Herpstat 2 Questions!

Hello!
I have been regulating my Herpstat 2 for a while, it is currently running one rack -- Which only has two tiers with flexwatt set up until I solder the rest.
I am putting a yearling ball python and an older ball python in Sterilite (28qt) tubs.
Anyways I'm stuck with some questions because I honestly would rather ask and be safe than hurt my "children."


My Herpstat 2 Questions/Settings:

1.) I set it as 92.0*F on Dimming (Heat), but it doesn't get past 28%... Is that okay? I noticed that it turns off the power strip, I assume it's to prevent going past your desired heat? Will this cause my ball pythons to have moments where they are cold? It turns back on literally within a second.

2.) What is AO & IO in safety? I have mine set to IO (Exclude H/L) randomly.

3.) I plugged in another probe and set it up as Dimming (Heat), it is not connected to any power strips on that side. Is it okay to use the probe to watch the cool side? Since there's nothing connected, do I need to have it as maximum power or does that not matter? Does it need to be under Dimming (Heat)? This probe reads 100%, unlike the side that actually is giving off heat. The side is at 80.1*F.

In advance, thank you. I may or may not have any more questions. I did read the manual, but first-hand help really makes me feel secure.

1) Its saying 100% because it doesn't recognize a heat source to get it to the chosen temp under #2.. so its giving full power potential to outlet on Herpstat that a heat source would be plugged into. You can turn the Power percent down or lower the Factory setting Temp and that would change the percent of power to 0.

2) as far as 28%. Do you have the Power potential setting on full 100% power?
If you do the only reason you would be running at a low percent is because the Temp is up to 91/92 already and thats what Dimming (proportional ) does.. Its cuts down on power to regulate.

3) Ao/Io Ive never used.. Its on default.

Maybe one of the others can teach us something tonight about that Safety setting.
I use my HI/LO alarms but dont know about AO/IO.





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Originally Posted by Lexiethekitten

1.) I set it as 92.0*F on Dimming (Heat), but it doesn't get past 28%... Is that okay? I noticed that it turns off the power strip, I assume it's to prevent going past your desired heat? Will this cause my ball pythons to have moments where they are cold? It turns back on literally within a second.

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Dimming mode is best for most heat sources - perfect. It's doing exactly what it should be doing under dimming mode - only giving the proper amount of power necessary to keep your heat source at the temperature you have it set at. The power strip probably isn't turning completely off, but going below a level to support the light being on (I assume that's how you're seeing that it's going off). Do you have anything else plugged into that power strip? If not, a plain ole extension cord will work and you can save that strip to use elsewhere.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lexiethekitten

2.) What is AO & IO in safety? I have mine set to IO (Exclude H/L) randomly.

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Here's a link to the Herpstat User's Manual: http://www.spyderrobotics.com/manual...t12_manual.pdf.. The section on Safety Setup is on the second to last page. The setting you have it on is the default setting, but there are other options should you choose to use them.

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Originally Posted by Lexiethekitten

3.) I plugged in another probe and set it up as Dimming (Heat), it is not connected to any power strips on that side. Is it okay to use the probe to watch the cool side? Since there's nothing connected, do I need to have it as maximum power or does that not matter? Does it need to be under Dimming (Heat)? This probe reads 100%, unlike the side that actually is giving off heat. The side is at 80.1*F.

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What you're doing with the 2nd probe is basically turning it into a thermometer (a really expensive one ;)). The reason it reads maximum power is that the temperature setting you have that probe set to is higher than the temperature it's reading. It's trying to heat something and not being successful because there's nothing plugged in. If you want to use it this way, you could turn that probe's temp down as low as it'll go (hopefully well below room temp) and it won't try to send power to that output anymore. If you're not powering a heat source through the second port, it doesn't matter what heat setting it's on (dimming, on/off, etc).

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Originally Posted by Lexiethekitten

In advance, thank you. I may or may not have any more questions. I did read the manual, but first-hand help really makes me feel secure.

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You're very welcome!

Both of my snakes still feel relatively cold to the touch whenever I take them out to handle, even with the temperature being at 92*F.
Could it be the flexwatt? I had a friend who set it up for me, he breeds ball pythons and has multiple racks himself. I trusted him more than myself with it, but I will be connecting the rest of the levels once I get more ordered in.
The power strip is connected to the Herpstat 2 via the back, however, only two extension cords are plugged into the strip itself (which are the flexwatt ones), I plan to use the remaining outlets once I get the rest in.

Side #1 is reading as 92*F at 24%, it's at its maximum power (100). I have seen it go to 48% ONCE, but it hasn't since.
Side #2, still using it as a probe, is at 73.6*F at 100%. What do I lower its maximum to, 0? I may unplug it since the cold side remains the same, normally.

