Any Growtronix users here?

Hello,

I am relatively new to the game (2nd harvest, first by myself). I was fortunate enough to have a lot of capital to start with, and have some decently nice equipment to work with. I was also fortunate enough to shadow someone who has been successful with his gardening for about 5 years. My first harvest was all Vanilla Kush, and landed 5 lbs from 10 plants under 4x1000w 8" Dominator XXL. All of it landed in local dispensaries (I'll see if I can find some photos, it went rather quickly). Detroit for those who are wondering.

My investor friend (enthusiast) has implemented a growtronix server into my res room with sensors in my flower room (so far I have a flood, temp, c02 regulator, res pump & dehumidifier). I'm sure (hoping) some of you are familiar with the software, but for those who aren't, it's pretty elaborate. http://www.growtronix.com/cart/ Has complete control over all of your automated processes, works off of policies, and maintains an awesome grow journal with heavily detailed charts. Also since it's a server, you can access it remotely from any web browser and initiate or stop any process.

Anyone else have any history with this software? BTW, first post, happy to be here. I think I'm going to become a regular. I've dealt with a lot in this harvest (male white dawg plant, PM) and my harvest is now looking healthy again (albeit bare, better than nothing). Looking to keep my mouth shut and ears open.

Cheers.

I'm sure it is amazing, it certainly looks like it, but I'm skeptical of these sort of integrated hardware + software solutions. I'm pretty new to growing, but I'm a tech guy (software engineer) for a long time now, and an entrepreneur with several failures under my belt. Does the pricing scale? More specifically; vendor lock-in is problematic with these types of closed-source software offerings, once they have you committed to their way of doing things they can potentially fleece you over years without providing a high level of support quality, and your only other option would be to completely re-tool your operation. I hope you know what I'm saying.

I understand they are in business to make money, and all, but I just think there's a better way from the customer's perspective. I am also a big open-source software evangelist.

There are many ways to make money on open software, even open hardware architecture. I'm also pretty sure there are options to use more use generic instrumentation to report data via cheaper hardware interfaces, I would bet on it.

You are very lucky to start with a ton of capital and an experienced grower, I don't have any perspective on that because I live in a place where we pretend it is still 1952.

Best of luck, man!

Addendum; looked a little more. Windows only, red flag. Also, this quote is borderline illiterate, and the images with it are clearly misleading. "While we probably don't need to mention this the Smartphone and Tablet are not included" - http://www.growtronix.com/cart/home/1-growtronix-base-system.html - I didn't know they weren't included, had to read quite a distance down the page to get there.

I think they're onto something, but I can't see how most folks can afford this. Enjoy your big bags of big city money.