The Rift Machine One is a new aquarium controller from Portugal that was created to be an all in one control and monitoring platform for nearly every aquarium application. The Rift Machine One is fully cloud connected to keep tabs of your tank pH, temperature and even a webcam so you can visually observe your tank within the app but it is fully expandable to work with level sensors, controllable outlets and peristaltic pumps.
Rift will be selling the Machine One for 420€ and the first round of Beta units are currently priced at 299€ but you’ll have to piece together all the accessories except a single temperature probe. The additional accessories like the 69€ dosing pump and smart outlets will drive up the total cost but still come in well under how much you’d spend to buy all these things separately and Rift is offering a full kit for 899€ with a pre-order price of 699€.
The Rift Machine One Pro kit comes with four stepper motor dosing pumps, one smart strip, a pH probe, cables, tubing and a water level sensor with plenty of expansion ports left over if you need even more devices to manage on your aquarium. One constant concern with cloud connected aquarium devices is what happens to the equipment if the company folds and the servers get shut down so we’re glad to learn that the Rift Machine One can also work on your local network without cloud access.
For a machine designed and developed with reef tanks as their primary application we’re disappointed that there’s only one pH probe and no mention of conductivity but since the Rift Machine One is still in beta we might see these improvements in a production model in the future, or at least some expansion modules to enable it. It’s very nice to see some progress in the aquarium controller space and while there’s still a lot of room for polish and refinement to Rift’s Machine One, we hope that it gains some traction and helps to push the envelope for all aquarium controllers. [Rift]