The default setting probably seems easiest for safety reasons, I just don't have a high/low alarm set up or anything. I will probably get into it more once I keep reading up and thinking about it. Thanks for the link, I bookmarked it since it's easier to read from my laptop.

Take the animal's temp with a heat gun. It is very hard to guesstimate reptile temps with your hands. Check the rest of the enclosure with the gun too for that matter. Displayed temp != what is getting to the animal.

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Originally Posted by JodanOrNoDan

Take the animal's temp with a heat gun. It is very hard to guesstimate reptile temps with your hands. Check the rest of the enclosure with the gun too for that matter. Displayed temp != what is getting to the animal.

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I've let my mom know that I need to purchase one ASAP... Hell, feeling the flexwatt with my hand... What's supposed to be 92*F feels lukewarm since we are warmblooded and such. I will definitely get one and check with that, I need the best for my kiddos. Thursday would probably be the day I could swing by a Home Depot and order one, or I'll just get it from Amazon. I see all of these random numbers and I don't understand a thing. :-) They are kinda cheap in price though, I'm not complaining.

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Originally Posted by Mr Sully

1) Its saying 100% because it doesn't recognize a heat source to get it to the chosen temp under #2.. so its giving full power potential to outlet on Herpstat that a heat source would be plugged into. You can turn the Power percent down or lower the Factory setting Temp and that would change the percent of power to 0.

2) as far as 28%. Do you have the Power potential setting on full 100% power?
If you do the only reason you would be running at a low percent is because the Temp is up to 91/92 already and thats what Dimming (proportional ) does.. Its cuts down on power to regulate.

3) Ao/Io Ive never used.. Its on default.

Maybe one of the others can teach us something tonight about that Safety setting.
I use my HI/LO alarms but dont know about AO/IO.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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If you missed it, AO means turns off power to all outputs on a failure. IO means it turns off power to just the failed output.

You kids nowadays!! Never reading the instructions, just plug the toys in and start pushing buttons!! ;)

And to the OP- I would suggest setting the safety for hi/lo as well. That way if something goes crazy and the temp gets over the set thresh hold, it will power down the unit and not cook your snake.

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

If you missed it, AO means turns off power to all outputs on a failure. IO means it turns off power to just the failed output.

You kids nowadays!! Never reading the instructions, just plug the toys in and start pushing buttons!! ;)

And to the OP- I would suggest setting the safety for hi/lo as well. That way if something goes crazy and the temp gets over the set thresh hold, it will power down the unit and not cook your snake.

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Yeah, you can never be TOO certain about things... That's like putting two animals together and saying, "Well, they've never fought before," and next thing you know... One gets killed by the other. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There would be nobody but myself to blame for the death of my snakes or my room catching ablaze. I will definitely look into setting a good temperature once I figure out how hot the tubs are getting inside. I think tonight I'll order a gun and have it sent tomorrow or the next day thanks to Prime, I just don't know which to settle down for! Hopefully it'll be good to go, but if not... even more flexwatt to buy, I'm so glad that stuff isn't awfully expensive.

definitely need a temp gun. I have about 3/4 inch of substrate and I have my herpstat set to 97 to get a hot spot of 91 degrees on the substrate. One of my snakes will burrow down to the bottom of the tub where it's at 96-97 degrees. She keeps me worried but doesn't seem to hot for her. When she first started doing this I would check on her everyday.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

If you missed it, AO means turns off power to all outputs on a failure. IO means it turns off power to just the failed output.

You kids nowadays!! Never reading the instructions, just plug the toys in and start pushing buttons!! ;)

And to the OP- I would suggest setting the safety for hi/lo as well. That way if something goes crazy and the temp gets over the set thresh hold, it will power down the unit and not cook your snake.

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Ok so another words if Channel 1 goes bad it can just shut that one down instead of shutting down all output Channels Sauzo?



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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sensismell

definitely need a temp gun. I have about 3/4 inch of substrate and I have my herpstat set to 97 to get a hot spot of 91 degrees on the substrate. One of my snakes will burrow down to the bottom of the tub where it's at 96-97 degrees. She keeps me worried but doesn't seem to hot for her. When she first started doing this I would check on her everyday.

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Glad to know that I can raise the temperature if needed if they aren't putting out how I want... What percentage does yours get to, or does that not matter as long as they are getting heat? Is yours on maximum power?
That would have worried me too. :$ So I don't blame you for checking, it's great that you would.

well the percentage is how much power is going to the heating device. To make it simple let's say you have a 100 watt light bulb. the stat will try and figure out how much power it needs to maintain the set temp so as it gets close to the set temp it will decrease power. so if it's at 40 percent the light bulb is only getting 40 watts to heat with because 100 watts would be too much and the temps would just be going up and down all day instead of stabilizing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mr Sully

Ok so another words if Channel 1 goes bad it can just shut that one down instead of shutting down all output Channels Sauzo?



