Giesemann Aurora User Thread

Jimbo662 · Oct 8, 2016

I figured I'd start off a new thread so we can all figure out how to use this light. :cool:

I've got mine burning in the T5s while I wait for the 8020 order to show up so I can get it hung.

@Broadfield could you and anyone else post some screenshots of your settings?

I've played around with the program a little but haven't figured out exactly how to do the programming.

Broadfield · Oct 8, 2016

Ok, here we go!

First off, I'm really happy with the purchase of this fixture. These are really expensive and not for a reefer on a budget. However, I have justified the cost when factoring in its performance, cosmetics and construction quality. I place a lot of importance on cosmetics when choosing light fixtures... and it just doesn't get much sexier than the Giesemann Aurora! As for performance, there is zero fan noise and it seems to run plenty cool enough.

Software:

Giesemann has not released an Aurora specific software for programming yet... you need to use the Futura BT software. I'm not sure if this limits the programming of the Aurora in any way, but not that I can tell. The only thing that is goofy, when using the Futura software, is the labeling of the T5 channels. The White/Red channel is the inner set of T5 bulbs and the White/Green channel is the outer set of T5 bulbs. The software can be downloaded here: http://www.giesemann.de/641,2,,.html

Programming:

All in all, programming is actually really basic/easy in my opinion. There are a couple of programming features that I really like, that I haven't seen in another fixture. NOTE: I only have previous experience with Aqua Illumination fixtures. There's also a couple of features that I wish it had... I'll touch on those later. The first feature I really like is what Giesemann calls the "Colour Mixer"... and I'll come back to the 2nd cool feature later.

Colour Mixer: If you're like me, you are constantly tinkering with spectrum colors and percentages on basically any of todays LED fixtures. And since the Aurora is an LED/T5 hybrid, dimmable T5 at that, it allows for even more tinkering. The Colour Mixer tab is great for this. It allows for playing around with colors and percentages, in real time, without actually changing your current lighting schedule. It simply has a slider bar, which represents intensity %, for all 5 channels. No matter what you set it at, once you "close" out of it, the fixture will automatically go back to your lighting schedule. NOTE: you want to make sure to click on any other tab when you are done with the Colour Mixer, to close out of the Mixer. Otherwise the fixture will stay in Mixer mode, even if you click on the Disconnect tab.

Giesemann Color Mixer by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Day Cycle: Next is the most important part of the programming, the "Day Cycle". This is simply your lighting schedule. You control one channel at a time, which is selectable top/left of the software. Simply double clicking adds a point and you can just drag it wherever you want. If you want to remove that point, you simply double click it again. Easy enough! Once you have adjusted all of your channels to your liking, simply click on the "Save" tab to save the file to your computer, then make sure to click the "Transport" tab to send that lighting schedule to the fixture. Done! When saving the files, I like to name them with my own personal version #, the overall percentage of lighting schedule, what T5 bulbs I'm using and how many hours the schedule runs for i.e. Broadfield Aurora V18 65% Coral Plus x 4 - 8 Hour

In this example below, I'm running 40% on all channels, except for whites... which are zero. I have an 8-hour total time with a 2 hour ramp up at each end. My white LEDs are at zero since I'm running all Coral Plus bulbs. I then use the blue LEDs to get the spectrum I want. I have experimented with all Actinic bulbs and then used the white LEDs to get my spectrum... the results were almost identical. So I went with the Coral Plus since they are the majority of my spectrum and the T5 bulbs have a really even distribution of light.

Giesemann 40% by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Move: I spoke earlier about a second cool feature... and that's the "Move" tab within the Day Cycle. Once you have a profile set for a channel, you can simply click on the Move tab to "slide" the entire channel up or down through the day. So lets say you simply want to move your light schedule up an hour. Instead of having to move every single point, for every single channel, you can just move the whole channel up and down the timeline. There's a slider bar that you use to choose the amount of time, up to 60 minute increments, that you want to move the selected channel. So in the example below, I have moved each channel 60 minutes from each other... for display purposes only. I don't use the move feature often, but it's really handy if I'm going to be home at a different time than usual and I can quickly shift the entire lighting schedule to match my available tank viewing schedule.

