I agree, their shipping isn't the greatest but their product is top notch.

I have been patient for a 4 pack order of micro-CT's I placed on 3/24 and have not seen or heard from yet. Maybe this week?

That's when I placed the order. Perhaps they used "alternative shipping", I'll look for "Bullwinkle with a backpack", hope they didn't use an overstuffed passenger pigeon, the Rednecks would shoot it down ...

 

[beelzerob]

Let's hope they didn't resort to hiring this guy.

 

[mdiehl]

Let's hope they didn't resort to hiring this guy.

I suppose on the plus side, despite his disappointment at not being shot down...he did land the Cessna in on piece I better have the FBI check the cargo compartment for an ECM-1240

 

[will40]

tenholde, I'd like to get a copy of your app. I've been running ECMServer for a couple of days sampling at 1 second and I've accumulated 17MB of data. I started to look at the information in Excel and it chokes on that much data. (The graphs can only show 30,000 points = ~8 hours and you can't zoom in to look at the detail). In looking for a solution I remembered experimenting with Splunk at work (www.splunk.com). It can read/parse/graph/analyze data from a multitude of inputs. One of them is UDP packets being sent to it. My hope is that with tenholde's software I can send the data and use splunk to keep the data and to view it.

How are other people dealing with viewing/analyzing this much data?

I have my 1240 hooked up and would like to start logging the output until a HS plug-in is developed. I like the idea of logging to an excel spreadsheet for the time being so I can see and graph whats happening on 5 channels.

I am not the brightest on creating or writing any kind of application but I can see the data that tenholde's ECM server is broadcasting on UDP port 3741. Is there an app out there to capture these broadcasts and log to an excel spreadsheet? I believe I can take it and sort from there as I can usually find my way around excel and VBA scripts.

Thanks, I appreciate any help.

Will

 

[tenholde]

tenholde, I'd like to get a copy of your app. I've been running ECMServer for a couple of days sampling at 1 second and I've accumulated 17MB of data. I started to look at the information in Excel and it chokes on that much data. (The graphs can only show 30,000 points = ~8 hours and you can't zoom in to look at the detail). In looking for a solution I remembered experimenting with Splunk at work (www.splunk.com). It can read/parse/graph/analyze data from a multitude of inputs. One of them is UDP packets being sent to it. My hope is that with tenholde's software I can send the data and use splunk to keep the data and to view it.

How are other people dealing with viewing/analyzing this much data?

I have my 1240 hooked up and would like to start logging the output until a HS plug-in is developed. I like the idea of logging to an excel spreadsheet for the time being so I can see and graph whats happening on 5 channels.

I am not the brightest on creating or writing any kind of application but I can see the data that tenholde's ECM server is broadcasting on UDP port 3741. Is there an app out there to capture these broadcasts and log to an excel spreadsheet? I believe I can take it and sort from there as I can usually find my way around excel and VBA scripts.

Thanks, I appreciate any help.

Will

I could easily create an application that writes the data coming from tenEcmServer to a .csv file that is easily imported into Excel. Let me know if that would be helpful as it would only take 15 minutes to write.

tenholde

 

[tenholde]

I've created a simple client program that receives tenEcmServer packets on UDP port 3741 and writes them to a text (CSV) file. An additional field is added to the front of the record containing the formatted date/time.

http://www.tenholder.net/tenWare2/tenHsEcm1240


tenholde

 

[drozwood90]

How did you guys get a 1240 already? The webpage states that it is available soon...

Or did you get one of the Xbee or other options?

I'm looking to get just the RS-232 option.

--Dan

 

[tenholde]

How did you guys get a 1240 already? The webpage states that it is available soon...

Or did you get one of the Xbee or other options?

I'm looking to get just the RS-232 option.

--Dan

I bought the package that had the RS-232 unit with the Xbee radio built in, but did not get the dongle, etc.

tenholde

 

[mdiehl]

How did you guys get a 1240 already? The webpage states that it is available soon...

Or did you get one of the Xbee or other options?

I'm looking to get just the RS-232 option.

--Dan

I bought the package that had the RS-232 unit with the Xbee radio built in, but did not get the dongle, etc.

tenholde

Same here, but still waiting on delivery (ordered March 24th), so I'm still singing the theme from "Annie" (Tomorrow, Tomorrow...)

 

[will40]

How did you guys get a 1240 already? The webpage states that it is available soon...

Or did you get one of the Xbee or other options?

I'm looking to get just the RS-232 option.

--Dan

I bought the package that had the RS-232 unit with the Xbee radio built in, but did not get the dongle, etc.

tenholde

Same here, but still waiting on delivery (ordered March 24th), so I'm still singing the theme from "Annie" (Tomorrow, Tomorrow...)

Ha, ha, ha...I know how you feel, it took 13 business days to get my 1240. I emailed inquiring after the first 8 days, recieved a tracking number, and saw that it did not ship out until 4 days after I placed the order.

I also got the unit with the xbee radio built-in. Still couldn't beat the price for anything else similar.