Lx7 light composer projects?

[Dave-T]

Anyone have a light composer project for the LX7 for either daylight or deep blues? I've been using the AB+ project on GHL's website, which is nice, but I think I'd like to start using different spectrums through the day, having more of a "noontime" daylight spectrum in the middle of the day, and a deep blues in the evening. A friend of mine does this on his system (using a different brand of light), and it's really nice - to see what the tank looks like under different spectrums.

I've looked on both the GHL Light Composer Project page, and on the facebook page, and there isn't much there for the Lx7.

If I have to roll my own, is there any way I can "do the math" to estimate what color temperature I'm getting out of the lights based on the intensities of each of the channels? If there was, that would be awesome.

Thanks!

 

[BeanAnimal]

Dave - the composer will give you color approx color temp for any combo of sliders you move.
Is it accurate? No clue.

I would take the AB+ and add a few steps near midday then adjust those steps to your liking by turning down the blues a but and/or the whites or whatever up a bit.

If you do a single step at noon then the lights will fade to and from that from the last AB+ step before and after noon.

You could replicate the AB+ steps at say 11am and 1PM with the "daylight" peak at noon and the transition would only be a 2 hour shift from AB+ to "daylight" and back to AB+

You can use your imagination from there.

 

[Dave-T]

Cool! Thanks. I never noticed that it shows the temp. And I now see that you can view your spectrum against "Clorophyl A", B, and "Violaxanthin", whatever that means. I think I need to find some documentation on Light Composer and read up.

 

[Saith]

Vinny's light composer project does that. It has a base daytime spectrum, goes to a daylight spectrum for a couple hours at midday, then in the evening it ramps down through a deeper blue. My understanding is his project is supposed to be used with adjusted Power Balancing on the LX7 lights, so the spectrum in light composer isn't accurate.

I spent most of Sunday looking for other projects and modifying my settings. I liked Vinny's the best. However I couldn't get moonlight ramping to work with his project.

I ended up slightly modifying ReefBums' spectrum for my base spectrum, then ramping to his 17020K for about an hour, then ramping down to a deeper blue in the evening. Here is what I am using, (no changes to the power balancing settings, all at 100%). Hopefully the corals will be okay with it.

Good luck with your project. I would be interested to see what you come up with.

 

[Dave-T]

Thanks. I'm not clear on what the power balancing settings do. Will they modify the spectrum you set in light composer? I did not know that. Something else I need to read up on. I do have some power balancing stuff going on in my configuration. If they modify the spectrum you pick in light composer, then my spectrum isn't what I thought it was.

Where did you get the Reefbum light composer project? I'd like to check that out.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Thanks. I'm not clear on what the power balancing settings do. Will they modify the spectrum you set in light composer? I did not know that. Something else I need to read up on. I do have some power balancing stuff going on in my configuration. If they modify the spectrum you pick in light composer, then my spectrum isn't what I thought it was.

Where did you get the Reefbum light composer project? I'd like to check that out.

None of this is well explain in my opinion...

Power balancing

Let's say that you have two channels (to keep things simple) only
the power supply (and heatsinks) can handle 200 watts
each channel is capable of being driven to 150 watts maximum
You can't drive both channels at 150 watts - as the 300 watt consumption exceeds the supply.

So instead power balancing sets the 100% setting = 100 Watts

You can then set
Set chan 1 to 50%
set chan 2 to 150%

Set the MAIN output slider to 100%
Chan 1 is driven at 50 Watts
Chan 2 is driven at 150 Watts
Total wattage = 200 Watts

This gets confusing because what you see in the composer does not reflect this.
So composer shows channel 1 at some level and channel 2 at some level relative to each other... but not accounting for the power balance scaling.

 

[Saith]

Where did you get the Reefbum light composer project? I'd like to check that out.

I created a project based off his reply to a comment on his lighting video.

Power balance settings:
100% for all 9 channels

Spectrum:
• Blue – 100%
• Royal Blue – 100%
• Cool White – 28%
• Blue White – 100%
• True Green – 28%
• Hyper Red – 16%
• Sky White 28%
• Ultraviolet – 100%
• Hyperviolet – 100%

Schedule:
10A 12N 8P 10P

I take the schedule section to mean:
ramp up: 10A 12N
ramp down: 8P 10P

 

[Saith]

None of this is well explain in my opinion...

Power balancing

Let's say that you have two channels (to keep things simple) only
the power supply (and heatsinks) can handle 200 watts
each channel is capable of being driven to 150 watts maximum
You can't drive both channels at 150 watts - as the 300 watt consumption exceeds the supply.

So instead power balancing sets the 100% setting = 100 Watts

You can then set
Set chan 1 to 50%
set chan 2 to 150%

Set the MAIN output slider to 100%
Chan 1 is driven at 50 Watts
Chan 2 is driven at 150 Watts
Total wattage = 200 Watts

This gets confusing because what you see in the composer does not reflect this.
So composer shows channel 1 at some level and channel 2 at some level relative to each other... but not accounting for the power balance scaling.