Giesemann Move by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Lunar: Lunar mode works great and can follow your actual local lunar schedule. Move the slider labeled "Moon Intensity", to adjust the maximum brightness of the moon. This value determines the maximum intensity of the full moon at day 14. All other values of the ascending and descending lunar phase intensity will be calculated automatically across the 28 day cycle. Move the slider labeled "Lunar Cycle" to determine the current moon phase position relative to your own real time lunar cycle. I.e. if your local lunar phase is at its peak in 2 days time, set the slider to day 12. You can then select the time frame in which the lunar mode is active. Since my Day Cycle ends at midnight, I have my Lunar Cycle run from just before midnight to 4:00am.

Giesemann Lunar by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Weather: The Weather tab is pretty self explanatory. The cloud cover feature is handy if you want to use it as a tool to run some acclimation. Which brings me to one of my complaints... no acclimation mode. Which then brings me to my second complaint... no move mode for channel intensity. I would of loved to be able to move my channel profiles up and down in intensity.... just as you can with time of day. If they would implement this, I wouldn't care about the lack of acclimation mode as much... because it would be super easy to just create various lower intensity profiles on a whim. However, if you simply want to move a channel up 5% intensity, you need to move every single point to do so... which is not going to be fun if you have like 20 points. Then having to do that for all of the channels... no fun. So back to weather mode, you have plenty of adjustments to get the effect you want... the percentage you want the fixture to dim during cloud cover, the # of times cloud cover will occur in a day and the duration of the cloud cover. The lightning mode is pretty worthless.... but who cares lol.

Giesemann Weather by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Well, I hope this helps someone with an Aurora. Please use this thread if you have any concerns/questions that I didn't touch on. I didn't want to ramble on too much.

Jimbo662 · Oct 8, 2016

WOW...this is 1000% more than I was expecting! :)

Broadfield · Oct 8, 2016

Jimbo662 said:
WOW...this is 1000% more than I was expecting! :)

Well, if you know me at all, doing things 1000% is about the only way I roll:D But seriously, please ask questions if you have a specific enquiry or if you are having issues with something.

Toby

Jimbo662 · Oct 18, 2016

Tody, any insight into what you think would be a good starting place for LPS dominant tank? I just copied your set up to see what it looks like.

Broadfield · Oct 18, 2016

Jimbo662 said:
Tody, any insight into what you think would be a good starting place for LPS dominant tank? I just copied your set up to see what it looks like.

How high is your fixture AWL? And are you going to have LPS midway or higher in the tank?

Jimbo662 · Oct 18, 2016

Right now it's 7" AWL...will probably play around with this to find a good spot.

I may have some LPS about 1/3 of the way up but mostly on the sand. Right now planning to do zoas and some encrusting montis and maybe few SPS at the top but none of that is set in stone yet.

Broadfield · Oct 18, 2016

Jimbo662 said:
Right now it's 7" AWL...will probably play around with this to find a good spot.

I may have some LPS about 1/3 of the way up but mostly on the sand. Right now planning to do zoas and some encrusting montis and maybe few SPS at the top but none of that is set in stone yet.

To be honest with you, I'm still learning my fixture myself. In my tank, 98% of everything is very happy. While I have a couple of corals that act like they are getting too much light. So I have been playing with overall percentage to see if I can get them to react to lower intensity. One did for sure, a trachy that I have had since the beginning. I have a newish Forest Fire Digitata that is also looking pale... so I moved it to the sand bed to rule out having too much light. We'll see in a few weeks how it responds. If it doesn't, then I'll know that I need to look into something else. But I think for my tank, which is an ultra mixed reef, around 40% - 50% is good with my mixture of bulbs and LED settings. I run my fixture about 11" AWL. If I remember correctly, your tank is 24" tall!?! Mine is close at 22" tall. PAR readings of T5's are WAY different than the LED fixtures I have had in the past. PAR doesn't seem to drop off very much from top-to-bottom with this fixture. At this point I think I'm just ultra fine tuning coral placement. Because everything else is exceptionally happy. So I would start with 8 hours, with a 4 hour max of 40%... so 2 hour ramps on each side.

