The Thrive Water Lab has been a long way coming but for those of you who kept the faith, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel for this machine to become a reality. As you might expect from this completely novel convergence of many new technologies, Thrive Aquatics has met with some challenges over their development of the Thrive Water Lab.
Thrive Aquatics had the ambitious goal of having their water testing kiosk already deployed in stores across America but setbacks in the development of software and hardware, outlined in a recent press release, pushed the project back by at least nine months. To be fair though, the Thrive Water Lab is far from vaporware territory since this bleeding edge concept has only been in earnest development for less than two years. The Thrive Water Lab was only announced in February of 2013 and just as recently as June of this year we saw a nice rundown of refinements to the Thrive Water Lab‘s near final design.
Finally however, Thrive Aquatics has committed to the Beta testing phase of the near final production units of the Thrive Water Lab testing kiosks which will see their first deployments “at two Florida based aquatic stores to ensure performance in the field” from January 8 to March 13 of next year. Hopefully this first public and retail testing environment will identify the need for only minor refinements because we know of many stores which are eager to receive and start benefiting from this promising technology.
It’s really nice to get an update on the launch of the Thrive Water Lab and we sincerely hope this new concept hits the ground running leading to better understanding of water chemistry for reef tanks across the country. Full press release from Thrive Aquatics is reproduced below.
Deerfield Beach, FL, December 3, 2014– Blue Ocean Corals today announced the date for the Beta release of its Thrive WaterLab. The beta project will run from January 8, 2015 thru March 13, 2015.
David Meek, company CEO said “It has taken almost two years and over a million dollars of investment funds to finally reach this point. Our early adopters have waited a long time to get their hands on this machine and we are so thankful for their continued support. We are looking forward to proving all the naysayers wrong, who said this couldn’t be done.”
The Thrive WaterLab was recently awarded the “Most Outstanding New Product” at the Australian Expo in Sydney, Australia. Participants at the Expo were thrilled by the speed and accuracy of the tests performed on test samples.
Philip Root, Vice President of Research and Development at Blue Ocean, said “I am excited to see the result of so many hours of design and development finally come together. This is a major innovation in water testing technology and there is nothing like it in the market today.”
Blue Ocean began developing the Thrive WaterLab in April, 2013 but had a major setback in December when the manufacturing partner for the project failed to deliver the initial version of the WaterLab and the complex software needed to drive the technology. A new manufacturer and software provider was contracted but due to legal and licensing issues the software portion of the project had to be completely re-designed, thereby costing the company an additional nine months and countless dollars. The new software was delivered in October 2014 and Alpha testing began in earnest to insure that all features and functionality were in place.
The newest version of the WaterLab will be Beta tested at two Florida based aquatic stores to insure performance in the field. General availability is expected shortly after the completion of the Beta project.
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If you would like more information about this topic, please contact David Meek at [email protected].
