There are many reefers who prefer no features, some prefer dimming only, and some of us prefer extras such as WiFi control, Moonlight Cycles, Storms, etc. It's hard to find a light that "does it all" on the market today, but that doesn't keep me from daydreaming about what my perfect light would be like and what features I would like to incorporate.
If I had to describe my dream light using lights already on the market it would be one where we took the actual lighting technology of a Kessil AP9X, mixed it with the feature set of the Giesemann Futura S, and gave it the same storm mode w/ pump control of the CurrentUSA lights (Lights start a storm simulation, and the pumps follow suit creating storm surges). But everything feels synthetic at this point, stuck to a rigid schedule that happens on cue and isn't very random, which detracts from the natural environment I am trying to recreate. One thing that the Previous Generation of AI lights did was make their storm mode based on probabilities, which you could set over long or short periods, and things became a bit more natural, cloud cover, storms, and natural events became more random, more natural.
But beyond things that already exist, our ever-growing connected world gives us real-time weather data for pretty much the entire globe. So I've been thinking lately, about how it would be nice if someone could create an ecosystem, similar to CurrentUSA, Apex, or GHL which incorporates lighting, pumps, and maybe even the ability to control water temperature beyond a simple on/off switch, and have it based on a specific reef in the wild. You would select, for instance, The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and the realtime weather data, gathered via API, including windspeed, water temperature, cloud cover, storm activity, etc would all be utilized by the ecosystem to raise and lower tank temp, create tidal activity and storm surges, and sunrise and sunset times would vary every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day just as they do in the wild. The reefer would have the ability to choose any reef, and roll the data back to a time that's more suitable for them (So your sunrise and sunset times align with viewing times).
I want to create the most natural environment possible in our mini ecosystems. How about you? What features would you like to see?
If I had to describe my dream light using lights already on the market it would be one where we took the actual lighting technology of a Kessil AP9X, mixed it with the feature set of the Giesemann Futura S, and gave it the same storm mode w/ pump control of the CurrentUSA lights (Lights start a storm simulation, and the pumps follow suit creating storm surges). But everything feels synthetic at this point, stuck to a rigid schedule that happens on cue and isn't very random, which detracts from the natural environment I am trying to recreate. One thing that the Previous Generation of AI lights did was make their storm mode based on probabilities, which you could set over long or short periods, and things became a bit more natural, cloud cover, storms, and natural events became more random, more natural.
But beyond things that already exist, our ever-growing connected world gives us real-time weather data for pretty much the entire globe. So I've been thinking lately, about how it would be nice if someone could create an ecosystem, similar to CurrentUSA, Apex, or GHL which incorporates lighting, pumps, and maybe even the ability to control water temperature beyond a simple on/off switch, and have it based on a specific reef in the wild. You would select, for instance, The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and the realtime weather data, gathered via API, including windspeed, water temperature, cloud cover, storm activity, etc would all be utilized by the ecosystem to raise and lower tank temp, create tidal activity and storm surges, and sunrise and sunset times would vary every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day just as they do in the wild. The reefer would have the ability to choose any reef, and roll the data back to a time that's more suitable for them (So your sunrise and sunset times align with viewing times).
I want to create the most natural environment possible in our mini ecosystems. How about you? What features would you like to see?