Received my Vertex Cerebra!

I just received my controller on Wednesday so I've had a couple days to play around with it now. My initial opinion is somewhat mixed. I'm impressed with the build quality. Everything looks/feels nice and solid like most Vertex products. The housings are all aluminum except for the sides which are plastic but it's hardly noticeable. The housing is also pretty well sealed up so I don't think any small water drips or splashes will be a problem. The screen looks good and was actually a little more responsive than I expected given that it's a resistive touch screen. Just don't expect it to be as fluid and accurate as your smartphones. I haven't ordered any additional probes yet (planning on ordering a Vertex conductivity and pH probe) so I can only comment on the temperature probe which is solid and seems to work well.

However, on the first day I had it, I somehow bricked it shortly after the initial update on wednesday night So I emailed Vertex around 11:00 today and received a reply within 20 minutes with a direct number to reach someone in tech support to resolve the problem. He was able to provide me a download link for the Cerebra operating system so I could format the SD card and then rewrite the OS to the card. This had the problem fixed within about an hour(mostly just waiting for the file to download). And while I didn't need it he was prepared to guide me through the whole process over teamviewer so even if you're not the most tech savvy person they should still be able to help you resolve any problems. I must say that for anyone concerned if Vertex support is up to par, I can't give them anything but the highest review as far as customer support.

Beyond my initial hiccup I am mostly happy with the purchase. The OS probably does still need some tweaking and improvements but that's something that I assume will be addressed over time with software updates. The Cerebra Cloud service is currently being switched over to Amazon servers so it is currently unavailable. The information received with my Cerebra stated this transition would be completed by this past Monday (18th) so I'm not sure when it will actually become available. Vertex did include info on all the modules that they are coming out with as well as when they are expected to be available so I've included that if anyone is curious.

If anyone has any questions or wants me to post any other photos just let me know.

The powerbar is ~21" if you're not able to read the tape measure in the picture.

 

The controller and powerbar (technically the "Multi-Bar") are separate. Here's a picture of both next to each other. The Multi-Bar does have all the probe connections built into it though as opposed to separate modules. Still I'm not too sure why Vertex's powerbar is so much bigger than others. This did make me curious so I just pulled the side panel off the power bar and they are using all the space. So it's not just an oversized housing.

 

BRS probably covers this better than I could in this video. You can skip to about 5 minutes in to see an example of them programming an outlet. There's no coding like the apex though. All the outlet rules are created within menus, which makes it pretty easy and intuitive. However, from what I've read, it may not be as customizable as writing your own lines of code.

Also in response to blackx, this is definitely still an open-beta program for the software(the hardware is not supposed to change). It even says that in the info packet they send with the unit. I have noticed that BRS is the only retailer I've seen that mentions this explicitly though so Vertex and the other retailers really should have done a better job at making this clear. With that in mind, I would not recommend this to anyone who's not willing to take a little risk as well as be patient while they can work all the bugs out.

 

To be fair, people still have software problems with their smartphones, pcs, etc. and Vertex is a small company with much more limited resources. Some people have also been having problems with bad/counterfeit SD cards in the new Apex, which are causing them to fail. All modern electronics unfortunately are susceptible to bugs and failure. As long as the company is standing behind their product and are fixing the problems (which they quickly did for me) then I don't see a major issue with that.