This is my understanding of how it works. I did most of my reading on forum threads, didn't find much for official documentation on how too much on how it actually works. There is this: What is the Power Balancing Technology (PBT)?

I read somewhere that all the power balance settings should average out to 100%. So you can't simply boost one channel up without reducing another. But on GHL's website for light composer projects, ReefRockersLive's power balance settings shows several channels increased with no channels reduced.

I suppose in if you pick easy numbers to work with, you could adjust the sliders in light composer to see what the spectrum really is based on your saved settings.

 

[BeanAnimal]

The proper fix would be for composer‘s graph and color estimate to account for power balance scaling

 

[Dave-T]

Thanks for the explanation Bean. I read the documentation. All it says about power balancing in the Lx7 manual is "Under the item Energy Options there is a further possibility to adjust the light spectrum. Here, you can weigh the available power of the luminaire in favor-of or at the expense of individual color channels."

Yes, too bad that the light composer doesn't take power balancing into account. It's handy that it shows the color temperature of the settings you pick, but they're meaningless if you have power balancing set up.

The AB+ spectrum that I'm using is one that I got from "Telegraham", that he created using a spectrometer. And it does use power balancing. I'd forgotten that when I set it up months ago I had put in his power balancing settings. I'm going to play with this a bit, I might just revert back to 100% for all channels in power balancing. But I can compute the true intensities in a spreadsheet pretty easily and get the kelvin from there, now that I know how this works.

 

[BeanAnimal]

I am not sure how to calculate the color temperature based on the power/output of each channel. I wanted to do this for the NooPsyche K7 app that I built (their app is beyond terrible). But gave up, too much of a rabbit hole.

 

[Dave-T]

I checked out Reefbum's Mitras video. Apparently, his settings are from the same AB+ settings from Telegraham that I was using. But if I take Telegraham's settings and normalize them to take out his power balancing, Reefbum's channel intensities are different and result in a different color temperature (Telegram AB+: 18610K, Reefbum: 17040K, according to the GHL Light Composer). Does anyone know the color temperature (Kelvin) of the Radion AB+ spectrum? I looked for it, but the google didn't find it. Here is what I got:

Light composer channel order	Chip	Telegraham Power balancing	Telegraham AB+	Ab+ with balancing	normalized (18610K)	Reefbum (17040)
1	SEMILEDS-ULTRAVIOLET-385NM	150.00%	100	150	100.00	100
2	SEMILEDS-HYPERVIOLET-425NM	150.00%	100	150	100.00	100
3	CREE_XLAMP_ROYALBLUE-455NM	150.00%	100	150	100.00	100
4	CREE_OSLON_SSL_EVL (BLue white)	150.00%	100	150	100.00	100
5	CREE_XLAMP_BLUE_475NM	150.00%	100	150	100.00	100
6	OSRAM-OSLON-SSL-WHITE-7500K (Sky white)	71.00%	28	19.88	13.25	28
7	CREE_XLAMP_WHITE_6500K (cool white)	71.00%	28	19.88	13.25	28
8	OSRAM-OSLON-SSL-TRUE-GREEN-528NM	71.00%	28	19.88	13.25	28
9	OSRAM-OSLON-SSL-HYPPERRED-656NM	71.00%	15	10.65	7.10	16

 

[KStatefan]

@telegraham must have changed his power balancing setting that is not what I remember.

 

[Dave-T]

@telegraham must have changed his power balancing setting that is not what I remember.

It's from his original post, here:

AB+ and the Mitras LX 7

Hey, all. I set out to recreate the proven Ecotech CoralLab AB+ spectrum on the LX7, and it's ready to share! Attached, you'll find the GHL Light Composer project. It's a very simple schedule that ramps up, emits its AB+ goodness, and ramps down. Running the project requires some power balancing...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[BeanAnimal]

I think he did... there is a "this is what I am running now" where he tweaked it a bit for photos or something and just left it.

 

[BeanAnimal]

I will also say this - plots that look similar are not the same. It takes very little variation in one of those plots (peaks, slopes, small humps, what have you) to drastically change what the human eye sees.

 

[KStatefan]

This is what I have that came form one of his videos or the discord

 

[telegraham]

@telegraham must have changed his power balancing setting that is not what I remember.

I have removed power balancing from my lights, but I am running the AB+ project. It's attached. Same for Keith. He is not running balancing.

The change noted by @BeanAnimal above was for my liking when the lights were over the 40 breeder. I changed it for more white.

But if I take Telegraham's settings and normalize them to take out his power balancing, Reefbum's channel intensities are different and result in a different color temperature (Telegram AB+: 18610K, Reefbum: 17040K, according to the GHL Light Composer)

The actual difference between the original post's balanced and Keith's/my current not balanced will be minimal.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Curious as to why you removed the power balancing.

 

[telegraham]

Curious as to why you removed the power balancing.

Keith’s results.