Jimbo662 · Oct 18, 2016

My tank is 20" tall. I'm going to run it like this for now. I've got a par meter to do some testing and we'll see how that comes out.

Broadfield · Oct 18, 2016

Jimbo662 said:
My tank is 20" tall. I'm going to run it like this for now. I've got a par meter to do some testing and we'll see how that comes out.

Cool, so at 20" I definitely wouldn't go over 40% in the beginning. 40% looks dim to my eyes, and my PAR meter says it's dim. But man, my corals tell me otherwise. My red planet grows crazy and the top of my euphyllias bleach if I have it up around 80%.

Jimbo662 · Oct 18, 2016

maybe I'll drop it to 30% for a couple of days and test with the par meter as I slowly raise it.

Jimbo662 · Oct 20, 2016

I'm trying to figure out the lunar cycle. Is there a reason you have yours only run to 4am?

Broadfield · Oct 20, 2016

Jimbo662 said:
I'm trying to figure out the lunar cycle. Is there a reason you have yours only run to 4am?

Because I want to ensure I have plenty of complete darkness every night/morning/afternoon... my lights don't even come on until 4:00 pm.

Jimbo662 · Oct 20, 2016

Broadfield said:
Because I want to ensure I have plenty of complete darkness every night/morning/afternoon... my lights don't even come on until 4:00 pm.

Gotcha

revhtree · Oct 20, 2016

Broadfield said:
Ok, here we go!

First off, I'm really happy with the purchase of this fixture. These are really expensive and not for a reefer on a budget. However, I have justified the cost when factoring in its performance, cosmetics and construction quality. I place a lot of importance on cosmetics when choosing light fixtures... and it just doesn't get much sexier than the Giesemann Aurora! As for performance, there is zero fan noise and it seems to run plenty cool enough.

Software:

Giesemann has not released an Aurora specific software for programming yet... you need to use the Futura BT software. I'm not sure if this limits the programming of the Aurora in any way, but not that I can tell. The only thing that is goofy, when using the Futura software, is the labeling of the T5 channels. The White/Red channel is the inner set of T5 bulbs and the White/Green channel is the outer set of T5 bulbs. The software can be downloaded here: http://www.giesemann.de/641,2,,.html

Programming:

All in all, programming is actually really basic/easy in my opinion. There are a couple of programming features that I really like, that I haven't seen in another fixture. NOTE: I only have previous experience with Aqua Illumination fixtures. There's also a couple of features that I wish it had... I'll touch on those later. The first feature I really like is what Giesemann calls the "Colour Mixer"... and I'll come back to the 2nd cool feature later.

Colour Mixer: If you're like me, you are constantly tinkering with spectrum colors and percentages on basically any of todays LED fixtures. And since the Aurora is an LED/T5 hybrid, dimmable T5 at that, it allows for even more tinkering. The Colour Mixer tab is great for this. It allows for playing around with colors and percentages, in real time, without actually changing your current lighting schedule. It simply has a slider bar, which represents intensity %, for all 5 channels. No matter what you set it at, once you "close" out of it, the fixture will automatically go back to your lighting schedule. NOTE: you want to make sure to click on any other tab when you are done with the Colour Mixer, to close out of the Mixer. Otherwise the fixture will stay in Mixer mode, even if you click on the Disconnect tab.

Giesemann Color Mixer by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Day Cycle: Next is the most important part of the programming, the "Day Cycle". This is simply your lighting schedule. You control one channel at a time, which is selectable top/left of the software. Simply double clicking adds a point and you can just drag it wherever you want. If you want to remove that point, you simply double click it again. Easy enough! Once you have adjusted all of your channels to your liking, simply click on the "Save" tab to save the file to your computer, then make sure to click the "Transport" tab to send that lighting schedule to the fixture. Done! When saving the files, I like to name them with my own personal version #, the overall percentage of lighting schedule, what T5 bulbs I'm using and how many hours the schedule runs for i.e. Broadfield Aurora V18 65% Coral Plus x 4 - 8 Hour

In this example below, I'm running 40% on all channels, except for whites... which are zero. I have an 8-hour total time with a 2 hour ramp up at each end. My white LEDs are at zero since I'm running all Coral Plus bulbs. I then use the blue LEDs to get the spectrum I want. I have experimented with all Actinic bulbs and then used the white LEDs to get my spectrum... the results were almost identical. So I went with the Coral Plus since they are the majority of my spectrum and the T5 bulbs have a really even distribution of light.

