400 gallon project

[untamed]

Originally Posted by mojo

Looking amazing, and I'm proud for this to be my first post on Canreef. Early on you mentioned you were going to program your light rack to raise and lower over a several hour period - is this in place or did you abandon that idea?

Thanks,
Mike

The aquatronica has the capability to control the light lifting by second and do a daily cycle... but I have yet to pursue that idea. There are a few hurdles to that plan:

1) As the lights lift, they hit the front door hinges about 1/2 way in their travel. (a design error on my part) That's no problem when I'm doing the lifting, but it would limit the automatic lifting to only 1 foot. I've since decided that 1 foot might still be enough to simulate a daily intensity cycle, so that's OK

2) The actuator has "up" and "down" buttons. The AQT can only power things "on" and "off". Making that translation would involve rewiring the actuator controller. I'm not sure I would want to relinquish total control of the lights to the AQT because I raise and lower these things all the time and it is easier to push the buttons that it is to touch the touchscreen (AQT software would require this to be a "right click", which involves more than just a quick touch.

3) Finally, there is the difficulty of the controller getting "lost" and not knowing what level the lights are actually at. If I were to manually move them during the daily cycle, the controller could drive the lights too high or too low and cause unpredictable damage or problems. This is really the most significant hurdle to the idea. There's no feedback in the system to tell the AQT where the lights actually are. A number of optical or pressure switches could be built in, but at that point it is just asking for trouble!