ATI Straton LED Light - Comments, Review, PAR, Coverage, Discuss...

[ryshark]

honestly, I love the power/LEDs/physical design. But not having season tables, not having a moonlight function, not having acclimation mode, is pretty tough to swallow at this pricepoint. Tough call for me.

I think there is acclimation mode.

 

[Reef-Engineer]

I just checked my app. No acclimation mode. You could manually turn it down but youd have turn it up a bit each day.

 

[ryshark]

I just checked my app. No acclimation mode. You could manually turn it down but youd have turn it up a bit each day.

It’s the presets that have acclimation mode.

 

[Reef-Engineer]

I opened each pre-set. Yes, you can set a pre-set spectrum to be at a certain power level 0-100, but that is not acclimation mode. Acclimation mode (to me anyway) is the system when engaged limiting the intensity of the light delivered and automatically gradually increasing it each day or week until the desired power level is reached. I clicked through the options last night and did not see any option for that. Can you share a pic of the interface? Maybe I am missing it?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I’m a little confused about when one would want to use acclimation mode. Once when you first get the lights, perhaps, but I cannot imagine doing it every time you get a new coral. That will just reduce lighting on everything else every time.

 

[Oldreefer44]

Agree that acclimation mode is not needed. Presets are conservative. As posted in Bolus thread, I have ramped up lights 80% above mixed reef preset with no ill affects.

 

[ChrisfromBrick]

what a great review. My gripe is that these lights are designed for very wide tanks. I want one for an 18-22” wide tank that is also much longer than wide. Are there plans to do this? They are missing a huge market of reefers if not.

 

[buruskeee]

what a great review. My gripe is that these lights are designed for very wide tanks. I want one for an 18-22” wide tank that is also much longer than wide. Are there plans to do this? They are missing a huge market of reefers if not.

The Pros and G2 Pros comes in more sizes.

The 102 (smaller rectangle) would be more for a 20” while the 204 (huge rectangle) would be more for 30”.

The 153 (squares) are the same dimensions as the OG version 1 Stratons which are great for 24” widths.

 

[buruskeee]

I’m a little confused about when one would want to use acclimation mode. Once when you first get the lights, perhaps, but I cannot imagine doing it every time you get a new coral. That will just reduce lighting on everything else every time.

I agree. The only time I ever used acclimation mode on my old XR30s was when I swapped them in to replace different light fixtures.

I have never found a need to use acclimation mode ever since then.

 

[ryshark]

Agreed. I just switched from ATI 8/bulb T5 to Staton Pros with zero issues. I didn’t use an acclimation mode, just started at 275 PAR and increase par by 25 every 2 weeks.
I could’ve sworn I saw acclamation mode on the statin pro at like 50% for the presets. I’ll have to look later.

 

[Naturalreef]

When you select a preset, it gives you 3 options. Coral is already light acclimated, or you want coral acclimated. 3 power settings…. Acclimate setting I believe is 60%, already light acclimated I believe is around 80%. The plus presets I believe lower the UV and Violet.

 

[Reef-Engineer]

I cant find that option on here. I just decide what color to make the dots and drag their intensity up and down.

@Randy Holmes-Farley you are right acclimation only really used when switching lights or bringing in lots of new coral. Sith these lights one could turn doen the light just over that new frag to get the same effect.

What i am really bummed about is no seasonal or moonlight feature, mostly because I’d like to toy with spawning.

Great lights, powerful.

 

[LiquidSpace]

I can’t wait to get mine. I’m waiting as patiently as I can. Last I checked with ATI was three weeks ago, I think I’m gonna give it another week before I bug them again.

 

[ryshark]

When you select a preset, it gives you 3 options. Coral is already light acclimated, or you want coral acclimated. 3 power settings…. Acclimate setting I believe is 60%, already light acclimated I believe is around 80%. The plus presets I believe lower the UV and Violet.

Yes, thank you! I knew I saw it somewhere. I didn’t want to mess with the settings in fear of messing something up.

 

[Naturalreef]

Np……It’s a beautiful light. I do agree with others and wish it had moon and seasonal tables built into it, but nonetheless, it grows and colors coral extremely well!

 

[AmateurAlchemist]

When you select a preset, it gives you 3 options. Coral is already light acclimated, or you want coral acclimated. 3 power settings…. Acclimate setting I believe is 60%, already light acclimated I believe is around 80%. The plus presets I believe lower the UV and Violet.

That isn't an acclimatisation mode, it just sets the intensity at 30%.

 

[UK-Reefer]

Isn't the new Kassray 156 & 216 sold on the Chinese site just the same.

I have been told the only difference is the housing. ATI use WURST engineering for the housing.

Would be interesting to compare the 2 because they are identical in appearance but obviously the ATI has a huge mark up.