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Yes, if you have it set to IO, then said 'faulty' channel will only shut down, not the whole unit. Set to AO and everything shuts down even if only 1 channel goes faulty.

I leave mine set to 100% power. It's a dimming proportional so it will keep the temp you have it set at. And honestly, 97F is a bit hot. You want to take the temp reading from the cage floor, not the top of the substrate. A snake can and will burrow down and make a nest. All of my snakes make little round depressions in the Eco Earth above the flexwatt and just curl up in it after dinner usually.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sensismell

well the percentage is how much power is going to the heating device. To make it simple let's say you have a 100 watt light bulb. the stat will try and figure out how much power it needs to maintain the set temp so as it gets close to the set temp it will decrease power. so if it's at 40 percent the light bulb is only getting 40 watts to heat with because 100 watts would be too much and the temps would just be going up and down all day instead of stabilizing.

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True but the bottom line is no matter if the t-stat is sending out 100 watts or 1000 watts or 10 watts, it is still keeping that spot at the set temp. I see the power feature being used in combination with the basking light feature so you can adjust the wattage to the heat bulb so it still will give off enough light for basking reptiles as well keeping the heat constant. For flexwatt or a RHP, it doesn't matter if it throttles the voltage down as it is still keeping the temp at the set point.

An example would be say you need your basking light to keep 90F. Well once it hits 90F, it will throttle down the voltage which will dim the light to almost not being on. Then when it cools down it will kick the light on. It would be like a strobe light for your lizard. Being able to throttle the power down to say 40% or whatever would just act like a lamp dimmer but with a t-stat function built into it too.

Ordered a temperature gun finally and I'm still in the process of learning how to accurately measure heat.

I'm wondering if my Herpstat setup is okay though... Here's my settings:

Unit 1 - Connected to flexwatt, reads 91.9*F at 28% currently. It's at 100% maximum power.
H/L alarm set to 96*F and 65*F.

Unit 2 - Only using probe, not putting out heat. I put it at 10% maximum power. It reads 70*F at 10%.

Safety is default.



My ball python who usually has awful sheds actually shed completely the other day. :) So far, I'm diggin' the tubs! Soon I am adding a banana het. pied to my collection, so I will do a quarantine and work on the other levels of flexwatt once I order some in.
Let's hope I do this correctly because I was shown by a friend on how to do it a few weeks ago and my memory is awful.

Would it be safe to leave the two tubs on the rack when I add new flexwatt? I'm just scared I'll F it up somehow.

Just to clarify...

IO is the default. This means no action from the safety relay. The normal power component (the triac) does your regulation and turns power off if over temp. In the extremely rare case that a triac fails in a stuck on position the safety relay will not trigger and you will have an overheat on that output.

AO enabled the safety relay. This means if an alarm triggers (such as the high / low alarms) the safety relay will mechanically cut power to the outputs.

So why is this a choice? On a Herpstat 1 I can't think of a good reason to not have it set to AO. There is only one output to affect. However on a Herpstat 2 (or above) a failure on one channel causing the safety relay to trigger would have an effect on the other channel as well. So lets say you had a ball python in a tank on one channel and $20K worth of eggs in a incubator on the other channel. Say your probe got dislodged from the tank and the sensed temp cooled below your low temp alarm. The safety relay would be tripped and now you have no heat to your incubator (maybe losing the eggs) but it may have saved the ball python tank from an overheat situation. Because thats a pretty big choice we can't make that for people. Safetywise AO is probably the better choice. Especially when considering how rare a triac failure is with our products due to the overrated component we use. We try to design for worst case scenarios though. :^)

Dion Brewington
Owner, Spyder Robotics

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Originally Posted by spyderrobotics

Just to clarify...

IO is the default. This means no action from the safety relay. The normal power component (the triac) does your regulation and turns power off if over temp. In the extremely rare case that a triac fails in a stuck on position the safety relay will not trigger and you will have an overheat on that output.

AO enabled the safety relay. This means if an alarm triggers (such as the high / low alarms) the safety relay will mechanically cut power to the outputs.

