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New and Improved
New and Improved
The successor to Vivosun's E42, and E42A, is finally here. There are quite a few improvements to the E42A here. The Vivosun E42A+ has all the functionality of the E42A, but features more USB ports for Vivosun accessories, and has a more robust onboard menu. There are quite a few changes to go over, so let's get to it.
The Outside
The Outside
The Vivosun E42A+ stands out straight away for having a LOT more USB ports than the E42A. There are now a total of six USB ports for accessories. The RJ11 and RJ45 ports used for lighting control have been replaced by these ports.
The remedy, a USB-to-RJ11/RJ45 adapter comes included with the Vivosun E42A+. Even if you use Vivosun lights alongside third party lights at the same time, it will only occupy ONE USB port.
Other changes to the outward facing hardware include a recessed port jack. I am guessing this is to make it less prone to coming unplugged from bumps. Or maybe it just looks cooler (it certainly does).
Finally, the last outward facing change on the unit, is the deprecated reset button. The pinhole button used to factory reset the device has been taken out, and replaced with an option under the settings menu. Which brings us to the next section.
The Inside
The Inside
The main overall improvement seen in the Vivosun E42A+ is the menus. The screen that shows your current settings and climate has undergone an overhaul, and is much easier to look at. The display is very dynamic and interactive now.
In addition to this, two more very robust menus have been added to the controller.
Gear Settings: Pressing the middle-left button on the Vivosun E42A+ controller will bring up your gear settings. Pressing the settings button again will scroll through your devices, where you can easily make manual adjustments using the check mark and arrow buttons.
System Settings: Pressing and HOLDING the same settings button will access your system settings for the Vivosun E42A+ itself, along with . This is where you can manually assign ports, adjust system time, time format, temperature unit, calibrate probes, and reset the device. It is worth noting that hardware based pinhole reset button has been deprecated, and the reset function moved to this menu.
The addition of these onboard menus makes frequent interaction with your controller for everyday tasks much more plausible.
My experience with the E42A+
My experience with the E42A+
After several months of testing, I feel the Growhub E42A+ is a solid upgrade. With all the new accessories Vivosun has been releasing latey, the controller allows for much more of them to be used in a single garden space. The dynamic display, and better menus with more options had me interacting with it more than I did the previous E42A, which kept me out of the app some. I was a huge fan of that. I don't like having to use my phone for tent control. So this was a nice change.
Please join in on our conversation about the new controller on the Vivosun Discord Server. I hope you found this review insightful, and good luck on your next grow!🌱
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