Before this thread goes into a speculation/misinformation death spiral I want to make a couple of points 100% clear. My source of intelligence is ACTUALLY having a Grasshopper 3 weeks using it like crazy and ACTUALLY talking to Trevor IN PERSON about EXACTLY these questions.
The ticking sounds is SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. If you do NOT have a ticking sound (or as we're calling it the little Grasshooper song) then THAT is a problem. Email support.
The collar that holds the clip in the backend should NOT be getting excessively hot. It is possible to have that backend defect and the unit still work fine otherwise. How do I know? I got back from the week long vacation where I was using the shit out of I with no problems. It didn't even occur to me the ring heat was a problem. That wasn't even why I was at Hopper labs.
I went because Trevor wanted to inspect the device after that kind of use to see how it's holding up. For context he wanted to see what would happen to a GH after spending a week with 8 stoners at a beach house in Oregon, this thing was one pretty much non stop and I never cleaned it apart from occasionally clearing out condensed oil from the tip or swabbing the inside with a clean q-tip.
He took the inside screen off because he wanted to see if anything had passed below it onto the heater (it was spotless). Before he could do that we had to finish what was left in the bowl through their machine and that is when he noticed the hot ring. He went through the device everything was fine with it but he replaced it for me anyway. Yes if you're getting the hot collar that is an error and you should contact GH Labs EVEN if it's still working.
One more thing one about errors:
1. If you bridge the connection at the backend with metal it will briefly flash red. That is NOT an error, remember that the charger is metal and magnets so what is happening is that is briefly thinking it's being charged, it figures it out immediately so you don't have to worry about a quarter in your pocket discharging your vape.
2. There are error lights that come on in the very rare instance you have actually overpowered the heater or the heater gets hot beyond its tolerance. The light flashes blue/red and returns to blue when tempature is restored which takes about a second. I really only had this happen during the new toy phase when i was ripping huge bowls on temp 5 through a bubbler. I can't believe I used to do that ah youth ....
Anyway now that I've fallen into how i like to use hit, heat and error lights are not problems at all but I wanted to give folks some parameters of what is normal. Despite what
@zymos implications, the majority of units sent out have NOT had defects, the biggest one which was the back collar has been indentified and again folks remember, this isn't Apple, it's a $300,000 crowd funded startup and since I've had to ship back my Firefly twice ($270) because it stopped working altogether and my pax once ($250 or whatever it was 3 years ago) because it stopped working altogether and my Apple watch ($350) because it had a bug, I feel like one GH that stopped working, and a second which was WORKING FINE and its error only got noticed by the MANUFACTURER and was replaced because HE wanted to replace it (I did say hey man don't worry about me, this one is still working fine and I know other folks are impatient for theirs, GH's commitment to quality control trumped my spirit of community, probably a good thing) I gotta say that's AMAZING for the $99 i paid for it and certainly would still be amazing customer service for $135, $150, $200? still got at least $50 to go till you get to the retail price of vapes that have been on the market for years, backed my much better capitalized companies, are inferior in every objective way and STILL BREAK!
So speaking as someone with 3 weeks of experience with this vape, I can't wait for all of you to have one and in the mean time DON'T PANIC!
If you want to believe the hype I would recommend that though :-)
