****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
installed in a 6000 watt pure sine wave inverter, works as it shouldI ordered this remote display for my Aims inverter. It's the public face of your behind-the-scenes power system, so why not show it off? It looks nice, has a fancy blue LCD display, so why not?Not. Firstly, it's expensive for what you get. For about 20% of the cost of your entire inverter, this disiplay shows you input and output voltage and frequency - who cares about that? It's just about 120V, maybe a volt or two higher or lower, and 60Hz, but doesn't affect anything. It shows battery voltage, and 'work mode' which is the same as the first two LED lights show you, and alarm and fault, which is again, shown by an LED light. Finally, it shows Output Load as a percentage, which is dumb, why not show the power in watts.What's worse, is the nice fancy LDC screen is low-quality (as you'd expect with any small LDC screen like this) and has poor viewing angles. So if it is mounted even 1 inch below eye level, you can't see anything on the display. Ugh. One-star for value, back in the box, and back to Amazon.Happily Aims also makes a simpler version, for only $26, which has the things you actually need, which is the switch and the 3 LED lights. So I bought that instead. Then, to understand the power your inverter is putting out, get a basic battery monitor, like the one from Drok with a 200A hall-effect sensor, for only $29.I did actually contact Aims tech support about another issue I had with the inverter. It was about this crazy buzzing sound produced by the transformer when using a heat gun. Later, I found this explained in the excellent user guide. The Heat gun has a half-wave rectifier to produce low-power setting, and this interferes with the magnetic field in the transformer. Totally normal, and no issue - just don't use the stupid heat gun on your nice inverter.Overall i'm happy with my Aims system, an excellent product at an excellent price - if you buy the LED remote switch panel.This remote does what it is supposed to do... let you see the status of the battery and inverter remotely. Mine is mounted in the drywall of my kitchen and let's me control and monitor the inverter that's in the basement.Great. Now the bad... well not bad, just not polished..... the display glitches every once in awhile when displaying the graphics. It's likely a refresh the screen and CPU interrupt issue, no cause for alarm... it just screws up the battery or bar graph icon for a fraction of a second every so often. The voltmeter and frequency meter aren't very accurate and sometimes the input reads different than the output when on AC power. Other reviewers have mentioned the backlight button. You have to press it for about 3 seconds and the display will light up for 30 seconds which is plenty.For what it's worth, the cable is a straight thru RJ45, so any CAT 5 cable will work. Some workers around my house severed the supplied cable and I replaced it with a 50' cat 5. Works great. They probably should tell you this in the instruction manual.If you just want to remotely turn on the inverter and don't care about the display functionality, you can simply install a switch on the RJ45 jack. 3-5 turns inverter on, 5-7 turns on with power saver mode.NOTE: the inverter's power save mode is practically useless since it only triggers with a resistive (heater) load, not a motor. I had wanted the inverter to run in power saver until, for example, my fridge came on. So the work around I can see is using a battery powered timer tied to the remote pins 3 and 5 to turn the inverter on every so often. The idle current on the inverter is kinda high, so you end up using 35-40% of your batteries just to idle the inverter all day. The best solution is this remote panel and simply turning it on or off as needed manually.The remote panel is a great idea and the only one that'll work with the aims inverters but it sure could have used a little more spit and polish.This doesn't do much for what they are charging for it ($183). I use it as a remote switch. In retrospect I should have just paid $33 for the remote switch. There are far better battery monitoring systems out there for less than the $150 difference (some less than $100 that blow the socks off of this unit).[Updated Sept 2020] - I'm going to bump this up one star because I have found it very useful for the info it displays and how I've used it. I still think it needs to cost less tho. :)This really is not a bad product and it does what it should. I am glad I have it so I can tell how much power I'm throwing at my inverters. I've had no problems with it so far. But like many others have noted, this really, REALLY is overpriced.Like seriously over-priced for what it does. It's a SWITCH with a small screen that tells ya what it's doin'... yay. But not $130 yay. Are you listening AIMS? AIMS, you are not Wal-Mart who sells major appliances with pennies for profits and need to over-charge for accessories to make up for it, um k?Yes, I like this product, but even tho I own two AIMS inverters, I will not be buying a second REMOTELF for the other inverter... that would be nonsense at this price. Would I buy another at say, $35-50? Sure. Do I recommend this? Yes if you have the money, NO if you have other things to spend $130 on.Note: I have given AIMS GREAT reviews on their 2000 watt and 4000 watt inverters after owning them for more than 2 years, this is their ONLY product I have to knock only because of the price.Non produit assez précisReceived only the front of the remote and have tried to follow all instructions but almost two weeks and have not received any messages from aims or Amazon. I am very disappointedControl inverterEasy install. Works as described.excelent