 

[Reef-Engineer]

That isn't an acclimatisation mode, it just sets the intensity at 30%.

woah interesting I have never seen that screen. I wonder if I have an older generation of the app. Or is there maybe a Straton Pro G2 app and I am on the G1? hrm. Either way, agreed, that is not an acclimation mode, which automatically reduces output and ramps it up over 2-3 weeks, that is just a reduced power setting. The user has to go in and up the power manually from what I can tell.

 

[Reef-Engineer]

Isn't the new Kassray 156 & 216 sold on the Chinese site just the same.

I have been told the only difference is the housing. ATI use WURST engineering for the housing.

Would be interesting to compare the 2 because they are identical in appearance but obviously the ATI has a huge mark up.

biggest concerns I would have are which LEDs are in use, how hard they are being driven, and the power supply in use. Three of the big attractors for me to the Straton were high quality emitters (color quality, longevity), being driven well below capacity (better lifespan), with a high quality meanwell power supply (longevity).

 

[AmateurAlchemist]

I picked up 2x g2 pro 204s a few days ago for an upcoming build. For context I've been through Red Sea ReefLEDs, Kessil A360Xs and currently run GHL Mitras 7204s.

Initial impressions-

The quality of the fixtures is second to none. Very solid feeling, flawless paint job and clear sheath cables are nice to see. Packaging was clearly sufficient as they arrived in one piece. Instructions were supplied in German only but whatever. Packages included the light fixture, hanging kit, control unit, C13 power cable with correct plug, Meanwell power supply (nice to see, don't reinvent the wheel) and Gebrauchsanweisung.

You have to wire the fixture to the control unit. Instructions are clear enough and wires have crimped terminals but the markings on the wires aren't particularly clear. I setup to test then removed cables again for storage, which was harder than it should have been due to tight tolerances on the connectors. An SP21 connector or similar would have been a better shout here IMO, but no biggie.

I've seen shimmer compared to T5s so was concerned the tank would look flat but it's actually pretty decent. Certainly not Kessil levels of shimmer but it's adequate.

I run lights on the whiter side but wowzers, the pre-canned presets are very white. Even the LPS+ profile is a whitewash. I'll probably start with LPS+ but take whites back to 10, and that's still whiter than I normally run.

They are immensely, insanely, overwhelmingly powerful. At 15% overall intensity and whites knocked back to 10 I was still seeing 100 PAR at 60cm depth with the light (very approximately) 25cm above the water surface. Coverage is, obviously, bananas. If properly sized I can't imagine any scenario where supplemental lights would be required.

And now, unfortunately, the not so good bits. I've seen people mention how bad the software is but a) I work in IT infrastructure. I'm used to clunky, enterprise software and b) I use GHL and for all of it's flaws, really don't find it to be that bad, despite having seen claims that it's unusable; so figured it would be fine. Good gravy, I was in for a shock... The annoying thing is that all of these niggles could be solved in firmware.

It took multiple attempts to flip wifi to client mode. I could see them connected to the (UniFi, FWIW) network but the web portal just wouldn't respond. It took multiple retries (at doing exactly the same thing) to get past that. Once connected they're reliable.

The ethernet port does nothing, apparently. I'm running DHCP and see the MAC but it just never picks up an IP.

The lights came with a firmware dated 2024 but the latest version on ATI's site is from 2023.

As far as I can tell, you have to choose between connecting to a common wifi network and controlling each light individually or controlling both through a single light (master/slave mode) but through the master's wifi network. If I set them up master/slave then move the master to my normal SSID, the slave doesn't follow. If I do janky things and force the slave onto the normal SSID they don't group up again. Logging into each shows them in a group but with one member offline and no way to manually intervene. Come on....

No NTP. So if the power goes out, despite them having wifi, you have to log in to (potentially multiple) lights and set the time again. What a glaringly obvious omission...

No moon cycles. Many lights at a fraction of the cost can account for moon phase.

No acclimatisation mode. I must just be missing this, surely...

The UI is generally, well, Germanic. It works, but it's unintuitive and harder than it should be.

Most of these things are annoyances more than dealbreakers but the sheer quantity of annoyances has me questioning whether they'll be staying. It's easily the most underwhelming experience I've had after dropping over £3k.

If I'm wrong on any of the above, please, please correct me. I want to love these.

Three corrections to this-

1. The lights do pull time via NTP when connected to a network with internet access. Not sure why the settings page doesn't reflect that but network traces show them polling time.cloudflare.com.
2. The lights will sync (mostly...) automatically when connected as clients to a common network but this is affected by point 3.
3. The WiFi and ethernet interfaces are addressed as 192.168.100.1 and 192.168.101.1 with kernel level, hardcoded interface routes for those networks via their internal gateway addresses. I have two LANs that already use those ranges. If your LAN overlaps with either network, you won't be able to connect. A DHCP supplied default gateway doesn't override the hard coded routes.