Giesemann 40% by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Move: I spoke earlier about a second cool feature... and that's the "Move" tab within the Day Cycle. Once you have a profile set for a channel, you can simply click on the Move tab to "slide" the entire channel up or down through the day. So lets say you simply want to move your light schedule up an hour. Instead of having to move every single point, for every single channel, you can just move the whole channel up and down the timeline. There's a slider bar that you use to choose the amount of time, up to 60 minute increments, that you want to move the selected channel. So in the example below, I have moved each channel 60 minutes from each other... for display purposes only. I don't use the move feature often, but it's really handy if I'm going to be home at a different time than usual and I can quickly shift the entire lighting schedule to match my available tank viewing schedule.

Giesemann Move by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Lunar: Lunar mode works great and can follow your actual local lunar schedule. Move the slider labeled "Moon Intensity", to adjust the maximum brightness of the moon. This value determines the maximum intensity of the full moon at day 14. All other values of the ascending and descending lunar phase intensity will be calculated automatically across the 28 day cycle. Move the slider labeled "Lunar Cycle" to determine the current moon phase position relative to your own real time lunar cycle. I.e. if your local lunar phase is at its peak in 2 days time, set the slider to day 12. You can then select the time frame in which the lunar mode is active. Since my Day Cycle ends at midnight, I have my Lunar Cycle run from just before midnight to 4:00am.

Giesemann Lunar by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Weather: The Weather tab is pretty self explanatory. The cloud cover feature is handy if you want to use it as a tool to run some acclimation. Which brings me to one of my complaints... no acclimation mode. Which then brings me to my second complaint... no move mode for channel intensity. I would of loved to be able to move my channel profiles up and down in intensity.... just as you can with time of day. If they would implement this, I wouldn't care about the lack of acclimation mode as much... because it would be super easy to just create various lower intensity profiles on a whim. However, if you simply want to move a channel up 5% intensity, you need to move every single point to do so... which is not going to be fun if you have like 20 points. Then having to do that for all of the channels... no fun. So back to weather mode, you have plenty of adjustments to get the effect you want... the percentage you want the fixture to dim during cloud cover, the # of times cloud cover will occur in a day and the duration of the cloud cover. The lightning mode is pretty worthless.... but who cares lol.

Giesemann Weather by Toby Broadfield, on Flickr

Well, I hope this helps someone with an Aurora. Please use this thread if you have any concerns/questions that I didn't touch on. I didn't want to ramble on too much.

Very informative! Maybe everyone ca also post some photos of their light in action?

Mike_J · Oct 20, 2016

So I have to be honest and say that I just clued myself in to the "burn-in" period for T5 bulbs. Switching from LED's only I had no idea and I'm kinda mad at myself for missing this step. With that said, should I go ahead with it at this point? It's already been almost a month.

Jimbo662 · Oct 22, 2016

@Broadfield, I'm checking my par now and I noticed when I'm using the color mixer i don't see the % on the left like your pic shows above. I'm running it on my notebook and I expanded the window full screen but still nothing. It jumps in 10% increments and I see your %'s show more than just 10% increments. Any idea what's going on?

Broadfield · Oct 22, 2016

Jimbo662 said:
@Broadfield, I'm checking my par now and I noticed when I'm using the color mixer i don't see the % on the left like your pic shows above. I'm running it on my notebook and I expanded the window full screen but still nothing. It jumps in 10% increments and I see your %'s show more than just 10% increments. Any idea what's going on?

Weird, I don't know!?! Can you post a screenshot of it? Are you running Windows?

Also, I'm now running mine at 80% values to see the outcome. I have a feeling that my issues for a couple of my corals were not light related, but maybe nutrient related. So I have bumped mine back up to 80%... still no white LEDs. I'll keep this post updated.