Hi Gene,
Thanks for taking the time to discuss these things with the hobbyists who ultimately use your product. I hope this leads to success for you and your company.
I do not like the idea of running the the pump control off of a humidistat for a few reasons. First, because a quality humidistat can be a terrible expensive thing, and second, when the fail they tend to fail quite dramatically. If the mister was hooked up to a large resivoir this could mean trouble for a small cage and it's inhabitants. Especially if one were using a high-flow mist head.
I'd never feel comfortable trusting a humidistat, even a high quality one, if I were away for a few days.
Also, many of use do not use misting systems to provide a constant humidity per se. For the species I keep misting is used to a) induce breeding, b) induce defecation, and c) to provide water droplets on cage furnishings for those inhabitants that prefer them.
Moreover, I prefer my cages to dry out a bit between mistings in order to control microbial/fungal growth.
So for me misting is more of a temporal issue rather than environmental issue, so I'd prefer a timer.
I think I agree with your take on an exhaust fan. In the case of overheating I'd want the thermostat portion to have shut off all pulses to the heat source(s) long before exhaust measures were necessary.
I'm not sure what to recommend for the fourth control -- maybe I'll think of something later. One idea is to still have it control an exhaust fan, but one that turns the air over quickly in something like the low-ventilation cages preferred by Green Tree Python breeders. A few times a day the controller could quickly remove the air and then subsequently bring the humidity back up.
Whether the Green Tree Python crowd would go for this is another question. I do think it would have limited use, though, and might actually detract potential customers if they perceive it is adding to the total cost.
One feature I'm considering for future cages is to have both a fogger and a mister. The fogger to raise humidity with little water volume, the mister for the purposes I outlined above. I would strongly consider a controller that had two extra timers in addition to thermal and light controls.
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We are developing a new habitat controller that will control 4 things. A light (programmable), heat source (pulse proportional), a misting pump and a fan. The pump control will either be programmable or we could run it off of a humidistat which would be much more expensive. Which do you think would work better? Is the extra expense worth it to run the humidistat? The fan would work in conjunction with the heat, if it gets too warm the fan would turn on helping exhaust the hot air. I'm still undecided about the fan though. Unless it's too hot in the room that you have your setup in, the heat source control will be very accurate and keep it within /-.5 degrees of your set temperature, which would make the fan useless. Any ideas on what we could use for the 4th control instead of a fan?
All in all what would be your opinions about this controller be and would it be something anyone would consider buying? If we go with a programmable pump control the unit will run $259 per unit.