So why is this a choice? On a Herpstat 1 I can't think of a good reason to not have it set to AO. There is only one output to affect. However on a Herpstat 2 (or above) a failure on one channel causing the safety relay to trigger would have an effect on the other channel as well. So lets say you had a ball python in a tank on one channel and $20K worth of eggs in a incubator on the other channel. Say your probe got dislodged from the tank and the sensed temp cooled below your low temp alarm. The safety relay would be tripped and now you have no heat to your incubator (maybe losing the eggs) but it may have saved the ball python tank from an overheat situation. Because thats a pretty big choice we can't make that for people. Safetywise AO is probably the better choice. Especially when considering how rare a triac failure is with our products due to the overrated component we use. We try to design for worst case scenarios though. :^)

Dion Brewington
Owner, Spyder Robotics

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Thank you for the very detailed example, it made a lot of sense to someone like me, who's kinda dumb about technical things. ;)

From what I understand... IO only turns off one side with an error and that could, for some odd reason, mess up and kill your snakes from overheating if it doesn't trigger completely?

Should I use AO [Include H/L], AO [Exclude H/L], or AO [Any Error]?

I definitely don't want to be away from home one day and come back to cooked snakes, that would be devastating...

And another thing, does it matter what percentage shows?
For example:
Output 1 is set to 100% maximum power at 92*F... But the probe reads 92.0*F and the percent is at 28%.
Output 2 is used as a probe only, I have it set at 10% Maximum power, it reads 76.2% at 10%.

Current setup;
H/L - 96*F H, 65*F L.
Safety - AO [Include H/L]

As far as turning the power strip off: I had a power issue with Herpstat 2 last summer after a DIY rack build and install it would keep shutting itself off. I e-mailed customer support and was directed to make sure the probe cords were at least 6" from the power cords. The electronic "Noise" interference from the power cables turned the safety feature on and shut off the power intermittently. After clearing more space between the probe cord and power cords its been running perfect.

Hope this and other comments help. If not, their customer support is spot on, and I'm sure they will be able to take care of you.

Yes, your setting AO [Include H/L] is the safest and make sure to enable the high / low alarms and set reasonable high / low alarm temps.

Your percentage is a sign that your enclosure is well matched to its heating equipment. The unit dims down power to try to maintain your setting. Yours only is needing around 28% power which means your heating device is doing a great job of keeping that temp in combination with the enclosure size and room temperature.

Using the 2nd probe as a thermometer is fine. You don't need to adjust its max output to a lower setting but its not a bad idea in case a heating device accidentally got plugged into that outlet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lexiethekitten

Thank you for the very detailed example, it made a lot of sense to someone like me, who's kinda dumb about technical things. ;)

From what I understand... IO only turns off one side with an error and that could, for some odd reason, mess up and kill your snakes from overheating if it doesn't trigger completely?

Should I use AO [Include H/L], AO [Exclude H/L], or AO [Any Error]?

I definitely don't want to be away from home one day and come back to cooked snakes, that would be devastating...

And another thing, does it matter what percentage shows?
For example:
Output 1 is set to 100% maximum power at 92*F... But the probe reads 92.0*F and the percent is at 28%.
Output 2 is used as a probe only, I have it set at 10% Maximum power, it reads 76.2% at 10%.

Current setup;
H/L - 96*F H, 65*F L.
Safety - AO [Include H/L]

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sensismell

definitely need a temp gun. I have about 3/4 inch of substrate and I have my herpstat set to 97 to get a hot spot of 91 degrees on the substrate. One of my snakes will burrow down to the bottom of the tub where it's at 96-97 degrees. She keeps me worried but doesn't seem to hot for her. When she first started doing this I would check on her everyday.

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It is not advised by anyone who makes UTH's to have the substrate that thick. It causes the heat to build up excessively. Since almost all snakes like to get down to the bottom so to speak the bottom of the tub should not be 96-97 I have read a couple people who try to heat the substrate to 90 or so but that means you have to have to bottom of the tank/tub too high. The bottom of the tub is what should be heated to 90 ( on the warm side) and the substrate should be be about a quarter inch deep max. so don't worry about substrate temp. but bottom of the tank/tub temp. and ambient air temp.

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Originally Posted by spyderrobotics

Yes, your setting AO [Include H/L] is the safest and make sure to enable the high / low alarms and set reasonable high / low alarm temps.

Your percentage is a sign that your enclosure is well matched to its heating equipment. The unit dims down power to try to maintain your setting. Yours only is needing around 28% power which means your heating device is doing a great job of keeping that temp in combination with the enclosure size and room temperature.

Using the 2nd probe as a thermometer is fine. You don't need to adjust its max output to a lower setting but its not a bad idea in case a heating device accidentally got plugged into that outlet.

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Thank you so much! I have kept it set on there, I definitely don't want my kiddos to get injured from me not understanding how to use the Herpstat, I checked over the manual but it's so much easier asking and less of an eye-strain, plus... Everything I have questioned gets answered directly. :) Means a lot to me.

Awesome! I was worried that they weren't getting everything because of the percentage, but now I know and have nothing to worry about, it seems. Definitely feeling more confident about this now and I'm sure I'll have no issues with adding more flexwatt now!