Setting up my Storm controller -- do I have the intelligence of a potato?

[aasukisuki]

Yesterday I received my tide & storm controller. This light is totally sweet, but I must be doing something wrong, or I have the wrong expectations for the controller.

 

Here's my setup: Mini Tide and Storm controller. Tide has 3 channels. Channel 1 is blue, Channel 2 is white, and Channel 3 is dedicated moonlight.

 

What I want is for the lights to transition from night mode (just channel 3) to day mode (Channel 1 and 2) in the morning, and then in the evening, transition back to night mode. Mine is not doing that. Instead, I had to manually put it into night mode last night, and then manually put it into day mode this morning.

 

Here is how I had everything set up. I recorded these settings / readings at around 8:30 this morning, an hour and a half after I thought the day lights would start coming on.

 

PWM Day: ch1: 120, ch2: 90, ch3: 120

PWM Night: ch1: 0, ch2: 0, ch3: 50

Set Sunrise Mode: [Auto]

Set Sunrise Time: 06:51 Auto

Set Sunset Time: 18:59 Auto

Set Ramp Time: 0 minutes

Set Ramp Delay: ch1: 0, ch2: 0, ch3: 0

Set Cloud Freq: 0

Cloud Channels: ch1: 0, ch2: 0, ch3: 0

Moonphase Adjust: [On]

Set Lat / Lng / GMT: 20 / -87 / -6

Temp Display: [F]

Ch4 Ch5 Fan? [N]

Daylight Savings: [On]

Set Clock: 3/19 08:28:45

 

I had the controller set to SIM mode, and it displayed [-1] in the brackets.

 

Last night, I had everything set similar (except I had set some clouds and ramp time to 60), but I had mistakenly set the time to AM instead of PM. It was also in SIM mode, but I seemed to be able to adjust the intensity with the dial (which I had set to 75)

 

I went into the controller, and set the correct PM time, turned off the ramping time, and clouds and exited the menu. Once I back in SIM mode, the number in the bracket adjusted to 37, so I assumed that the controller had compensated for the time (it was at least 30 minutes after the sunset time at this point). I left it that way for probably 30 minutes assuming that it would keep adjusting as it got later and later, but it never did. The light intensity remained the same, and the number in the bracket stayed at 37. I put it into night mode manually.

 

This morning, I woke up well before sunrise, and put the controller into SIM mode. This is when it displayed -1 (again, me assuming this meant night mode), so i left it that way and started the morning routine, thinking that at 6:51 it would start transitioning to day mode. I left it this way until ~8:30. I had to leave for work, so I recorded the settings and manually put it into day mode.

 

What have I done wrong?

[aasukisuki]

So after re-reading Dave's thread, and re-reading the manual, it was determined that I do, in fact, have a potato IQ. I didn't realize that "sim" mode is just simulating the simulation, and that the auto mode is the mode that will show that it's Day or Night (not Dark).

[DaveFason]

Are you set?

-Dave